The higher ups really want this machine to work, (recover ethanol at a rate around 25 gallons per hour) but after running it and looking at how it is designed, I highly doubt this is possible. Things to note about the design:
-No vacuum, it doesn’t use vacuum to lower the energy required to evaporate ethanol
-Uses an air condenser, essentially pulling room temperature air over a long copper coil.
-Low surface area- The thing is basically a giant reactor that has some modest stirring inside, so the surface area for the ethanol to evaporate would just be the top layer in the reactor.
It runs by heating the container with your ethanol inside to about 125C, and turning the blades inside to mix, running the vapor through the coil to condense (with room temp air) and thats it.
To me this seems incredibly inefficient, it will easily raise the room temperature by 15 to 20 degrees if all the doors are closed.
We are able to pull about 6 gallons per hour, much lower than the 25 gallons per hour that is advertised.
Anyone have any ideas to improve the performance or any experience at all with the system or something similar? Any input is appreciated. We will also be looking for a reputable consultant to confirm the quality/efficiency/usability of the unit for the higher ups at the company, if anyone has the experience. Thanks
You could tell the truth about how I’ve been trying to work with you to determine what your issue was. Asked you to tweak settings since it was a first run and confirm electric was correct. I called again and assured you that we would get this straightened out tomorrow after you ran the second batch at the parameters I asked you to run. Thank you for bad mouthing us and our product in public while we are trying to help I’m sure the higher ups at Your company which I won’t name to protect you will be happy. FYI we offered a vacuum system as part of the package. It was declined.
As for @spdking our units were not designed for paint thinner and we have over 8,500 of them in numerous industries in North America alone.
Everything from manufacturing and printing to pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing. And everything in between. I provide reference for everything we sell.
No shit that thing is not meant for gently pulling ethanol off of cannabinoid extracts. It’s meant for high temp stripping a solvent away from a feedstock then throwing the feedstock away after
We have followed your parameters and recommendations, and are not even getting close to the recovery rate that is advertised. I would like to work with you to make it work how you say it should.
I inherited the roto400 as my job asked me to check out their hemp processing facility, after working with it for a couple days now I can see where it is lacking compared to a rotovap or FFE, no liquid cooling, no vacuum to assist the boiling, I just cant imagine that boiling the mixture in a giant vat while stirring is the most energy efficient way to recover ethanol. Not to mention any degradation that might occur. I tried to voice these concerns but you just talked over me asking if I was “questioning your qualifications”…
Just trying to get 25 gph, not 10
We Discussed this all on the phone today and are going to check what I asked and run again tomorrow. We offered vacuum and water cooling and it was decided to buy the machine this way. That being said it’s been run twice and as any instrument does it needs to be tweaked for optimal performance. I have enough of these running in this industry and others that we will get it running optimally and you will be happy. That’s why the higher ups I. Your company and others chose us. I think that until that happens we both stay off a public forum and work together. How’s that sound?
My job is find a good solvent recovery option for my company. I detail the facts, make recommendations, and they will make the decision. To me it seems that you sold them a product that does not do what is advertised, even if through troubleshooting it does get to 25 gph, to me the design still seems detrimental to the cannabis oil. The fact the manual describes the oil as a ‘pollutant’ doesnt bode well either.
I am only on this site asking these questions because you refuse to put me in touch with anyone who uses this machine in this industry, or to recover ethanol at all.
My homies in Washington are running the big one and love it so sounds like maybe the problems you are having are something else. People on here talkin bad but haven’t probably even seen one doing it’s thing. One thing this site is good for is people trying to keep everyone else from using the technology they are by trash talking it. It happens to Summit all the time, fools talk about how garbage their stuff is and everyone knows that they secretly either have it already in their lab, or wish they had it, or could afford it. It’s the same thing here it sounds like because if you have actually seen one of these work, they KILL IT on alcohol recovery. As far as degradation of cannabinoids, it is PID controlled heat so you have the option of setting it how you want.
Like I said, I don’t have one, but I have seen one in use. Funny thing though, they called it a HR 1200 and it’s not on @NexGenEnviro site, so unsure how big it really is, but they said it was from them, so I can only assume it is.
Show us some pictures or videos of your buddies machine. @SpectreDabs Seems like every time someone is displeased with a company new accounts get opened to praise the company.
You would think with 8k units in the field you would ship them “tweaked” to any new clients.
I can ask them for sure. Like I said they said it was a HR 1200 though and I don’t see that on Nexgen site, which is weird cause you would think if it’s hella big like that, it would be on the damn cover of their website.
That is done at the client facility because each client even in the same industry running the same product has a specific need and we treat it as such.
You can’t just ship out a car to someone with the seat set for someone that’s 6 ft tall. One guy has long legs another a long torso. It’s not one size fits all. I’m a perfect world it would be but in the real world it is not.
This is where I’m confused, there really shouldnt be that much variability in the system, i can only change 2 variables, the temp it heats to, and when it turns off. I feel like most companies would have these numbers for you to run it optimally, but you only offer 30-40 degrees C above the boiling point.