Hello all! My lab is setting up an extraction process where we will be doing an ethanol was in 2x 250 Gallon tanks and then we were going to put the bags soaked in ethanol into a centrifuge on a spin cycle to remove the residual ethanol from the bags with biomass but we are realizing that a centrifuge with a peer review and proper certifications for the legal market will cost at least $50K and that just doesn’t make sense. So we started looking at presses (both pneumatic and manual operated) as well as a salad dryer (spin operated) and a grape press and still haven’t landed on anything which can run at scale for a reasonable price. We would be trying to get the ethanol out of 40-80 bags of biomass as quickly as possible. We could use some help from you all in pitching an idea for what would be ideal for our operation.
Thanks in advance for your effort and be well.
Look into Vincent Screw Press.
Thank you kindly. I’m going to check them out.
what is your budget?
Good things aren’t cheap.
Cheap things aren’t good.
Welcome to the industry.
you’ll need to spend ~50k to do what you want with certification.
IMO a floodable centrifuges are a better option than a system where you soak the biomass and then transfer it to a centrifuge to dry it, invariably spilling some cannabinoid laden solvent on the floor.
NSEP makes good units (their 755/855 series) that are certified for hazardous location usage and flammable solvent but new ones start around $60k and they max out around 100 lbs of biomass + solvent each cycle, don’t know how much weight 40-80 bags is going to encompass or what each bag is going to weigh, but at any descent scale you need 2 minimum of those NSEP units and they’re still a lot more labor intensive to load/unload when compared with a floodable one you can load dry bags into, run your cycle, and pull dry bags out of.
If you’re not running your extraction cold a large screw press seems like it might be your most economical option, but its also going to produce way more nasties to filter out before your solvent recovery step. The same losses and labor apply to having your soak step be a separate process from your biomass drying process.
If you’re going for a screw press I second the Vincent motion. I’ve heard good things and they seem like good guys.
If you want a single step I’d just do a decanter centrifuge. There are small ones too but a unit that does 700 lbs/hr is ~120 I believe
Hello, Is the centrifuce without proper certifications Like UL ok for you? We can provide you this kind of centrifuge
The 250 gallons is a big capacity.
We have one set 26gallons in CA, it can do 2-3 pcs in one time.We can give you price if you interested.