I have a ex-60 with dual Haskell’s, and was wondering if anyone who has ran an Ironfist, or Haskell’s before knows the average recovery times. Maybe suggestions to speed it up? Right now we are doing like a lb ever 2-5 minutes.
For crude I am turning up the heating coil on the recovery tank, and I have the cooling condenser on the lowest it will go after the Haskell’s and it is only -10 Celsius. Has anyone had recovery time issues with the stock Ironfist condenser design from like a year ago? Suggestions and temps to run at for crude and shatter runs? Haskell’s are at 120psi…
What pressure is your tank? And do you have a way to keep it cold? I’m not familiar with the system in mention, are you able to post a picture of it? What temperature is your collection pot at and what are you using to heat it?
Iron fist uses too small of a heater on the coil in collection pot for recovery… I would suggest getting a different heater for the coil in the collection pot
The tank is around 30plus psi on the solevent tank…
I have the poly sci chiller that came with the Ironfist, but I bought the unit from some guys that didn’t know anything about extraction. I have been doing things for a while but not with a machine like this.
For crude runs I am turning the heating on the coil in the collection all the way up to 120 but it really stays around 102. For shatter I have been staying around 70-80F… like the guy said below the heater is the smallest of the three heaters and chillers I have it has maybe a two gallon Rez…
I ran an EX-40 with dual Haskells for a while. With pumps running at 100PSI we were able to hit about 1 to 1.5 min per pound. We didn’t turn the pumps up all the way - just a nice steady rhythm. No knocking. Solvent tank temp between -10 to -20C (came with underpowered PolySci chiller) and about 50-60PSI during recovery. Collection about 30PSI and about 85F.
As MrRoots said, the coil that’s in the collection pot kinda sucks - I wrapped a heat belt around the whole thing and I also added a jacketed bowl at the bottom. Then I finally got a nice boil going.
Did you get the system used? Maybe the pumps are ready to be rebuilt.
Forgot to mention, I used 2 circulating baths to keep collection temp in the right zone. 1 bath hooked to the coil & the other hooked to the lower jacketed bowl I added. Dumping 80 lbs of solvent in there cools everything down rather quickly…
Here you go. These pics are from the place that I bought it… I can take some more pics if you need it today I’m having compressor problems… One thing after the other
No we distill through one tube as we don’t have a second set up for distilling the tane at this facility. I am running a poly sci on the tane and pre chilling to 0 degrees we are making slabs so we are trying to not use nitrogen right.
Couple locals in the bold said they upgraded the heat exchanger and I plan on ordering one of the plate exchangers from pinnacle here soon.
We finally got going can for crude I would say more heat is good, but for slabs this heater will burn things quick, still considering getting a jacketed 6" column off the bottom of the recovery tank so that its not just a flat spot and I have more control. Just seems that on my small lab I was recovering way quicker with a MVP… Will the compressor issues I have been having from running on a gen set. I am considering going the MVP route…
Which model heater do you have with your unit? Older EX 20’s, 40’s, came with a 900 or 1100 watt Polyscience, it’s not powerful enough. Iron Fist now supplies Julabo SE-12, 3000 watt units, which seem to be much more suited for this application. I had a Unistat 815 on the columns of the EX40 so incoming solute was always extremely cold, exacerbating the underpowered-heater situation.
I also added a second recirculating bath heater on the heated bowl for an EX40 and was able to achieve 1 lb a minute at the beginning of some runs if I allowed pressure to build in my collection vessel. I couldn’t sustain more than .8lbs a minute as I lost heat (and consequently pressure) in the collection vessel.
The tube and shell heat exchanger you’e got works well, but it needs an even colder chiller for best performance. Tube and shell has more effective heat transfer in a given length, but lower ultimate outlet temperature potential compared to a counter flow coil.
If your solvent tank pressure is rising during recovery because incoming solvent is too warm, you can try adding a drop-in coil in dry ice and alcohol after the afterchiler, before the tank, and see if that improves things - See if your solvent tank pressure remains steadier.
I used a pressure regulator on the drive air, coming from air compressor, to limit the pressure the Haskel’s saw to about 50 or 60psi. IIRC the Haskel thread from IC Mag suggested operating down at 40-60psig inlet pressure, then using a ‘flow metering’ valve like a globe valve to regulate airflow to the pumps. I teed the inlet drive air together after one of these valves, and pump operation was consistent but often not perfectly in sync. Joe Jesse from FLW told me there are speed-control valves available for the Haskels that might work to mitigate the out-of-sync issue. Performance was always better when the two pumps were perfectly sync’d and pumping in harmony.
Are there any 3/8 fittings between the outlet of your pumps and the solvent tank? My EX40 had a half inch hose up from the pumps, and a reducer to a series of 3/8" valves for hot gas boost back into the manifold. I upgraded those 3/8 valves to 1/2" Superlok 220 series from Corlee valve fitting, and the tee/fittings stack on top was opened up with 1/2" tube stub tees and other goodies https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODkyOTgwMDU5Mjg3MjU4/?utm_source=ig_story_highlights_share&igshid=1rxrvzp3f0qbe
I might be running a EX-40 soon. Ive ran a few other machines including old school bhogart, custom ghetto cls, bizzybee, MEP. How’s iron fist in terms of difficulty operating? Any andvice is welcome.
Figured. prep material columns, pull vacc, inject solvent into material column, transfer solvent to vollection vessel and recover. Any advice on this set up, tips/tricks? Thanks Dred
Meant more along the lines of multiple columns, with manifolds for the liquid feed. I think these have seperate lines to the collection and can do more than one at a time, I believe.
@SamuraiSam may be able to answer your question more in depth
