Centrifuges are sweet because you can extract and spin dry in the same thing
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Depends on the centrifuges and what your local code says/requires for the MAQs involved.
NSEP doesn’t have any centrifuges that are floodable afaik sadly, and those ones you won’t have any issues with the fire marshal, but a lot of the floodable Chinese 'fuges aren’t UL listed and don’t have the engineering certs you’d need to get them to be passed in an inspection for a legal lab.
Re: OP’s question about putting your biomass into a large buchner: if you’re extracting at room temp this will kinda work, but the additional airflow will mean more evaporation and higher solvent losses versus just drip-drying. If you’re doing cold extraction it’s going to warm your ethanol up to near-room temps which means you’ll pull out fats and waxes you’ll have to remediate for later on.
Same concern follows for presses (hydraulic, screw or otherwise) you squeeze out a lot of crap. Centrifuges don’t get everything but they can usually hit 90%+ liquid recovery with a long enough cycle time (dependent on size and G-forces involved, naturally)
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The floodable centrifuges I design and sell are certifiable virtually anywhere on the planet.
how much gforce and rpm does a fuge need to remove 95%+ of solvent?
Medium
You need a centrifuge once you decide to stop tossing out 15-25% of your cannabinoids plus solvent… I can’t recall exact numbers, but they’re in other threads and they’re staggering fa sho
Still, many people remain unequipped to spin
Like me, fml
Imo cannabinoids are more precious then your solvent, so a second soak or rinse with fresh alcohol will get closer to 100%
Heres my numbers for a 20 min soak, then rinse with about 25% initial volume worth of solvent, that leaves about 10-15% left.
Heres a test on popcorn bud about 1/4-1/2" in size not grounded/milled, just size sifted. Before and after the extraction.
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Centrifuges remove 95-99% of residual solvent.
If you’re starting small the panda is, by a huge margin, the best bang for you buck.
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Imagine finding a way to load up like a big ass puck loaded on an industrial spring with compressed air and a shutoff and that spring could be set to a triclamp cap and when you pull the shutoff down it shoots the puck in the column and your collection base collects the ethanol that’s trapped in the biomass
Or something like that. That’d be cool.
I guess it becomes worth it when you start to want to see how much ethanol is trapped in your biomass or if you expected more solvent to be recovered during distillation.
I see many people on here recommend the Chinese centrifuges- are these only an option if you are unlicensed? We are opening a lab in Michigan and it is my understanding a centrifuge used for extraction would need to be in a c1d2 environment and the Chinese equipment is not certified for this?
How big you wanna go?
Ace is a somewhat local/US company that’ll have certified stuff, I think they have 100+L units
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Not very. We’re relatively small. Planning on 100lbs a day. We’ve looked into a CUP- and I’ve scoped out the Ace. But is my understanding correct that those Chinese centrifuges couldn’t be used in a licensed lab?
Not without getting an engineer to sign off on it. it really depends on your area and the codes required to follow.
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Check out this thread about modifying the control systems on a Chinese fuge to be “safe” (and compliant). FYI a lot of this discussion applies to US made fuges too. Ask me any questions you like, I love talking about safety logic controls
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