Currently doing bucket tek with -80C ethanol. I’ve been using 5 gal buckets but about to switch to doing the extraction in a 30 or 55 gal barrel. I use 5 gal 220 micron bags to hold the biomass, pull them out of ethanol and spin them in a panda. I have a 3 stage water filter set up which filters into rotovap with 50, 10, 1 micron filters. The housing is PP so the ethanol has to warm up before it can go thru the filter. Problem is when I let the solution warm up to -10C or higher the color goes from gold to green pretty quickly. So I’ve been using the 5 gal refinement filter from BVV to filter while still cold. It works ok, but is kinda slow.
What I want to do is this:
Biomass soak in ethanol in a barrel
Pull bags of biomass and spin in panda
Transfer spun out ethanol back to barrel and filter thru a stainless steel filter housing using negative pressure and 100L stainless solvent tank.
Yeah when I first got the panda, I thought it was stable so I walked away for a second only to come back to see it spilling ethanol all over the floor b/c it walked away from my collection pan. Lesson learned.
This does the trick for me… acouple 2x4 and a hook.
Also 5 gallon paint strainers are 100 micron. Doesn’t quite get all the plant matter but most of it. I use nutmilk bags @ 40 microns to get the rest, but there small and harder to work with
