Hey. I’ve designed a post processing set up, I guess its pretty much a jacketed reactor built from tri-clamp parts. I wanted to see what you all thought of it before I get it built, any possible problems or general critique.
This is just a quick drawing. Basically its an 8" x 24" jacketed column with a round bottom to 2" reducer. A 4"dia x 24" jacketed condenser to a collection tank with a vacuum take off. There will also be other ports for gauges etc.
I’m planning on using this tri clamp stirrer/mixer component which will reach to the bottom:
I’m not using this for extraction (but I guess I could), this is just post processing. I start with crude which needs decarbing and then dissolving in etho which will all happen in this column. I will have a second similar jacketed column which will be chilled for winterizing and have a few filtering stages. The processed slurry will end back in the above column (but the round bottom reducer will be swapped for a jacketed ‘splatter platter’) to distill and collect the etho.
Basically it’s a two column jacketed system that has a hot tank for mixing and distilling and a second tank for filtering, polishing and winterising. I hope that makes sense!
This is a small scale thing for personal use mostly, but I want it to be good (and safe!) because I don’t know where it could take me in the future. A friend works for a steel manufacturing co that makes equipment for food grade water systems and breweries etc so I’m getting this done dirt cheap otherwise I probably wouldn’t bother. I already have all the other bits to run this.
What do you guys think? Any obvious problems that I’ve missed? Any concerns? I won’t take it personally.
Other spool for winterizing is gonna be much larger and is gonna be filled up with ball bearings or steel wool to increase surface area and keep the wax from settling as you drain the system- wax will clog your lines- what kind of throughput do you need on this system?
Bumps will occur in solvent recovery, as the oil reaches higher and higher viscosity with the departure of ethanol, the bubbles will become thicker and stronger and more violent- the narrow path for vapor to travel means it’s likely to shoot up and blow into your collection pot - a pot still type solvent recovery system works at atmospheric pressures but with vacuum the bumping issues become much more problematic - you’d need a much wider pot I think
I have a very large unit weve run a long time now. Do yourself a favor and have equal sized vessels and maintain head space on high side reactor. Also vacuum port should be off the condenser closest to cold htf inlet or your unchilled receiver will vaporize and feed your vac pump directly.
Thanks MrRandy, the seccond vessel will be the same size as the first and my usual batch size is well under a 3rd of the vessels capacity. Is that what you mean?
Sorry, I’m not sure what htf inlet is? Do you mean the vac take off should be at the bottom of the condenser where the cold inlet is? I do have a cold trap as well.
With a mixer you wont get bumps but you want the surface of the boiling liquid to have enough head room that the vapor can have unrestricted laminar flow so 90% full max. If you have a cold trap then as designed is fine.
I run stainless ball bearings on top of my filter in my dewax column. Without them, I need to pressurize my column to 90psi in hopes that I can blow I hole in my filter and start again.
