I’ve heard nothing but shitty things about most bags/bag vendors over the years - generally that the standard bags don’t stand up to constant use and blow out after a shockingly low amount of runs.
So we had a seamstress making bags in-house for us, and they worked great.
But we don’t use fuge bags anymore and she’s moved on to be with family, but now she’s is thinking of starting to make bags for other companies.
There are a couple of designs that she’s got in her back pocket.
The first is heavily field tested and ready to take whatever you want to throw at it.
It is a two layer woven fabric and filter felt bag, which we used in our 450mm basket fuge when we were running over 200lb/hr (dry) through it. By the final design iteration we were only throwing them out between batches or because the felt had started to blind/slow down enough that we noticed it. I believe we were getting about 1700kg / 3750lb through a single bag before the filter felt would blind to that point.
They can be hit with a pressure washer to clear the felt and extend the life a bit.
We were using them in an open-top configuration for slurry loading, but they could be done with zipper tops as well.
Scaling it to 600mm / cup30 size would be no problem.
We also know someone who used this same type in a fuge for spinning the terps/mother liquor off their isolate.
The second design is for much larger fuges - 800mm and up, designed for crane/bag lift installations.
We’ve got a special woven multifilament fabric that is ridiculously strong, and the liquid drains out of it as fast as you can pump it in.
The fabric has a nominal hole size between the weaves of about 400µm, but very little material actually escapes through it, as the biomass makes a very effective cake.
When last using this material for biomass solid/liquid separation, we had our liquid discharge through a 10" diameter 100µm basket filter, and after 500 kg or so had only collected enough material in the basket to just barely cover 3/4 of the bottom of the filter basket with a very fine sludge.
It also seems to not blind at all.
These wouldn’t be cheap, but they are super robust. She’s considering offering a “If it blows out in under 3 months, ship it back so I can improve the design and you’ll get a free replacement” guarantee on it.
Do these seem interesting to anyone? I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well as what you think these might be worth / places I can check for current pricing, etc.