…and out from the spout came water-clear crude…
I’d claim “Texas gold”, but that’s apparently a felony
5 Likes
Well then let’s get you one!
3 Likes
This is what this community’s spirit is allbout… Grandious… 
3 Likes
I think within about 4 weeks I’ll have just about everything on hand that I’d need to construct such a thing, assuming global logistics don’t make my life more difficult than they already have.
If you’re running a membrane system there’s no reason to run cold anymore.
A dry-loaded 800mm centrifuge should easily get into the 300lb/hr range or above. Call it 300 gallons per hour of solvent to be conservative, or three to four 4040 series membranes in the desolvation stage.
Good thing I’ve got two (three?) spare 800mm vertical scraper centrifuges on hand.
Who else wants one? lol
8 Likes
Me, but I hear my credit isn’t that good there anymore 
6 Likes
I’ve got access to one…but the damn thing wants 25kW at 600V, and again: I can nay get the power Captain!
7 Likes
I can’t help you there, when it comes to electrons, I call professionals. Even my Electrical Engineer business partner calls electricians to do physical stuff.
Now that I think about it, we’re probably luck that I’m not the electrical one.
4 Likes
Not to revive an old thread, but this is one of the more exciting developments in ethanol extractions since we started using centrifuges. Lol.
Thank you to everybody whos done the work.
We are converting our shitty chinese centrifuge to perform this fancy new QWET-fuge method. Unfortunately, it didn’t have any tri-clamp connections for a rotating spray ball. Instead we bought a weldable CIP spray ball and are going that direction.
It’s always fascinating to me how we move forward in one direction, and the basics keep helping us improve. This is such an obvious thing, but hard to see when we are deep in the weeds.
4 Likes
Wanted to share a quick experience i had, i ran at -1c and sprayed for a period of 5 minutes (way to long in my opinion) but after a weekend in the freezer we had nothing fall out of solution. This was done on 5% shitty thc trim.
I am currently waiting for a few more parts to finish my setup but i would say having no fats or waxes drop out of solution is a big win! I also threw a small sample vial in my -110c cold trap and still nothing fell out of solution however my ethanol started to thicken up a bit from the overly cold temps.
Extract was a greenish in solution and black as crude.
4 Likes
If you get it 10, 20 degrees colder, you should see that chlorophyll go away as well.
7 Likes
My chiller is giving me issues all the sudden, it should be able to go down to -12c but keeps getting a low suction pressure fault. I have a tech coming to dig deeper than i was able to dig.
8 Likes
If your tech can’t sort it out give me shout, I’m sure we could figure it out
6 Likes
Thanks! just got a refractometer and am testing my glycol in a second. currently calibrating it. i think my chiller system has had to muhc makeup water get added over the 2 years of it running.
1 Like
That would make sense if the coil froze up
1 Like
Looks like I found at least part of my problem, it was usually throwing the fault right around -8c and this mixture of prop glycol should start to freeze around 8.3c but I assume the contact points in the chiller are actually quite a bit colder than the reading at the output of the chiller causing the solution to thicken up and restrict flow.
I’ve also noticed when the temp drops to around -8c right before the low suction fault gets thrown the pumps also stop flowing as fast. They usually run around 35-38gpm and they usually drop to less than 25gpm. The chiller calls for a minimum of 30gpm.
I’ll order another drum of glycol…. Yippie
12 Likes
Well that was easy lol. That’s the best kind of fix
6 Likes
We finally got all of our parts and did our maiden voyage. Our ethanol was prechilled at -80, much colder than is necessary, but we intend to increase that temp once we collect data from the initial runs.
We are using two diaphragm pumps from sambocreek and a jacketed chinese fuge with a triclamp CIP spray ball that we had welded on. We set up a circuit using a 35gal drum (all we had) and we balanced our outlet to push beyond our inlet. We put in about 4500g of biomass and 10gal of EtOH. Then we set our fuge to 1600rpm and ran for 5 min.
Post run we definitely had full saturation of the biomass/bag and it didn’t appear to flood the fuge. We definitely need to make adjustments to our plumbing, but all in all it was successful.
Check out the micella and our rigged system!
5 Likes
Looks good! What size are the pumps?
1 Like
I might have to do some experiments like this as well. I usually extract at -80C in the cup15 the classic way but I do have a CIP spray ball attached that I will rinse my biomass with clean ethanol several times during the spin dry cycle as I’ve noticed that helps to significantly pull out some residual THC.
I’ll probably also start at -80 and see how this works. Instead of recirculating the ethanol is there any reason why I wouldn’t want to just run 10-15 gallons of ethanol through the biomass and right into a collection keg so it’s all only going one direction instead of recirculating? Doing it that way with my current setup looks like it’s going to be easier and require less reconfiguration. Maybe I’ll try it anyway and see what happens.
1 Like
We are using a 36gpm pump. We didn’t run full bore during our initial tests and we observed semi-optimal saturation. Once we got a reducer to plumb the outlet we ran it as hard as we could.
Also, thank you!