Continuous is the only thing that makes sense at anything approaching the thousand lb/hr mark or above. Less humans is less cost and less screw ups in a well designed system.
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If squeezing the crap out of it yes. But then you say if you donât you donât get you cbd soaked ethanol back and you lose money and I say we already came up with a solution for that. The name of the game going forward is doing it for less than everyone else. No fat salaries, no overpriced equipment (I got a brand new 100 gallon reactor for $10k) and no doing it the same way as everyone else. Analyze the process, take the most expensive part and come up with an alternative. If you can save $100k here but then spend $25k there and still get the same product out the back end, then youâre getting somewhere.
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There are other ways to get your ethanol back out of your biomass and that means a higher extraction yield, the reason I prefer centrifuges over presses is that they donât break cellular walls releasing stuff youâll have to remediate for later on.
IMO, you have to do something to get the ethanol out, otherwise your spent biomass is a tremendous fire hazard in any significant quantity and youâll have a much harder time getting rid of it, much less finding someone who will pay to take it away.
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Itâs not just a carbon scrub, you have to winterize too. Those two steps will slow you down considerably. If it were me I would rather have the labor focused on a cleaner and faster process that extracts with cryo ethanol.
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I can confirm that 
I can also confirm that even after spinning at over 1000g for 6min you can still set the spent biomass on fireâŚeven though it feels dry to the touch.
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But you are assuming the only way to winterize is the way that everyone currently does it. 24-48 hours, take the top wax off and filter it through a buchner. Yes I agree that takes forever but itâs not the only way.
No, the buchner method is small scale. But regardless of the method it does take time to chill the ethanol/crude mix. Not taking all that unwanted stuff off the plant in the first place makes more sense. I have seen the screw press method in action and I wouldnât recommend it.
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Decanter centrifuge then. The important thing is itâs continuous and large scale.
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Sierra Gold Hemp extracts around 2400 lbs of biomass per day. We process 24/7. We use a TruSteel recovery unit for ethanol recovery, which is made in Grass Valley, CA. We also have a couple 50 liter rotovaps and two 20-ton rosin presses.
I can tell you that no one makes a âcomplete system.â The reason is that the equipment engineers, who are making some of the best equipment Iâve seen in my life, are not actual hemp extractors. They sit at their computers every day, while we are covered in hemp dust and oil every day, which gives us a different perspective of the process. We have 42 full-time employees, one of which is a full time truck driver. The process is âtruck to truck,â not just the ethanol recovery unit, which is what most equipment manufacturers are selling.
Our actual âcryoâ process happens at the reactors, which only some of the recovery unit manufacturers sell. Thereâs too much to write in a post, but there are actually many steps to an efficient process.
We had to design our own process. You will be able to buy ethanol recovery systems, but not a complete process. The refinery scale process engineers are coming to us to find out what the actual process is. The industry is so new that you should beware of anyone who claims to have a complete process at scale.
My advice is to perfect the scale youâre at, while keeping in mind that you will have to scale the process you currently have. You will then have to design your new larger process around the larger recovery unit, modeling it after your smaller scale process. You have to be super efficient at small scale or when you scale up you will just have bigger problems.
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Highzenbear or ace spinner are the 2 larger centrifuges that id recommend. Donât EVER EVER EVER buy a delta cup.
Also working with a new company thatâs designing their centeifuges from the ground up instead of retrofitting Chinese ones like the majority of the centrifuges offered. Itâs around 60-70k and does 25-40 pounds per batch depending on mill size. Which would be right around that 1000 pounds per 8 hour shift. Problem is, if your talking your full budget for soaking, recovery, and filtration is what you listed your not gonna be able to do 1000 pounds an 8 hour shift. Youâd need to be able to do around 65 gallons an hour recovery And that falling film would run you about 175k.
Well If you can pull the 500k youâd probably be able to do it. 175k for falling film. 70-100k for centrifuge, 30k for filtration, and then you need distillation which would break your budget. But If your just talking crude budget, you could do it at around 350k.
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Decanter centrifuge is going to be the future of large scale processing.
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Sounds like you had a bad experience with Delta. Can you elaborate?
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Not bad experience. Just massively over priced
Keeping an eye on the thread.
Where are you located? I think I could help you margins out. I have the lowest prices on all chemical products. ethanol, hexane, butane etc. Whatever you need. Reach out and I will send you my product pricelist.
I think we discussed methanol winterization at room temp in another thread. The main issue I see is not the winterization but chlorophyll pullover.
Ive been using methanol for almost 7hrs, imo it is rhe best for winterizarion, and the chlorophyll can be removed in your last step of filtration. Just my opinion, but since using methanol it cuts my filtrations by 1/3 and end product is exactlt the same
The major petrochemical company where I worked designing and starting up big iron tried to avoid rotatiing equipment like centrifuges as much as possible because they are hard to keep running 24/7/365.
When you get to big equipment, economics demand you run expensive process equipment 27/7/365 or the capital cost eats your business.
That said, biomass extraction on large scale cries out for a pusher centrifuge operated continuously.
Pushers are a pain in the ass but when optimized they have massive throughput.
Kraus-Maffei centrifuges tend to be the cream of the crop.