Hey guys!
We just got our type7 licensed lab up and running. It’s been 3years in the making and of course everything was purchased 3yrs ago expecting everything would be up and running 3 years ago. With that said We are currently running precision’s x10 mse from 3 years ago. Lol got a gc5000 for the pump their condensing coil with a cs100 at -20c and a 815 chiller at -50c for the solvent tank.
The problem we are having is in getting our run time down and be able to recover in a efficient manner. We are running a 6:1 ratio on solvent (70/30 butane/propane) to material and I realize they designed this extractor to run a 4:1 so I think that might be the hiccup. We are also running filtration down to .22 micron so I know that may slow things down as well.
Our issue seems be once we drop our gas into the collection vessel we are getting only a pound a minute and 30secs. With the gc5000 we were expecting a lot faster recovery. We are running our recovery temps at 40c I know that’s a little hot, this was us trying to speed up recovery. With all the said I’m hoping someone may help point us on the right direction to speed up recovery.
If there is something I missed or more needed please let me know. There are many knowledgeable people on here and hopefully someone can open our eyes to something we are missing.
Thank you in advanced.
Steve
What size are your recovery lines
Thats very small for that pump but goes along with any piece of precision equipment ive ever used or owned. They work on paper to them but in real life it doesn’t. Make those lines as big as possible but then you’ll probably have to change other things because the other stuff isn’t appropriately matched.
3 Likes
Idk if that’s the problem I know it will help. When starting recovery the collection vessel is at 50/60psi once we turn on the gc5000 the psi drops to 20psi within minutes. The pump is definitely is pulling it just seems like the collection vessel isnt purging off the gas fast enough
What size wild you recommend? I have a large solvent tank to recover to that I can have fitted to size
There platters have very lil room for water in them, my last px1 just by swapping out there crappy jacketed platter made it run faster. How much heat in kw are you using, is jt there standard hot water recirculator?
1 Like
We are running the julabo SL-12
As big as you can go, what size is your inlet on the punisher? I used the 1.5 port in the middle where the gauge was and built a manifold to feed multiple pumps.
1 Like
The julabo SL-12 is only 3kw heating capacity
1 Like
Yeah thats not a ton of heating for that pump, the small valves is probably the reason your able to keep that temp of the water during recovery. Ive never bad anything but problems with there stuff and when i would change something like were talking about it always led to having to change something else. I would start by getting as big of a opening for recovery as possible or your comfortable with and then see how it recovers
1 Like
The top of their collection has 3/8” compression so it’s definitely a bottle neck point beyond that I should be able to swap everything else out. If I do I afraid it might pull a vac on the collection and ruin the terps lol
With the GC5000, I noticed a lot of the recovered solvent was getting stuck in the condensing coil. I run my collection pot as low as 25C on the X10 sometimes, and I need extra pressure to help the recovery along. I would pressurize my material columns slightly with argon to help push the solvent, but then it would just increase the solvent tank pressure in the end. I attach a braided stainless hose from the solvent tank to the material column now so the pressure helps squeeze the solvent out of the biomass in the column. I leave the valve between material column and collection pot open for a few minutes, while that “open pressure loop” with the hose is open and it absolutely dumps recovery out of the condensing coil into the solvent tank. I’ve tweaked the method a little bit to cater to my machine, but thats what help me get closer to advertised recovery rates. Hope this helps!
1 Like
Not sure how your lid is set up but before i did the manifold i just used 2 valves on the lid T’d together still didnt work but wanted to see since I’ve already been down this kinda road with there stuff
1 Like
Hey Steve, I can help you optimize your system by explaining the factors that are affecting your recovery speed.
Your first issue is the heater. A julabo SL12 is only 3kw of heat and that will only work for maximum 1lb/min sustained recovery. The amount of heating energy is the largest factor in recovery rates because you need energy input to create phase change from liquid to vapor. Everyone’s so focused on surface area and overlook the largest variable to recovery speeds.
Next issue is the heater ports, hose size, jacket ports. If the flow is being restricted to where the volume of fluid in the jackets is not being replaced fast enough, the fluid will get cold before it is replaced by the fresh heat from the heater. Hard to fix the ports on the machine but you may be able to get a higher GPM pump to make up for the chokes in the system.
Next, the CS 100 can only condense your butane and only gives you enough to do around 2.5lbs of butane recovery per min. The 815 has only about 1kw of condensing power at the temp that the blend/propane would condense at so only enough for about .33lbs/min. The chiller spec is probably enough for the GC5000 but they will be operating at 100% load which is never good for equipment if you want it to last.
Based on the chillers you have, I would recommend one of the 24kw heaters we carry from Hubbel with a taco pump. It’ll have more than enough heating capacity and give you room to increase recovery speeds as well.
Let me know if you’d like to hop on a call to discuss in more detail.
It is sad but I don’t think any of the OEMs do any actual in depth engineering or testing to back up their products and it shows with the ancillary equipment they sell people.
4 Likes
Yeah it’s unfortunate we spent a fortune on the machine years ago and since then the industry has advanced so much. Figured changing out the lines would help out a lot even with the drop into the collection since it’s still slow even with a nitro push
Yeah there stuff is definitely all undersized for what they charge. But what he’s saying^^^ is spot on, when j changed my platter the new one held 3-4x the volume of water there’s did. It sucks to have to redo a new system, my last one i had for 2 weeks and by then already had added an extra tank, bigger everything just to be able to even run a normal amount. It was only being used for seeing yields on material but still was barely if at all of being able to do 2 runs back to back unless you recovered atleast 95% of your gas.
If you want to optimize and modify your system, we can help you with that and peer review any changes without breaking the bank. We optimize ETS and precision systems all the time because they can never do what they claim. With a few tweaks and add ons, they can be made a lot more optimal.
5 Likes
We really appreciate all the help guys! Thank you for everything. We will be in the lab this week. If we can’t get it to where we’re happy with it we will be hitting you up @ChangMinXD thank you for the info and you will probably be hearing from us soon lol