Just curious. We are fabricating our 1st ffe in house. We have a Julabo w 91 chiller/heater that needs repurposing. I’ve always ran my falling films at between -2c/4c on the recondensing side. And I’ve havent come across anyone that runs super cold and there must be a reason. I’m assuming that it may have to do with premature recondensing in the vapor column and dropping ethanol back into the crude but that’s just a guess since we are not at the testing stage yet. Has anyone tried running a falling film under 0c and if so how cold is too cold? -20c? -40c?
I suspect reason most aren’t running that cold is diminishing returns, way more money for a chiller rated for 10 ton at -40c than the same cooling power at 0c.
IMO there’s better reasons to run colder temps on cold traps but not on bulk condensing
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Ideally if you have a chiller that can keep up at -20 then it could keep up with almost double the capacity at 0
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Turn your heater up and let her rip.
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Also, all chillers have less cooling capacity as the temperature goes down.
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there is no such thing as ‘too cold’, it’s all about how many kw/btu you are putting in/need to remove.
the condensation temperature depends on your vapor pressure in the system. if you’re pulling vacuum it will need to be lower.
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