Roto Evaporator on a 20L Across International distillation unit
While reclaiming I have to say this is the slowest part of the lab, Running my RPM’s at 90, water bath temp at 50C and pulling almost full vac at 48. Running these parameters I can tell my chiller is struggling to keep up, on this roto i do have the double stacked columns along with the double reclaim balls running with the C30-30-20L chiller. During this time I can pull back how hard i run the machine to keep from overheating but i was curious if anyone has advice before I upgrade the chiller size to the C30-40-50L chiller.
Please let us know more about the parameters you have set up for the 20L roto.
Water Bath - 50C
RPM’s - 90
Vacuum Pressure - 48 what ? torr? Welch 2052?
Condenser/coolant temperature - ?
Continuously feeding with hot crude? If so, how hot?
The upgrade has considerably more pumping speed and has around ~1-1.5kW more cooling capacity than what you have now. But let’s see if we can optimize your solvent recovery with what you have at the moment.
48 vac would be in torr measurement, sorry about that, also i am leaking in a very small continuous stream till it is at the water line of the water bath, then stopping drip till it needs refilled. I did run a continuous feed, prior to the double stack with no issues, but the chiller just can not keep up with the ethanol reclaim if i do so now. Chiller is set to -28 but once reclaiming the first 10 liters in 1.5-2 hours it will sit at -6 as the day goes if i give it a break every now and then when i drain the ethanol balls. Crude temperature is held in a stainless steel carboy and started at as low as -20 then over night will get up to room temp of 22C at the warmest on the 2nd day of finishing up the roto batch.