I’ve been trying to get some more info on the capabilities of membrane systems for ethanol solvent recovery. so I thought I would reach out to the manufactures of these systems directly.
I can’t find any contact info on google, and the links on their social media pages lead to a web site that is down.
from trying to get in contact with with other equipment manufactures it seems like a lot of the companies have been bought and sold over the years.
So did ethos go out of business or were they bought by another manufacture?
does the membrane system require constant solvent flow to prevent the membrane from drying out or fouling?
What’s the general process when doing a full de-waxing, de-coloring, and solvent recovery? do you start with start with separating out the highest molecular weight compounds first, and work your way down in MW and then recover the solvent?
Any downfalls or cons with membrane systems for solvent recovery when compared to thermal methods like falling film?
Some of my questions were about their specific system.
does it make use of pervaporation to deal with azeotropes?
what is the solvent concentration in the concentrate after passing through the membrane? is this adjustable with the pressure inside and flow rate? How low can you get the solvent concentration before you see issues?
From reading on here I know people have done a lot of experimenting with different membranes materials and pressures, trying to find what works best. If this has been covered before, a link to it would be greatly appreciated.
Constant while running? Ideally. Most membranes need to stay wet. Read the data sheet for the one you’re using. If your skid vendor won’t give you the manufacturer’s data sheet, they’re probably trying to hide the source of those membranes because they’re making a very healthy markup on them.
Depends on your solvent and membrane stack. Generally that would be two or three membranes. You’re not incorrect at a high level.
Not really.
No commercial systems sold to our industry utilize pervaporation as far as I’m aware.
This one I can’t answer, but if they were using a not-stupid membrane and system design, it should be functionally pure solvent. I wouldn’t hold my breath on a system from ethos working that well though.
There are a more than a few membrane threads. There are some not useless tidbits scattered through most of them.
What works best? The short answer is “it depends.” It depends entirely on your feedstock, solvent, and goals
for 5.) I was wondering how much ethanol would be left over in the cannabinoid solution. I saw from an old ethos brochure that they had the concentrate output of the membrane system going into a falling film evaporator.
sorry for the confusion I got my terms mixed up the permeate would be the ethanol recovered right?
I did a few days ago, he provided some cut sheets on the x-spiral systems and a really informative power point about membrane systems, and the energy savings of his products compared to falling film.
But I still had a few more questions on things that were not covered in the info he provided.