they were never intended for flammable solvent use.
they are not able to be used “flooded” like the CUP.
if I didn’t have a horse in this race already, I might look at how those two could be fixed.
if you keep your solvent well below it’s flash point you’re fairly unlikely to set it on fire.
no city/state official is going to approve your process if they notice the panda. fixing that would require engineer sign-off which is unlikely even after swapping in food safe bearings & seals and an AtEx rated (air powered?) motor.
leaving ethanol in there as a transfer solvent reduces the viscosity, and makes getting it out of your reclaim still easier. depends what you’re looking for as an end product. for distillate, a little ethanol should be fine, and will be removed during devolatilization or decarb.
adding a cup of MCT before turning on the still works really well if you’re going for tinctures.
I suggest you use a counter top ethanol distiller instead.
they are the same price, and are designed for the job.
recovering a gal at a time, it’s going to take you quite some time to have anything to give to your distillate guy. you might want to look at off the shelf 5 gal moonshine stills.
Thanks so much for the info,
Also one more thing - if I’m making this crude for the distillate guy should I be Buchner funneling at vac in any step of the process or is it okay to just give it to him straight up after cold extracting, spinning, and evaporating?
Make sure you get an ethanol distiller, NOT a water distiller. @SkyHighLer had a thread detailing his mod of either unit, using his own pid controlled heat source for better operation.
Ethanol distiller will have an adjustable temp dial on the unit, h20 version will not.
Wash trim
Filter thru buchner yo remove fines
Filter again they buchner to winterize of you didn’t cryo wash
Rotovap ethanol wash
Purge
Decarb
Hand to spd dude or run yourself and stop paying out your hard work
Sorry I was just wondering since this is a setup that a friend has and it stated in the description that the unit was also designed for alcohol. i read the post and gained some insight but im going to avoid modding for now so i ordered the moonshine still, just wanted to ask a harmless question since i thought maybe the temp regulation would be enough
“'cause your buddy is using this device” works for me.
as does “it’s cheaper”.
the temp control on the unit you suggested should be sufficient. if you read the comments on Amazon you can surmise that at least one of those commenting is using it for cannabis resin production.
The water distiller when used for ethanol will cause the ethanol to boil and seep out the gasket seal. I know from personal exp. This is a good way to start a fire. Reason why I sold the h2o version and bought a ethanol specific 9ne
I see, well I’m definitely just going to get the T-500 thank you for the tip, it seems more worth it especially given the fact that I don’t really want to be sitting there distilling a gallon of saturated ethanol at a time
the t-500 works, and is designed for distilling ethanol.
it is not designed to be loaded with 190 proof, and as such, it is not a brilliant long term production option (semi-direct heat. baine marie prefered)
it’s also not as set it and forget it as the air-cooled counter top units. it is a decent starting point.
have you decided how much cannabis you want to push through your pipeline per day? for every lb of cannabis, you should figure on distilling a gal of solvent (for best yields), and size your still that way.
the cheap solution is to use cheap solvent (eg iso @ $17gal ) and boil it off to atmosphere in a used restaurant sized rice cooker.
I’m trying to reach a target of 2L of crude a week so maybe 50 or so pounds of trim a week. Right now I’m just doing it on a small scale to test the process and see how it goes
I checked out your baine marie setup and the thing you’ve got going on with the beer kegs looks pretty gnarly, if only I was handy enough to construct something like that… How exactly would you recommend that one going about doing this?
Thanks cyclopath, I realize it’s hard to understand, but a temperature controller does not reduce the wattage of the heater.
The standard Megahome water distiller has a 565 watt heater (the fan’s another 15 watts,) while the Megahome alcohol distiller has a 305 watt heater( the fan’s again another 15 watts) - much better but still could use a variable control on it - 150 watts is all it takes with one these to distill alcohol at a nice drop to two drop per second rate.
All the inexpensive Chinese countertop distillers whether identified for water or alcohol have 750 watt heaters. Adding a temperature only limiting controller does not reduce the wattage, to reduce the wattage you need what is referred to as a power regulator, be it a Variac, light dimmer, fan/motor controller, or the most precise I’ve found, a rotary encoder power regulator. For detailed info on the facts about Distillation controllers please read through my thread dedicated to the subject, the info applies to all distillations, water to cannabinoids - there is major misinformation out there, PID control alone is the wrong way to control a distillation heater or mantle, this even applies to $50,000+ wiped film units.
So, how use an inexpensive a countertop distiller to boil off alcohol? Get a Megahome alcohol distiller, or get an inexpensive Chinese water distiller (~$50,) and get a second appliance cord so you can plug the fan in separately, then you can plug the base unit into a power regulator of your choice as itemized above (a 10 amp Variac goes for ~$40, and is plug and play with excellent control.)