Formula for Molecular sieves?

Hash and Stuff Solvent Recovery
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Trying to figure out how many Mole Sieve beads i will need to re proof 50 gallons a day (will probably get a weeks worth of beads so there is never a down time waiting for the to dry)

My question being: whats the formula for water absorption for 3A beads? Carbon chemistry did not have any info on this… they said people just usually buy X amount of beads and figure it out…

We will be ramping up to 400-600 gallons a day over the next up coming months and id like to be able to also figure out what king of ovens we will need based on amount of beads being used.

For the 50 gallons a day we have a 4.8 cubic foot oven currently. And that was just a best guess scenario since the providers of Mole sieve beads ive contacted dont appear to have any empirical data on the subject? which i find to be somewhat unprofessional, but understandable.

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This is how I would go about it, your milage may very based on your seives.
step 1) dehydrate your seives @400f for an hour and cool under vaccum.

step 2) Weigh out a gram of the mol seive beads

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step 3) load a syring with distilled h20.
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step 4) slowly add the h20 to the seives and gently shake them untill they reach saturation, record the weight. the beads should look “wet” but there shouldent be any pooling water.

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It looks like a gram of my seives held around
.4 -.5 grs of h20. On the safe side I would say .4 grams.

H20 is 1gr per cc so 1 gr of seives hold .4cc of h20.

Repeat the experement with your seives and lets compaire data!:nerd_face:

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Awesome will do!

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So doing that math out your mole sieves hold 40% H20.

So if we have 45 gallons a day at 175 proof need to be brought to 195 proof, then we have 10% of that as water, and need to remove 4.5 Gallons of H20.

1 gallon of H20 weighs 3.78 Kilos, 4.5 x 3.78 = 17.01 Kilos of H20 to be removed.

1 Kilo of Mole Sieve Beads can absorb 40% its weight AKA 400Grams of water

17.01 Kilos is 17,010 grams of H20

17,010/400 = 42.525 Kilos of Mole Sieve beads needed DAILY

Fuck me, there has to be a better way, thats gonna take so much Oven space.

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@Shadownaught This math add up to you? trying to source beads from yall, you guys just didnt have the empirical data available. It seems excessive to have to use 40 kilos to proof 45 gallons, gonna need a couple more ovens for sure

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Most manufacturers have spec sheets available online.

High quality 3A’s theoretically can absorb ~20% H2O, there’s a table here,

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Generally 3A sieve should hold about 18-20% of its weight in water on average. That’s what most manufacturers will tell you.

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The 20% ratio is correct yet iT seems that the colder the liquid the less the beads absorb Acording to My supplier of beads so Maybe try the test at real life temperatures

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O one more thing Please check your PH of your sieves there seems to be 3a sieves that are more acitic than otheres
Making your ethanol ph change

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Skyhighler If this is the same person as Seen on other web forums You flatter me
Read many of your post in de past 3 years
Many thx for your insights and effort making a quality product

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18-25% water retention is to be expected, however, mol sieve drying is normally used on higher proof alcohol (180+). Due to the normal usage I wonder if this drying method is worthwhile. The BR 9200 can regen alcohol to 190p all day (9600 is the THC distillation model).

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Sorry man i try to understand what You are trying to tell
Could You Please explain a littel more

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Is that a spinning band apparatus

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Cheered to hear the appreciation!! A lot of open minds here doing progressive investigation, much love back at you!!! John E Schuyler (SkyHighLer)

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9600 is for solvent recycling. 9200 is our cannabis unit with a significantly shorter column.

I agree that reproofing the ethanol a little is probably the better method. Going from 80% to 100% with sieves alone could be tricky as the math indicates. That’s a ton of sieve and they don’t regenerate at low temps. Massive energy investment + you would probably need either a vacuum system or N2 stream to speed things up.

@Siosis Now lets say you take your ethanol back to 95% through fractional distillation. Then you need 1/3 of the sieve.

We sell everything from small (The B/R ProCycler Solvent Recycler | B/R Instrument)
to large (Pilot Scale Distillation Equipment | B/R Instrument) with pretty much everything in between.

Take my advice with a grain of salt because we sell ethanol recyclers though :slight_smile:

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Oops, got the P/N’s backwards again, smh.

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Yeah the one he is referring to is spinning band. We sell packed column systems too especially for larger volumes.

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Haha, no worries as far as I know its pretty arbitrary. Just unique numbers for safety certifications and the like

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Have You ever thougt of purefying your ethanol by means of revursed osmosis
I have seen sevaral studies un the matter quit posittive

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I believe Evonik makes a hydrophobic filter membrane.

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