@Mr.Clean I appreciate you taking the time to lay all of this out. It’s obvious a lot of work went into documenting the videos, screenshots, and operator-side details. That type of firsthand record is a lot more valuable than any amount of marketing talk.
What stands out to me is how specific Zack’s public ProJak claims were:
capable of going below -110C with just propane
+50C to below -50C on demand within minutes
and doing so while removing the need for costly ancillary heaters and chillers.
That paints a very clear picture of what buyers are being led to expect:
extreme thermal performance
minimal dependence on traditional heating/chilling equipment
and a system that is largely self-operating
But the owner/operator material in this thread paints a much different real-world picture:
substantial chillers still showing up in installs
manual, valve-heavy operation
even a “best case scenario” start still showing injection temps only around -10C, then quickly climbing positive, including +6C at injection just from circulating through an empty column
the operator’s own summary was that the machine was “unable to keep up with the system itself” and “can’t get out of its own way”
That is a very different picture from what was marketed.
@Myrrdin I get not wanting threads like this to turn into a dogpile.
But when the public claims are this specific, comparing them against real-world operator results isn’t mob mentality it’s just basic due diligence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If an owner bought into claims like these, structured a facility and business plan around them, and then ended up buried in troubleshooting, retrofit costs, and underperforming output, the frustration is easy to understand.
While I am comfortable at this time telling my real world experiences with the Illuminated system, and I do have the P&ID, that breaches a signed NDA/Confidentiality agreement to a level I am not comfortable doing regardless of my personal feelings about the company.
Understood—no problem, I’m trying to reverse engineer one from pictures and videos for the time being. It’ll take me a while to work up calcs.
Purely doing this to see what the thermodynamic story is and see if the math can clear the fog. Bit of a complex mass/energy balance to work up, though…especially without P&IDs
We don’t typically share PID’s with non-clients, but under the circumstances, I think I could slip Phil our PID’s if that would help with the overall calculation.
I personally fully support this effort and will provide all the data on our side to make it happen.
I’m in Toronto right now on a Manticore training and this whole “it doesn’t work” has officially become a meme at the lab leaving everyone laughing hysterically while at the same time watching it work as expected.
Yes they were skeptical at first because the claims were pretty wild but after seeing it work everyone says seeing is believing and now they’re believers.
Edit: as for the Jacob training…
The trainer (Jacob) was doing his job correctly and then becomes the villain, the operator who ignored direct instruction (and consequently flooded the compressor) becomes the sympathetic figure, and the equipment damage becomes evidence against the trainer instead of evidence against the trainee.
So far I’ve created a reliable model of thermophysical data for n-Butane and Propane using NIST tables you provided previously. Working currently on accurately dealing with mixtures and including components of non-ideality that are often skipped
Next module is compression cycle modeling with corrections for non ideality—after all compression cannot ever REALLY be isentropic
Edit: final piece of the puzzle is modeling heat transfer in multi-phase systems contained in a shell and tube. Previously I’ve done this manually using Exxon-Mobil’s handbook on condenser design, but hoping that AI might be able to help me integrate it into the overall code stack I’m working on currently—this part will be the deciding factor in how accurate the model is, it is also probably more complicated than any other chemE work I’ve done in the past 10 years
A P&ID is useful, but it is still only a map. It can help people understand the architecture and make the thermodynamics discussion more concrete, but it does not prove the machine is actually doing what has been claimed in the field.
That is really the core issue here. The dispute is no longer just about whether someone can sketch a clever concept or describe a cycle in theory. It is whether the real machine, under real operating conditions, actually delivers the temperatures and behavior that were publicly claimed.
@Zack_illuminated If this thing is currently at a training and performing the way you say it is, then the clearest way to settle this would be to post some actual evidence:
unedited startup and run video
live temp and pressure readings
a clear view of what ancillary equipment is actually hooked up
and enough run time to show the machine holding those conditions for more than a brief moment.
Saying you support the effort and will provide data later is fine. But if the machine is doing it right now, the obvious question is: where is the direct proof right now?
A P&ID is simply a representation of the physical components involved in a mass/energy balance.
The primary purpose of needing a P&ID was so that i’d be able to accurately model stream and unit ops information in regards to mass/energy balances.
Ultimately, all I want to demonstrate is maximum potential mass flow. Subsequently, I want to demonstrate how the geometric constraints of the existing unit operations either meet the demands of energy transfer or don’t.
Sure, a real-world demonstration is great, but I wouldn’t so quickly discount a comprehensive mass/energy balance. It is, after all, a universally accepted methodology for the design of chemical processing unit operations.
Runnin around the booth like a monkey to say the least in between jerkin off the columns to feel or look for frost lines every few minutes to maintain that banging temp of -5c injections. Aye ai ai.
Yea dude, I hear you! I just finally finished processing all the unusable hte we got off the original ISS. It was laughable, what it was spitting out. I reformatted their entire ISS, along with the rest of their ek4 max whatever system lol, so it actually worked afterwards. Took some tinkering to work out all the obvious flaws of that portion of their system. But I haven’t had any issues on any part of the system since the complete rebuild was done.
The thing that confuses me is @Chemdizzle sent me dm’s of the ‘all super nice and consistent’ product he was making (his words) while at the exact same time was telling other people that it doesn’t work…
But also that whole bullet proof vest fabrication was hilarious.
So was it not working and you lied to me about it to convince me that it was - or - was it working and you lied to someone else for whatever reason? It can’t be both.
I really am very confused how it is apparently both at the same time depending on who it was told to?
From today… Pretty busy training to take a full list of uninterrupted videos with my one cellphone but we held between -50c and -40c all day today on the jackets. Just like we quote.
Only the MTA that is connected to the system, no water heaters like we quote. The MTA condenser had NO waterfall effect throughout the day even with a load on it. No expensive $90k chillers that need chillers and chillers to chill their chillers…
An extraction system is just steel and compressors… If you can’t make hash with that then there might be something wrong with the operator. (A quote from our Alaska client that is crusin it every day)
The bulletproof vest story is exactly the kind of bullshit I am talking about too.
It has nothing to do with whether the machine worked, whether product was made, whether the chiller lines were correct, whether the jackets were cold, or whether Ryan was privately telling me the product was good while publicly telling a different story.
That is not a technical argument. That is a character attack.
And if the only way to defend the claim that the system didn’t work is to start making up weird stories about me personally, then that says a lot about how weak the actual technical argument is.
No but it tells a lot of about the people you are handing over a half million dollars to. It tells a lot about the person you are inviting into your lab and around possibly your friends and family.
It’s not a good look. This whole thread could use a lesson in customer service. It’s not a good look calling your clients clowns even if they might be. It’s just not a good look.
That is fair, and I understand how it looks from the outside.
I am not trying to make this about personal stories, and I agree this should stay on the technical and factual issues.
The reason I reacted strongly is because personal stories were already being used to distract from the actual machine-performance claims. I should have kept that tighter.
The real issue is simple: if the system did not work, then the product photos, cold jacket evidence, and private messages saying the product was nice and consistent need to be explained. If the chiller flow path was correct, then the temperature readings need to make heat-transfer sense.
I am fine keeping this professional, but I am not going to let false claims about our equipment stand uncorrected.
I think you should. I think the level of equipment you sell and the technical aspect goes far above most systems on the market. That takes an equal level of professionalism.
Even if it gets personal. You need to be the bigger man. You’re collecting the money. There is a responsibility of service with that type of payment.
You can’t take this all personal. It’s just business at the end of the day.
in between jerkin off the columns to feel or look for frost lines every few minutes to maintain that banging temp of -5c injections. Aye ai ai.
