I have about 50 gallons of ethanol and quite a large amount of biomass to work through. Currently I am evaporating my ethanol using my short path and recoverWrong using the cold trap.
We can’t currently afford a rotovap and I was just told by my boss that he doesn’t care about recovery. He just wants to make enough distillate to be able to buy the rotovap with the 50 gallons we currently have.
My question is does anyone have reccomendations for a large pot and electric hot plate/Burner that I can use to purge all my ethanol before running the resulting crude oil through my short path? I’m working through about 18lbs per day leAving me with about 24 liters of ethanol that has to be boiled off.
Ok riddle me this since ya seem so passionate. Right now in my short path with the cold trap it takes me about 2 hrs possibly more to recover 2 liters of ethanol. How long would it take me to recover 2 liters in a 5 liter rotovap?
Realistically would I be able to recover 10 gallons of ethanol in a 10 hour day in a 5 liter rotovap or is that asking too muCh?
Would help to have this data to push my boss to get the rotovap. But essentially he will not buy it until I make 3 liters of distillate so until then what’s my best bet at getting rid of all my etoh as quick as possible so I can make distillate…
Does etoh recover faster in the cold trap if my bf is lower temp and system is under vac? Currently I’m not using vac.
I know it sounds suspect currently but I’m working on getting my shit together. Much love
Rotovap manufactures will publish estimated solvent recovery times.
I use buchi no clue how efficient a chinês garbage lead bucket takes.
-decarb / lose the solvent
-transfer to spd
-make distillate
-don’t lose the cannabinoids
Only focus on those for this I would say…
Then figure it out
Maybe you don’t need a boss?
Hey buddy i didnt mean to sound harsh. Im just frustrated with people putting others in bad situations. I did exactly what you are describing on the hotplate a few times meanwhile getting drunk off the vapors. It was no bueno.
either get an ethanol recovery system, or don’t bother recovering it.
your boss paid ~$2k for the solvent (assuming beverage grade), offer to blow it off to atmosphere with a $40 used commercial rice cooker. point out that he will then need to buy more solvent.
you can triclamp a 2" spool to an unmodified beer keg and make a still for less than $200. you’d be done in a week.
** why a rice cooker? They turn off when they’re done evaporating…if you disable the “warm” feature. I used to use them once upon a time, before switching to Ethanol from Iso.
Pretty sure I was working on my one and only 50gal iso run here.
Apparently I was recovering some of it…but blowing it off to atmosphere was definitely faster.
Technically if you add enough condensers/cold condenser in a row to your short path you could recover a pretty wild amount of ethanol with your 5L. But I’d say you’re gonna likely Max out at 2-3LPH.
Just do what these folks say, build your own. Rotavaps suck anyhow for the price. Ethanol recovery can be done at 5x the rate for the same price in stainless.
No worries dude. I’ve seen your posts I know you got more info for me than tellin me what I already know. Sorry if I sounded like a dick because I thought you were being a dick, just wanted to squeeze the juice out of you.
