Quality advice and much appreciated. I am taking a step back and reviewing all equipment options. I have already begun to find some alternatives that meet our needs outside of Capna. To answer your questions, the Atles maxs out at 1920lbs per day in a 24 hour shift or 650 per 8 hour shift. We don’t need to be quite that high but our floor would be 400lbs per 8 hours. Our phase 1 is geared directly towards producing bulk distillate however our core competency from previous large business’s we have scaled is in consumer facing brands and product development so we wanted to leave the door to type 7 stuff open for the future.
Once again thank you for the input I am always open to it!
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You’ve come to the right place for high quality advice, my friend! These guys know their stuff!
That got me wondering why they wouldn’t just have a built in centrifuge spin cycle for the end? Like after its done you should be able to open a ball valve that drops the plant material into a self locking centrifuge to spin the rest of the liquid out.
EDIT: Link is no longer active but this post was still true.
Likely because they didn’t want to re-engineer and re-certify their existing system.
It also gives them an additional piece of hardware to sell instead of bundling it into an existing unit. This way they can “fix” older units and sell to former customers, as well as hook new ones.
That’s pretty moronic on CAPNA’s part. If they re-design the unit so the operator is able to spin the material out at the end then it would actually be used by extraction companies. They should’ve had that in place to begin with. In fact why not have it so that all the material is in a centrifuge and then when the initial extraction is done you could lock a lid down to the centrifuge and then set it for spin.
You may or may not benefit from winterization (major point of the capna is to avoid winterization), but you’ll absolutely need to filter your tincture before recovering the solvent.
I like 0.5um, but you can probably get away with 10um as you’re not using a WFE.
Maybe after first short path if you try lightening it with magic powders/dirt.
I have been using the ETHOS capna 6 for almost a year now and I have concluded there are some few good things about it but there is definitely room for improvement. First of all, the claim it can do 14 lbs an hour is a lie. Maximum capacity is 2000 gr of plant material per process. One process takes 25 to 30 minutes. Therefore, I can only process a maximum of 10 lbs per hour. Second, I have noticed I lose about 3000 ml of ethanol every run. To counteract the loss of solvent, I got a hydraulic press to squeeze the remaining solvent out of the plant material and now I only lose 1000 ml of ethanol. Third, there is a limit on how many runs a day you can do. It has 6 cartridges that limits your production to 6 runs. (6 runs x 4lbs plant material=only 24 lbs a day). Lastly, the one huge thing that capna doesn’t explain is that it’s not class 1 division 1 certified in certain states ( such as Maine). The engineering team and local Fire Marshall I have to wants to separate the refrigeration unit from the extractor because the A/C unit always has power and violates C1-D1 provisions.
In my opinion, a nitrogen cooled tank for ethanol would be more efficient and safe.
I’m conclusion, the extract is winterized and free from chlorophyll as it is intended to. The yield for distillate has been anywhere from 9% to 14% with high quality trim. It helps produce some great distillate but the cost of production is a huge variable to consider purchasing the capna 6.
And one helpful hint about improving yield and less chlorophyll: grind up the trim and freeze it to -80 degrees Celsius for a day before extraction.
I forgot about the details about that part; I press the plant material as soon as possible. I’ve noticed when I waited longer to press the material, I did have some fats and chlorophyll. After pressing, I use a filter system from summit research with a stage 2 filter while the solution is still cold. I know it seems primitive, but I’ve increased the yield by 2% and save close to a gallon of ethanol per run.
Thanks for this. The post is a bit older we quickly realized the ethos (while a good system) was nowhere near big enough for our needs. We purchased a system similar to the atlas but at a much lower cost with a daily throughput bordering on 2000lbs a day.
Still looking for a solution re: centerfuge without winterizing but alas…it escapes me
capna just came out with bigger and modular set up where the centrifuge apart of the system now actually. dont have experience with it just saw it at MJBIZ
Why would you want to grind the biomass and freeze, i read on other peoples post that freezing biomass will pull water from the air and therefore not be as efficient as it will dry.
And if you grind the trim doesnt that create more damaged cell walls to expose more chlorophyll?