What if someone hypothetically had 3000 lbs dry biomass per month. Didn’t care about fats or lipids. but didn’t have the money for eth recovery. All we need is the crudiest crude possible. Running a giant 40lb material column with a matching giant collection/recovery tank for butane. Trying to hypothetically get ~ 3-4 runs per day = 120 to 160 lbs (wayyy on the high side just brainstorming) eth recovery will come later just need to get the ball rolling. Ill have more info to add later. An early thank you to anyone that can possibly answer questions
Get rid of the butane and you can process it all in ethanol from start to finish
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I totally agree but the people Ive been talking to want to buy a centrifuge to not separate ethanol from plant material but to separate the crude from the ethanol thus not needing to buy rotary evaporators or ffe. They think that buy getting some crude produced with some of the stainless they already have using butane they will be able to buy the equipment for ethanol extraction. They are talking huge numbers like 1,000,000 hemp plants will be in the ground next year so they will absolutely be doing ethanol. They just need to get started
100 k and its yours. 200 lb a day all in one run 7 lbs per tube. maybe if iron fist guys are legit you can fit more weight in there per tube putting you at 300-400 per run. I did this for months with the help of one other person. 8-10 hour days. oh yea and if you upgrade the recovery system, you could do 2 runs in a day.
they are trying to centrifuge the crude from the ethanol?
Tell us more.
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I have a meeting with the people who are trying to put this together on Monday and will definitely show them this. Where is the machine located as we are in Michigan.
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sacramento. comes in a shipping container. I would consider doing a hands on install as well for travel/time.
That is what they were pitching I’m not totally sure the specs. The idea kinda makes sense tho
will pitch it too them on Monday for sure i"m not totally sure the budget is there on this venture so don’t hold your breath but its definitely worth a shot.
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Potentially doable with high enough sigma factor in a continuous disc stack centrifuge.
Kinda doubt it though
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I agree sounds too good to be true. Not having to change phases of the ethanol…
I had previously talked to someone who said it was possible to get 80% of the ethanol out that way and had planned to get a flottweg centrifuge for that purpose. However flottweg told me they knew of no such technique. Shouldn’t be hard to test
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I’ve looked into it. Spun some ethanol+extract at about 10,000 rcf in a lab scale fuge for over a half hour. No separation or even really a gradient across the fluid in the tube. A big enough continuous disc stack centrifuge could do it in theory, though the couple of fuge catalogs I’ve got on my desk only list rcf ratings up to about 11k.
I’ve got my eye on a smallish clarifying fuge that will do about 20k rcf in a continuous manner, might play with it one day when I have more free time/money.
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Ya highly highly doubt it… and if it can be done it’s on a very expensive centrifuge that can spin SO FUCKING FAST which at that point just extract it normally… no?
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Big energy savings vs. evaporation if possible
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talking to them tomorrow will keep everyone updated