I spoke to B&P Littleford about their Podbielniak Liquid-Liquid Centrifuge (not your typical fuge). Here are the takeaways from the call and some useful links.
None of these are in use in the cannabis market currently but they have and continue to do testing. Anyone hear differently?
The units are not easily tuned because the separation ring diameters dictate the separation layers.
The problem is you have to know the properties of your liquid stream for this to be setup properly. I would really like to know what the community thinks of this.
They run at very high speeds (i.e. 10k rpm)
In theory you could extract multiple constituents of a micelle stream in this one device.
@TheGratefulPhil, @cyclopath, @Apothecary36, no comments from anyone yet on this. Is there not a need to seperate the micelle stream into multiple components based on specific gravity? Or is the unpredictable nature of the streams makeup rendering this thing useless?
Deffenatly not useless only very expensive
Had the pleasure of playing with one for two days unprepared
And a lot seems posible
Solvent separation for one
I recently gave away a vintage ServeAll (now Sorval) that might have done 15kG, the Beckmann I hoped would out-spin it and get cold turned out to be DOA.
imo spinning water & particulates out of lube oil is a different trick from density based partitioning of a solution.
those three will separate on their own under normal gravity.
sure…turn gravity up enough, and you need to redefine “particulate”, but in my experience you have to spin really damn fast to achieve that trick.
I freely admit that I was using a different tool on different inputs, so what I think I “know” may or may not be relevant here.
reducing the solvent level will obviously change exactly what is “soluble”…
were I to guess, I’d suggest spinning crude really hard would be more productive than trying to fractionate by spinning while in ethanol. I’ve got a -ve report on that trick (crude) at ~15k times G. I’d love to see what 150k G can do.
I was told by a very experienced processor that direct centrifuging of crude can partition out the fats usually removed by winterization. I haven’t had a chance to try it
I certainly did my small scale winterizations in an RC-1 fuge at 10k G. but the fats could be filtered out at that point, using a fuge and decanting was easier, and more complete, but didn’t involve anything that 1 G couldn’t achieve given time (and fats just don’t drop out of crude if the jar is ignored for a year)
I can’t wait until the 20k tubular clairifier comes in. If that won’t kick them out, not much will. It’ll spin plasma out of blood, it should kick solids out of cannabis things.
