I was going through the data logs from our last extraction day and wondered how we stack up against what everyone else is doing.
In 7 hours and 55 minutes, a team of two people extracted 686kg/1512.6lb of dry biomass.
So that’s about 43kg/96lb per extraction tech per hour.
We’re running a single 450mm/17.1" basket fuge.
We lost an average of 162ml of solvent per kg of input biomass. Or 2.5oz of solvent per lb of input.
This isn’t close to the fastest we’ve run, but it’s an acceptable average over a whole shift. One of those people has a bit too much downtime while the system is cycling, so I think I’ll be making some changes to get more hourly throughput and keep them running.
I know some of y’all have to be able to beat that 96 lb per person-hour on the extraction side. What are you running? How do we stack up?
1300-1500 lbs for 2 operators is about average on a single 300L centrifuge while managing the rest of the shop. Extraction is mostly managed by one person while downstream processes are handled by the supervisor. This is on second and third shift. First shift has more support staff.
My best 1 person performance was running 1300lbs and packing 1600lbs into bags while managing solvent recovery and winterization. That was by no means sustainable for more than a day or two. It was more of a personal test.
Would that be an 800mm basket? Or larger? I seem to remember that you’re running a bag lift system for getting things in and out of the fuges, is that right?
We’re slurry loading ours.
Having post-extraction be a mostly hands-off affair is definitely the only real way to do it.
1200mm if i remember right. We load dry in bags and run a spinning extraction with fresh ethanol. Usually around 2.5lbs/gal. We can choose the fill time, recirc time, and spin dry time from the HMI. The lift makes a huge difference, but we still have to muscle bags from the scale to a cart.
We recently started using a decanter for winterizing and i can’t wait to see it implemented for continuous biomass extraction.
How tall is that crane? The one I picked up cheap for this task is too short, but getting folks to purchase one that’s actually tall enough has proven difficult.
I could build you any type of overhead crane you could possibly want for a lab. I’ve even built cranes for explosive environments like paint recycling centers, ect. Starting to feel more and more like a small fab shop is my next move
I’d also recommend a long radius bend outlet that does those two 90 degree bends in one long swoop. If the fuge is spinning the right way then its drain time is being reduced by those two sharp bends.
We soak/spin for few mins circulating etoh then spin off at 1100rpm. Seems to work good, but i wouldnt mind ridding the machine of several bends not just those going to the pump.
