My current project is figuring out a way for large scale fat removal from BHO without just pouring everything over powders by hand (although that works just fine for the time being).
However, I’ve noticed something interesting with my batches of BHO in ethanol while preparing them to filter. Our current SOP calls for a room temperature filter immediately out of the extraction unit, then 8hrs in cryo and a cryo filter the next day. I’ve noticed that when my RT Crude mixture sits overnight, most of the waxes that come out at that step accumulate at the top of the bucket. The exact opposite happens during the cryo step; the majority of the fats fall to the bottom of the bucket.
Has anyone considered a set of mixer settler tanks to take advantage of these properties and roughly separate off a clean fraction of crude oil without using filtering? Obviously there would still be material left over that requires filtering, but even if this could separate off half of the crude, that’s half the amount that requires filtering on my end. Plus if successful, the capital cost of two simple jacketed tanks would be crazy cheap and would be a very scaleable solution for large scale fat removal.
My main concern with LLE as a fat removal tool is scaleability. Specifically, the fact that as I need to clean more crude, that subsequently increases the amount of secondary chemicals that I need on hand, as well as increased waste disposal, increased and more complex solvent recovery for multiple solvents. The whole reason I’m considering a tank system is because it doesn’t change the current process, or add any more complexity to it. It reduces the load on my filtering systems at the cost of a few jacketed tanks and no other additional changes.
If I was redesigning a plant from the ground up, I might consider an LLE instead of filtering because then I’d be able to design the recovery sections and also account for waste disposal.
I would try a small scale of that agitation setup, just not sure if you’ll get all the waxes out. You could also, change your solvent you dissolve in and use heptane and then tou would be still recovering the same amount of solvent and get the benefits of the LLE.
I do not have much ground to stand on, and want to see where this discussion goes. Here is my two cents anyway.
I think this is a fantastic idea at scale! Especially for the hemp industry which is going to have a lot of low quality material that needs to be ran at scale. Of course each mixer-settler step would only separate out a fraction of the total waxes, but two steps should significantly reduce the total amount of remaining waxes. I would imagine so much so that in-line filters would suffice to finish the filtering. Additionally, this allows the waxes to be collected and potentially used in another product, or just discarded.
I want to see other’s thoughts. I think this is a great scaleable solution.
This is actually exactly what started me on this project to begin with because in about a month I’ve got about 200,000lb of not-so-good material to get through. I need to get through it as quickly as possible to open up capacity for small batches of better biomass and winterization is my biggest equipment and personnel bottleneck.
Looks like it’s time for me to break out my old ChemE design books and do some small scale experiments.
I am curious if this would simplify warm temp ethanol extraction at scale. If the mixer-settler works, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want the broadest spectrum extraction possible.
I would hypothesize that you could do a “slurry tek” on masses of low quality material in warm ethanol followed by a continuous feed centrifuge or even a mash separator from the beer industry. The crude tincture from this would surely be gross, no doubt about it. But there’s CBD in there!
Put this gross tincture into that two step mixer-settler to separate out a good portion of the waxes and remaining plant material (potentially used in other products). Follow this with in-line filters and a FFE, and tada you have bulk crude ready for distillation.
This is what i do, albeit in a ghetto manner. The effect taking place is calles floccuation, I make use of it by decanting my solution but using mixer/settler tank with a drain valve is just the big boy version of what i currwntly do.
The only downside to implementing a mixer-settler in the way you described is that I don’t really invision it being a perfect separation technique. The “heavy liquid” portion is still crude with just a higher concentration of fats and would still require a standard filtering step. Also, centrifuges are not a very scalable process in my opinion. High RPM spinning is very mechanically intense and big centrifuges don’t seem that feasible from a longevity or safety standpoint (mechanical ppl, feel free to chime in telling me I’m wrong).
However, in beer brewing a low tech way of separating out the mash solids is to induce a whirlpool in your brewing vessel which causes the solids to accumulate in the center. That seems like a kind-of low tech centrifuging that could be used for separation of bulk solids before a settling or filtering step.
Beer mash separator to remove bulk solids from slurry. Additional centrifuge will still be necessary here to fully recover solvent, but the mash separator is a creative way to scale the slurry tek.
Mixer settler system to skim off big portions of fats. Would there be residual CBD caught up in these? could chromatography on the skimmed fats recover that?
required filtering for color and small particles. I envision that inline filters would manage this, but don’t know for sure.
Finally, the solution goes through FFE
Distillation turns any crude into usable products right?
Again I am only proposing this for discussion. I have not ran anything like this. But I do know that there is a lot of garbage biomass on the market that if a scaled solution like this would work could handle it. Even if the yields are less than 5%. I am in the midwest and farmers here would grow 1-20 acres. Some would actually mow it down with a discbine and then run it through a chopper stalk and all. No matter what we do this will make gross crude. I hope to hear what you have to say on this. If it can be effectively dried and doesn’t mold on them, even if the yields are low it would be a shame to burn it all.
Nope. There are fuges that can separate uranium isotopes. Turning up gravity when the object of the game is density based separation is almost always a win…,
That only applies to batch centrifuges. Continuous centrifuges are made in sizes to do thousands of tons per hour, for instance in fracking industry. They are one of the most scalable things out there.
I have been taking the bulk of winterization fats for ages Now with a panda if you have a real fuge with botom discharge and a scraper then there is no option that can compete
It works and fast some dry ice to cool the basket down and go down to 1 micron the panda pushes it out in a flash
Also i talked to a screw press company who said they can make a screw press with a special micron-filtering shell instead of the usual screen. Haven’t tested it but you might be able to squeeze dry wax very rapidly with that methos.
