what is AO
I assume that he means Al2O3 - Activated Alumina, - Aluminum Oxide
The solvent system and buffers matter a lot with these types of metallic filtration media
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This isn’t exactly what you’re looking for @HeisenbergInd , but you can winterize inline with a plate and frame heat exchanger.
Edit: If you know someone who home brews, you can probably get one to try it with: CPE60H-XXD Stainless Steel Plate Heat Exchanger – CPE Systems Inc.
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I’ve wondered about that. So no residence time is required for the fats to drop? Just cooling to correct temperature instantly precipitates them?
There’s quite a bit of flow interaction going through the plates which minimizes resonance time requirements over say a shell and tube heat exchanger. If you dial in your temp and flow, you’re basically cold filtering through a heat exchanger.
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So a pig filter, more or less…
Not familiar with those sorry. You folks will love this pft00058en_lowres.pdf (633.8 KB)
Edit: guide to plate and frame heat exchangers in degumming/dewaxing/solvent recovery/vapor scrubbing.
Edit 2: great company btw, always had good experiences with their equipment.
When I winterize in methanol I let it sit overnight in the chest freezer to get nice and cold I don’t need to worry too much about it warming up because anything that crashes out isn’t going to just instantly redissolve into still cold methanol I feel a spool with layers of C light followed by T5 followed by activated carbon followed by a generous amount of coarse activated alumina that is well wedded with water before I put Several volumes of her stainless steel wall into the school to fill it out by then add approximately 10% water to the math and I’ll give it a good mix and then filter it the steel wall grabs onto a lot of the floating waxes that crashed out with the addition of the water and stops them from taking up too much on the top layer of a Lumina which is a course grid and allows for a nice fast flowBefore getting too stopped up the water on the alumina also tends to stop a lot of waxes that are normally not fully crashed out in the loose methanol
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My filter set up for this particular stack was an 8 x 24” tri-clamp spool affixed to a 15 gallon keg that I tapped with a hose barb so I can dry vacuum from the bottom it worked well to filter 5 gallons of methanol at a time but could easily be scaled up with a wider filter
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Anyone used a plate rising film like the one shown here?
Ive done it, there were issues with fouling and eventually the flow slowed way down. my unit was not alfa Laval though.
Were you able to open it up and clean it out?
no it was brazed, I just ran it really hot and everything came out. I switched the plate exchanger to an immersion heater after that.
Fouling is an expected and intended outcome. Typically you run two of them with a three way valve to swap or bypass both. When one gets fouled, you line up and push steam through it to strip all the fat and waxes while you run through the second one.
Also, definitely need the kind that have extended all thread to hold the plates together. That way you can back the nuts off and extend the plates out for cleaning. It typically took my maintenance guys about an hour to disassemble, clean, and reassemble at 18x36" heat exchanger.
Edit: Like this 
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Thanks for the info! Are you currently using this system?
No, I used it in a previous industry for a similar application. Caprolactam actually. Also used this style of heat exchanger for cooling quench baths in hdpe fiber production.
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I have two questions about the contents of this excellent thread. Firstly, what is the recommended temperature for filtering warm extract through a bed of AC, and secondly, is filtering through unrefined AO grit not liable to contaminate the end product? I have no idea of the degree of purity of this and what else may be lurking alongside it.
Would you have a recommendation on the amount of alumina to used based on the amount on crude that is being filtered?