Infused Oil Filtration

Hey All,

I recently was thrown into managing the production of retail goods for my company. Most of our retail goods are oil based (MCT, Jojoba, Omega-3, etc.) and are infused with a crude hemp extract. The resulting infusion has a lot of undissolved material (plant particulate) that needs to be filtered out. Previously this has been done with Buchner filtration which takes quite a while especially when we are doing larger volumes. There is also the need for a more refined system that is easy to clean and nearly automated. Therefore, I am looking for a better way to do these filtrations.

Based on what I have read on here bag filters are often used for larger scale refinement. I have a lot of experience with these but my main concern lies in product loss (housing volume). The ways around this seem to be either to follow your infused batch with non-infused oil to push it through, push a gas volume to clear the system (pump or tank). I can’t push extra oil through as this would dilute the batch and disrupt potency, so I am left with pushing nitrogen though the system (or sourcing a specialty pump).

Other recommendations have been lenticular filters and filter presses. The obvious downside to the filter press is the cost. The downside to lenticular filters is the fact I cannot reuse filter media. Since this is a kitchen we are not running the same product everyday so we will need to replace filter media between batches.

Based on this I sourced some equipment and tried to build out a small scale inline filtering solution that would be relatively cheap to run. I am a chemist, not an engineer, so I would love some feedback from the community experts.

Our typical runs are anywhere from 1-25 gallons so nothing incredibly large. The refinement level I need is only ~10micron, and I probably will not get the 1 micron bag filter at the end.

Everything is built around 1.5" sanitary fittings. Total cost for build is around 2k so if you think there are better options I should be looking at for a similar price please let me know.

Is this an overkill, are my micron step downs too severe, does anyone else filter these types of oil on a regular basis? Would love anyone’s input, thank you all in advance.

150-100-50-10-1 micron stepdown (sorry hard to read on picture)

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hi Chaboes,

a percolation type setup benefits from ‘self filtration,’ high output potencies and efficient extraction of biomass. After infusion, I’m then able to filter at reasonable rates through 6" felt pads down to 0.5 micron.

Check out the infusers my company makes that do 20 and 50 lbs/shift.

http://hempharvestinnovations.com

I’ve written about process economics and small-scale percolation results (that easily scale up). Happy to help at your scale. Cheers!

looks like it will get the job done.

adding an AODD would be the next logical progression as you scale I believe.

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Yeahh I second the aodd. Then you can push gas through the pump and recover anything left on the suction side as well.

I’d stay away from depth media as the media could get into your product abd require additional filtration.

As an alternative to bags you might be able to use cartridge filters. I think they do a better job personally.

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Short answer: Yeah that setup is totally fine. If anything I’d say it’s over built. I like to run with the elcheapo amazon r.o filters staging from 100-25-10 and pull the solution through instead of push.

If your only doing 1-25 gallons a run you could accomplish that for 500$ including the pump and cart to mount everything. And the actual filtering should only take a few mins to get through 25 gallons

One tip would be to place a drip try under your filter housings b.c. you may find yourself changing one or two mid run and they can be messy also I’ve always used string wound filters not bags :call_me_hand:

One last thing. If you can do anything during your initial infusion to mitigate some of the stuff you’d filter out later it may help. We always went through a 5ish micron dutch wound s.s. filter at the bottom of our material column that the lipid infusion was done inside (a sintered disk would be fine too)

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I was thinking AODD as well. I saw people mentioning issues with pulsation? Is that only an issue with depth media? If not, I saw dampeners were an option.

Thank you for the input, much appreciated. I will definitely consider cartridge filters, just was worried about product loss but I am guessing it is no more than you would see in a bag filter.

@ky_cbd Thank you for your tips as well. When you say cart, do you mean a portable push cart to mount stuff on or is it just lingo? I was thinking of mounting this to the wall but after your tip about the drips I think that could get messy quickly.

This is from CES pretty similar idea

Edit: you obviously don’t need glass there. I like to filter right out of 55 gal. Stainless drums and into anything that can deal with the vacuum. So scaling is easy enough

If you push through product loss won’t be awful.

from personal experience this system is not great.

For what? B.c. using those kinds of filters on a cart for filtering tinctures is really all I was talking about. In which case it works great!

I’ve never tried to do initial extraction using a tripplextract cart seemed kind of silly so if that’s what you mean, I agree 100%

my bad I was thinking more on the extraction side lol. we played with one of those 4 years ago or so and were sorely disappointed. I never thought to use it for tinctures.

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Yeah the idea is not to use that system at all, just draw inspiration from the filters that are mounted. I would never spend that kind of money on something you can home brew for $500 :joy:

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