You’d be suprised at some if the production I’ve worked where bins were the norm. Machining especially, cnc machines may have an auger but a man still has to move and dump the bins. Your turn over fixture needs to be hydraulic with a simple lever allowing the operator to dump the centifuge basket onto a bin on a forklift.
@Mr.Amagi What is the capacity on that $250k machine?
I absolutely agree that if you’re not doing the extraction in the centrifuge (to control solvent residence time to the second) then a “flow through” design like Western States offers are the right way to scale.
Where you looking at the Quadramatic or the QuadraClean?
tilt to empty is implemented on 100gal steam kettles, so it’s not a terrible idea.
the required shake suggests looking at the hydraulic lifts used by the garbage collection industry might not be a bad idea.
looking harder at NSEP’s removable rotor implementation might reduce the hardware requirements for a fairly similar gain in efficiency.
if you’re into freezing your biomass, freezing it in the basket could be spun as a feature to justify the cost of multiple baskets…
I think there’s some very big differences between what I’ve seen of commercial metal shops and commercial woodworking shops as far as waste material removal/recycling.
For one, if we’re talking about metal lathe chips, unless you’re pushing the machine within the right parameters to chip break properly, you get long stringy chips, and you might get them anyways depending on how gummy the material is (stainless is especially known for this behavior). This shape doesn’t lend itself to vacuuming up well, in any material I’m aware of (have definitely experienced this when machining certain plastics like UHMW and urethane)
Also, from looking at the mess in my metal shop where I’ve got a 17" lathe, CNC knee mill and a VMC, depending on what and how you are cutting the chips end up all over. Coolant may wash small chips downwards where an auger may pick them up but when we’re talking about vacuum systems, its hard to plan for chips that go everywhere instead of landing in a predictable place - doubly so when we’re talking about trochoidal toolpaths that shower chips in all directions.
The fact that machine shops don’t and frequently can’t use a central collection system doesn’t really change my contention, that we could and IMHO, should be using a central collection system. Woodworking shops have been using them for collecting a waste product very similar to my hammer milled biomass for 50+ years for a reason.
1 Like
You’ve got a point in the chips being different, I programmed lots of machines where the chips simply fell onto the floor to be swept up. One concern for dust collection is good grounding on your metal ductwork. That and an explosion proof motor and it should work.you may want a good fire suppression system as well, when things go wrong you have a lot of air to assist a fire. Cabinet shops are victims of fire like any other industry. What industry’s does your shop cater to? I’ve got a haas sl20 and a haas vf oe. They fuel my insanity…
The biggest difference between your hammer milled biomass and the woodworking waste that you’re comparing it to would seem to be the residual solvent and it’s flamability. Sure, wood dust is problematic, but Ethanol vapour above its flash point seems like a much bigger problem. The solvent also adds weight and a degree of cohesion to the material that is absent in wood working waste.
I’m using material post CUP as my metric here, and the NSEP spins quite a bit harder.
any chance you could share your milling solution over here?
Edit: they’re a little out of the way, but mbar might be able to address the feasibility & build out cost associated with a vacuum based spent biomass handling system. I’ve known the owner for almost 50 years, and will pose the problem to them via email…even though none of us are likely to import a system from New Zealand.
1 Like
@greenbuggy I’d suggest checking these guys out. http://peonyfns.com/cenpsbd.asp
I know I will be…
Edit: my cousin sold mbar.com about 18 months ago. He agreed that a system like the wood workers use might be appropriate. He also suggested proof of concept with something like the hafco air powered vacs to make sure added cohesion provided by the residual solvent didn’t make it a non-starter.
Cyclo-
Pardon the delay in getting back to you, shits been crazy around here lately with state and county inspections and such… The unit he quoted me for $250k was only around 3.7 cubic ft but in a recent conversation he told me they had just came into some basket style units that are 15.3 cubic ft for around the same price. The main difference being that as previously mentioned the original quote was for a machine that you can port slurry in directly from your wash vessel and when finished spin drying it, the unit automatically empties via a bottom hatch and an internal knife/scraping system that removes the dried biomass.
Let me know if you’d like the info for my contact there.
1 Like
no worries.
that doesn’t sound like either the quadramatic or quadraclean, but does sound much like the Chinese one I linked to above based on @highestzen’s post in the CUP thread.
Could someone tell me why you wouldn’t just use a filter press if the input is a slurry?
the wine industry recognizes the free flowing juice as different from the pressed juice. the concept is similar. pressing slurry if heading to distillate is more likely acceptable than if EHO “shatter” is your goal.
There is a fellow on here that sells them.
I’m more familiar with their use for apple juice rather than wine. It would seem to me that you would get an inappropriate amount of tannic acid from the material if you used a filter press on grapes. But, I really don’t know enough about ALL the ways they process wine.
I think I missed the reference to using EtOH to make shatter. I’d like to read more about that.
@Soxhlet I’ve seen it. Very nice, and made of stainless too.
1 Like
Winery’s around here use filter presses. My neighbor makes a grape juice concentrate that is sold as a color ingredient for wines. The process uses a “ultrafilter” to remove just the pigments. Red juice goes in, white comes out. They sell the color, and the stripped juice. They call the juice that comes out “white grape” then Welchs juice buys it.
1 Like
There are so many ways to skin this cat…
my biggest concern is what are we doing with all the skin and bones? (spent biomass & sticks.).
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I want to make my extraction solvent with it. via cellulosic ethanol production. @Shadownaught has enzymes that might enable that (in case someone else wants to try).
Fungi are the correct answer, whether selected or engineered, or even just as a source of the enzymology. introducing a half dozen novel genes into a hi-test Belgian yeast to enable hemp cellulose as a carbon source and 17-20% starting wash would not be that difficult these days. we’ve had those strains tamed for awhile.
5 Likes
Interesting. See, I thought white juice from red grapes was accomplished by removing the skin of the grape. I know more about Welch’s pumps than their juice anyhow. 
1 Like
I like your style, every part of the buffalo! The feds might get kinda mad if they didn’t get to steal some of your hard income for distilling your own etoh… lol
1 Like
The winery settles the juice on the crushed skins to pick up the pigments used in the process. Juice company’s love buying cheap sugar to sell in bottles! They also extract polyphenolic compounds from grape seeds and sell it as a supplement. You should see a 2 story cromotography columm!
2 Likes
Getting back to Cannabis, have any of you had any experience with Centrifugal Partition Chromatography (CPC)?