I’m setting up an old ironfist with portable chillers and a custom compressor heat exchange system. Everything is jacketed.
I’m considering wrapping everything in thermo insulation jackets. Needled fiberglass.
Here is my thinking. One, the name of the game is efficiency. I want to preserve my equipment and also be able to maintain consistent temps without being concerned about atmospheric conditions (room heating up). I also want to avoid condensation.
I see a lot of people using the bubble foil, but I’m only interested in doing things 100% the right way. At the same time, custom fitted blankets/jackets are expensive, and I don’t want to over-do it, but I do want to over-do it.
Also, has anyone used temperature controlled/limited heated thermal jackets on collection vessels with success? What about tank warmers for vapor distilling?
Yes you can buy PVC tubing a little bit bigger than the tube you are trying to insulate, cut it the right length then slit down the center lengthwise in half. Then take a flat piece of plastic cut a circle the size of the PVC tube then in the center of it cut a circle the size of the tube you are trying to insulate. Take that ring you just made cut that in half and glue it the end of your PVC pipe (each half ring to each half of your PVC pipe) on the other end of your PVC pipe glue four pieces of plastic to be used as centering posts to make sure your outer tube is centered correctly. Take the tube you are trying to insulate and wrap it in saran wrap (just in case you don’t like the way it looks or works later on it’s much easier to remove with the saran wrap in place). Take both halves of your PVC tube and put them around the tube you are insulating at that point you can either glue the halves together or simply wrap a rope around it to keep both halves together while you are filling up the space between the PVC tube and the center tube with insulating foam. Fill up with foam. Allow sufficient time for curing and cut off all extra foam. Vuela you have a badass insulating job that looks professional.
Unpopular opinion: Chilling and insulating the material columns is completely unnecessary and only adds complication/cost/weight to an extraction system.
There is no degradation of the final oil from the minimal temp increase the solvent experiences in the short time it takes to flood and rinse non-jacketed columns.
Chilling the entire mass of solvent (the solvent tank) is also completely unnecessary and just overcomplicates the entire extraction process (introducing/purging N2).
IMO the only things that really need chilling/insulation are the pre-injection and recovery heat exchangers. I just use coils dunked in drink coolers, very easy/simple. The heated recovery vessel/boiler could also use insulation.
Also, there is definitely a point of greatly diminishing returns as far as solvent injection temp goes. I think around -30C is that point for BHO. Colder is not always better.
Have you ever calculated the actual inlet outlet temperatures of solvent from your heat exchangers given heat exchanger type and LMTD between tube and shell side?
I’ll just say, if you’re injecting room temp solvent and hope to get down to the -40 or less range you either must:
I always get that question, and it makes sense. What are you trying to do. My answer is, I’d like to be able to do whatever it is that I want to do. It’s a beast of a system. I want to be able to easily convert between quality and quantity, while always preserving whatever terpenes are present by not going too hot. When I’m cranking through work, I want to be able to pull vacuum on my material column jackets and move through it. When I’m running live material, I want to be as cold as possible, and to be able to soak for longer periods if necessary, so I think that, potentially, insulating the material columns could be useful.
I’m going to play with solvent temps. -40 or so is the sweet spot for ethanol, they say. I haven’t run bho since 2016, so I’m just a little behind the curve on data and tech. I’ll be caught up soon.
It isn’t about ridiculously low temps. It is about maintaining temps in a wide range and preserving equipment and saving on power. Maybe I’m just OCD. I don’t currently have the ability to go below -40 on anything.
No I haven’t actually done an official calculation, but I find that kind of thing interesting.
The way I run my system I’m usually injecting propane from my tank at about 100-110 PSIG so that’s about 70F (21C). This pressure also provides a very decent flow rate. I flood a 6 x 24" in about 40-50 seconds.
Solvent goes through a 50 foot long stainless coil (1/2" tubing) submerged in DI/IPA slurry inside of a 10 gallon drink cooler and it is usually reads -40C to -50C (end of range of my infrared thermo).
I’m not sure but I think it was really the Bizzybee team that started heavily pushing the jacketed/chilled column idea when they were emerging and showing off their LCO2 chilling concept. I don’t blame them, I’m sure they made a killing selling all those jacket columns. It looked so fancy!
I really think having light, easily movable and packable columns is much more worth it compared to the heavy jacketed/chilled variety. I hate material socks.