Hi there! We just got the IceTek Chiller from bhogart, setting it up tomorrow… Super stoked! Any advice, info or tips on running and set up? Thanks in advance!
It gets really cold, but it’s very difficult to adjust the temperature to a specific setting so that’s the only real drawback.
You may consider using a nitrogen push, or a chiller bypass from your pump to your recovery tank to get solvent moving around more at such low temps.
Make sure your electrician installs it properly or you’ll blow out the compressor. There are some special instructions for setting it up he has to follow.
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Thank you!
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“It gets really cold” is pretty much all that the guys at Iced Tech have been able to tell me about the damn thing. All they can say is “I recommend you see it in person because it is the fastest recovery time I have seen in person.” You can’t argue with that, can you?!
Fuck yeah I can. Because I can do simple math and tell you exactly how much heat transfer needs to occur. It sounds like they’ve hardly done any installations and they’re weirdly clinging onto sales at Bhogart as opposed to just dealing with potential customers straight up. That’s a red flag if I’ve ever seen one, especially coming from Bhombgart. They also claimed “We can build anything you want.” After discussing a cooling application of 7.5 kW @ -40C, they claimed “We got that all day long.” After discussing a cooling application of 15 kW @ -40C, they claimed “Our machines will smash that. We do gas transfer extremely well but we chill large volumes even better.”
Well, it took over a month to finally hear “We are manufacturing company and haven’t got the sales thing down that’s for sure. . . The units recover propane and butane between 2 to 4 lb per minute. 50 lbs solvent gets down to -45C in about 15-18 minutes.” That’s a hell of a spec sheet I might say. No parameters were given regarding pressures, temperatures, or method of heat exchange (internal vs external cooling, vacuum insulation, surface area of heat exchanger, etc).
So their machines don’t “smash that” and they do not “got that all day long.” As a matter of fact, they only seem to have one model and are not willing to custom build a solution, contrary to their own claims.
“You have not seen one person that has demo this machine get on social media and dispute any claim we have made.” 
This message has been approved by The Instagram Institute of Technology.
…followed by “I’m not an Instagram guy…”
Just my few pennies on the subject matter…
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I have tried in other industry as an engineer to incorporate cooling into products. Some of my engineering designs (in fact nearly all) dealt with robotic style working of metal as well as ancillary compliments to a machine cell with an automatic annealing machine in both gas and electric versions. An annealing machine needs to heat the metal up until just barely glowing red in order to soften the metal after it becomes hardened from welding.
I have spent many hours trying to nail down any sort of real formula to predict cooling capacity. If a salesperson is inflating capabilities with gibberish it just means they are doing their job as a salesman lolz but honestly the problem of estimating cooling capacity is huge without having installed enough systems to see what works and what does not.
I recently bought a used cold immersion cold finger. I love the damn thing. On those they simply put the capabiity in watts of cooling power at any given temp. Mine is rated at -87C so therefor once the cold finger achieves -87C the engineers are communicating that there are zero watts of available work left in that design.
If your heater of the solvent is rated at say 1500 watts of heating capacity then generally speaking this is the amount of cooling capacity needed but even the slightest design issues in the cooling system change the need towards higher capacities.
Beyond this calculation unless a guy has seen and done it in an application then they do not know. Cooling capacity is also expressed as “tons” meaning how mnay tons of ice a day it can make. Once again this is extremely ballpark info if you need to compute cool down time for hot ethanol contianing plant extracts of unknown composition. Let me repost here an IG vid showing somethingthat at first glance can go unnoticed yet is uniquely profound in my opinion.
Take note of the probe readings just inches from the cold finger and then the readings from the flask. The temperature gradient is very steep and the point is that at zero inches from the cold finger the unit might indeed smash the heat out of things but move the cold finger a few inches? Not so much then.
I predict the one solution that will appear for mass cooling will leverage pressure (and therefor temperature) release in a controlled fashion for mass cooling. Here is how it works. Have you ever held onto an air nozzle from a compressor and felt it get cold? In fact within companies that use factory wide compressed air tools it is not uncommon for a tool to freeze up with a bit of water in the system. My vision here is placing the hot mix into a pressure vessel and then pressurizing to near the vessels capacity. Then through a restrictive nozzle the solvent and compound would be released in a controlled fashion under high pressure and the pressure swing from this would have a mass cooling effect not achievable via a cold finger.
I had napkin designed a machine and even bought an oilless compressor meant for cake decorating to try this on a micro scale. My hope was a saturated solution cooled like this would precipitate out the cannabinoids which would drop from the pressurized stream while carrying the impurities further along a trough sort of collector and could be seperated. I decided not to pursue that further simply because I found a different path towards seperations.
Here is the IG vid showing the steep gradient of temps. The efficiency might be improved by a circulator however there are only so many watts of cooling power to work with. A salesman will quote a chiller as -87C and may imply that this means the entire bath get that low but this is not the case.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BldLGRyg8lo/?taken-by=redturtle984
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I agree with you regarding general inefficiencies, ambient losses, and specific-to-design components that will greatly affect the empirical data. However, isn’t it kind of a major part of the engineer’s job to be able to crunch numbers behind the system he/she designs and builds? Sure, flow rates, volumetrics, materials or construction, surface area, etc all play a role into the calculations…but I find it pretty sad if the engineers behind the machine cannot even conjure up some calculation. Shit, I have spoken with multiple local PE’s that haven’t complained once about “Oh there are so many factors involved, I don’t know where to start.”
Regarding the bold statement #1, that’s exactly my issue. It seems to me as if Iced Tech doesn’t quite have the experience that they originally made claims to. That’s a major red flag going forward with any business, especially if they are in “start-up” mode.
As for bold statement #2, you are correct, as the listed cooling capacities on spec sheets are typically on an empty load. But that’s all I was asking for! They couldn’t even tell me the volume or type of refrigerant, the operating pressures, the flow rate of coolant…I could go on…
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I wrote down some specs last time I talked to an Iced Tech rep:
2.5hp - 1 Phase power, 220v w 30amp breaker, 6.6kw
5hp - 3 Phase power, 208v w 50amp breaker, 4.3 kw
We are currently running crude with two master vapors with the smaller size. It gets the job done and keeps up with solvent recovery quite well, but I really wish we could have gotten the larger size compressor. Our tank is 150lbs, so that means it would take three times as long to get the tank to temperature when full. The smaller compressor will have difficulty getting to -45 at all with the 150lb tank completely full.
That aside, it works reliably and hasn’t really had any issues. I am still quite happy with it overall. My main issue with it is that I wish we would have gotten the bigger one.
Yeah I agree, sales associates should try to sell products, but they have to be careful not to say yes to technical inquiries if they don’t actually know the answer for sure.
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Just my $0.02 here but I don’t really see the point of this. If direct cooling as opposed to a liquid cooling were so much better then the chiller companies would have switched over years ago. Whenever I think of a new design I say to myself “why hasn’t anyone done this before”.
Here’s the low down…
Cooling power is cooling power, so whether you use a intermediate material to transfer heat or direct cooling it won’t make any difference aside from the initial cool down time.
What the fluid does is buffer temperature swings and creates a sort of inertia to your temp and much greater stability. You can also hook up to any item you want to fluid based chillers whereas direct cooling means that you’ll have to drain the refrigerant to disconnect.
A quick note point about specs and cooling power:
Cooling power is non-linear. If you see a cooling power graph graph it looks like a hump instead of a straight line. What this means is that when your chiller set point is close to ambient temperature you’ll have many times greater cooling power than down low. Some chillers have multiple stages to bump that curve even lower but it isn’t going to get close to the min temp with any heat load. So find out what temp you need and the cooling power at that temp.
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Echochyll also has the same idea. I’ve made this point before but chillers are very common needed equipment and they chose to pair it with a rotovap and declare it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s just a big pot still with a immersion chiller.
Not very smart considering that every rotovap manufacture and seller needs chillers so they just chose to compete with everyone. Maybe he should get his $$$$ back for his MBA 
It appears that Iced tech chillers are a BHOgart off-shoot. Probably run by the same guys just has a different name so they can sell to the competition easier. Not hating or anything I think it’s a smart idea
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Curious but if you’re running crude, what’s the point of getting your solvent to -45?
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I’m skeptical on getting a 5hp iced tech because I can’t find much info on them. Wondering if a huber cs100 & a Big heat exchanger from bhogart will be sufficient for condensing on the outlet of both the MVPs
heat in heat out
i find this a great thumb rule
my recovery by corken is 8.5kw my cooling active needed is 6kw
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Never worked for us. It’s used has a support mount now 
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No, it fucking doesn’t!
Based on pressure readings (yep, no thermosensors provided) from the solvent tank, it is achieving maybe -20C with zero process load. Operator reports it doesn’t ice over when they’re running their system, suggesting it doesn’t even get to 0C when it has a load on it.
From what I saw yesterday, that -20C actually degrades with time rather than getting better (it was colder at the 1hr mark than the 2hr mark).
who sells a chiller without a temp sensor? I’d say only folks who don’t want their customers to know it doesn’t work worth a damn.
it does make a lovely snowball in the C1D1 space…but the pumps (liquid and vapor) make it too noisy to enjoy.
It’s not my install/purchase, I’m just here to do a little hand holding and process optimization…now that I know there are two sizes, I’ll check which one I’m dealing with.
my first response is to insulate it appropriately, the next is to place thermocouples strategically around the system. the reading I’ve done on the MVP suggests that it doesn’t like back pressure…so I’m not sure how these guys have been recovering propane into a 0C solvent tank.
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If the heat exchangers aren’t cold, that’s definitely not right. If it gets warmer as it runs, it probably leaks. We had a leaky sight glass on the Iced Tech that has been replaced with a solid tube. Also - don’t fill refrigerant from the expansion valves at the heat exchangers. MVP is the only source in the world I can find that backs this practice… And they don’t even know why. They say “you can’t overload the system.” Yes you can.
Private message sent with details about the system I run - feel free to share bits and pieces you find relevant to your post.
We scrapped the MVP vapor pumps for a Corken compressor.
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bummer. Iced tech is the BHOGart joke version of what is now Perma Cool just like MVP is the BHOgart joke version of a quality Grenco paint pump. I mean recovery pump. If you want a quality long lasting system that works, spend the money on the one designed by HVAC engineers with all safety sensors and failsafes in place designed with a slick touch screen interface that shows you system parameters.
Not the one from the guys who ripped off the design of the original direct refrigeration guys, ripped out the smarts of the compressors so they just run at full bore all the time (not designed for 100% duty cycle) now your slightly cheaper gear often fails prematurely. Idk what kind of cool controls the Iced tech has now.
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Looks like I’m dealing with the smaller unit, it is definitely undersized for the task.
Their lead extractor is a trained HVAC tech, and the owner has worked with a tamisium for several years. They have a better chance than most of working their way out of this hole.
Thank you! I’ll pass that along, or not, they’re both on here I believe
The current ice tek implementation does not seem to include anything in the way of “cool controls”, or much at all in the way of controls. certainly little in the way of safeties. It has apparently been throwing a P1 (over pressure?) error, which the operator has been told to ignore…
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That’s exactly what killed two of our compressors…if you fill both the heat exchangers and compressor 100%. . . .they leave no room for expansion, so the cooling effect is not there. The compressor should cycle a few times on startup, bringing the pressure lower as it cycles each time.
The first time I saw it run, the pressure spiked to 500 psi in a few seconds before the limit switch actually did anything. Thankfully the heat exchangers are actually rated for 500 psi…
The model I’ve used has some ability to change settings like cut-in and cut-out pressures. . . It would trip somewhere around 100-110 psi usually. The few times the expansion actually worked (when we made our HVAC tech recover some of the refrigerant) the startup cycle was enough to bring the pressure down to 50-80 psi, and within 15-20 minutes down to 12 psi.
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JFC what a bunch of hack jobs.
I’m sorry @hambread but thanks for confirming everything I’ve heard about Iced Tech from two other customers without as much knowledge of “why” shit kept breaking and underperforming.
I’m on site for an installation in the Bay Area. We begin today and the game plan is to do it right the first time with a completely custom 10 column small batch machine (150lbs solvent capacity) with a dual Permacool setup; ethanol on the column jackets, solvent tank, and maybe preinjection? (Idk Exact details,I haven’t met Permacools engineer yet but we’ll be on site at 10 to find out.
Oh yeah the POWWER: direct refrigeration for the post pump and passive mode condensing and chilling.
Tune in to my Instagram to learn along with me today @samuraisam33
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