Who is king of EToH Recovery?

Pinnacle charges 240k now I just got a quote yesterday. Seems they are on the higher end of cost to speed. I know his is fully auto as is the trusteel, not sure on Delta or N.B

Trusteel 225k - 170Liters/hr
Pinnacle 240k - 140Liters/hr.
Delta 150k- 130-200 Liters/hr
N.Boiler 185k - 225Liters/hr

:joy::joy:already have. How does a few thousand liters per hour sound for $40k.

I don’t own it, don’t worry guys…

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well you can’t just say you found that and not say what company it is lol

I haven’t seen those units that you refer to running but I have seen pinnacle running and I know a lot of people that run them. I find it slightly hard to believe that someone with a falling film system can achieve 224-175 liters per hour. I’m also curious what kind of chiller and heaters you’d need for that. The beauty of the pinnacle unit is it runs on steam and tap water. You can’t beat the efficiency in my opinion.

I just did
What I can’t do is tell someone else what they can or can’t do.

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that is super helpful thank for contributing to the discussion.

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:joy::rofl: ppl a lil salty today ha

I have 2 SprayVaps and have been using them for about 3 years. I just got a Pinnacle Stainless evaporator 2 months ago and really love it. It runs about 6 times the volume of the SprayVap and there is no glass to break. We have been using it with just cold water for condensing the alcohol. I just bought a large chiller for it but have not installed it yet. The best thing about Pinnacle is the customer support, the guys there really care. I plan to buy another Pinnacle evaporator this year.

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Quit crying, just because the spoon didn’t reach your mouth doesn’t mean I don’t throw bones left and right. I remember when your IG was first blowing up and I’d hop on your live stream to engage scientific discussion and compare empirical data about all things CBD. Your response was along the lines of “I’m not here to teach you my methods.”

I always praised your work, honestly. And I recommend people to try your products out all the time - having done so myself and seeing positive results. But this is clown behavior. If you can make nothing of what I said beyond “hurr hurr hurr I know where to get cheap shit and you don’t,” that’s on you brother.:man_shrugging:

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So you guys would recommend these “column style” systems over the centrifuges I’ve been seeing more and more of (highzenbear)? I’m looking for high daily output of crude, not looking for the highest quality, just the highest output and yield for an ethanol’s system, any thoughts?

Thanks in andvance!

dude for real. Their customer support is amazing. Zach is the MAN

you’re seeing so many of centrifuges because they are a good fit to the task at the most common (mode) current scale…

I’ve got a fuge I’m selling, and my response is: if you’ve got the biomass & cash, and @highestzen has a 'fuge in stock; grab one!

fuge vs column/bucket/vat is about solvent use & extraction efficiency.

the most expensive part of extracting with ethanol is the energy required to recover your solvent. if you use more solvent for the same yield, your margin suffers.

if you’re leaving 10-15% of your solvent behind, and not throwing fresh solvent at it to retrieve cannabinoids, you’re losing solvent AND cadabinoids.

which only works if you can run faster enough or cheaper enough to make up for the solvent loss & the cannabinoids being composted.

there is a required solvent residence time at any given temperature. I can control residence time with better than 10sec precision in a fuge. So you’re going to have a hard time getting the residence time tuned better.

One could probably approach that precision with a column based solution, but it’s a lot less likely with a 300lb tea-bag pulled from a vat (unless you 'fuge it). or treat the vat separately from the “drippings”.

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ummm…another interpretation just occurred to me.

That you’re referring to the FFE in this thread as “column based solutions” that perform the same task as a centrifuge…

If that is where you are, check out the Ethanol Extraction White Paper

a centrifuge helps get the solvent off the biomass.
THEN you need to evaporate the solvent to get your “product”.

this thread is about the evaporation and condensation of said solvent.
the devices pictured and mentioned are all “stills”.

you need a fuge AND a still.

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All though FFE’s are not related to extraction I like the columns vs centrifuge question and even though it’s off topic for this post here is my 2 cents:
It totally depends on what your product goal is, how cold you need to go, your desire to tightly control temp and soak times and inline filtration. I use centrifuge for my bulk clients and lower grade smokeable’s and a column for when running high quality trim/nugs. My current prototype requires that I take my filter socks out of the columns and throw them in my fuge to recover the ethanol. Once I’m done building my permanent rig I will no longer need to recover my ethanol in a centrifuge. It will require more time and not be as fast as a fuge but the quality and ability to do small batch processing will make up for it.

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Is a cheap homemade still maybe using a 4" triclamp column and a 20-30g 5500w heat boiler going to perform better than say a 20l roto? I assumed a roto under vacuum would allow for lower temp evap. But now I’m not so sure

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A couple of things to note here -

For the sake of distilling alcohol, most commercially available and homebuilt stills value controllability over speed. Too much speed and you get smearing across your cuts and other problems. You can slow down the output of a roto (by reducing vacuum, evaporation globe RPM and temp) but its hard to significantly speed up a still designed for atmospheric pressure without some major structural changes, like adding agitation, rebuilding it thick enough to hold vacuum pressure, a circulated indirect fire heating system to ensure even heating, more powerful heating, etc.

Don’t know what temp controller is on that still either, a lot of alcohol distillers like ones like the Auberins PID because you can slow them down considerably. Don’t know that I’ve ever seen a commercially available still brag about max rate for a couple of reasons, smearing as I mentioned above, as well as cooling needs on the condenser, ABV of the feed and some other conditions out of the control of the manufacturer.

A lot of those same stills also have copper and/or brass components, which is fine when you’re distilling neutral spirits but you get some funky chemical reactions and discoloration when they interact with a complex mix of terpenes, cannabinoids and 190 proof (ask me how I know…)

I would also question whether the 5500W still heat is direct or indirect (whether or not its in contact with what you’re trying to distill). Direct heat on 190 proof tea is a recipe for a fire. Not a concern when we’re talking about an ABV % comparable with beer.

And what kind of heat does your 20L roto have to heat the evaporation flask? Under vacuum the temperature to boil off is lower but heat input is still considerable in order to cross the liquid/vapor phase change. I will say that my 50L rotos have ~8kW (IIRC) of heating power under the evap flask. I also note considerable difference in recovery speed and vacuum level depending on ambient air temp and what temperature the chillers are able to maintain

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Why is it hard to believe that a falling film can get over 225LPH? The scale most people in this industry are at is what the oil & gas industries refer to as “pilot scale” or “a joke” and there are FFE’s in the O&G, sugar and juice industries that are hitting thousands of gallons per hour throughput.

The difference between us and those industries is that we’re coming under a lot more scrutiny from the fire marshall, no doubt because of a lot of people open blasting with butane and blowing up their houses. I suspect the reason that a lot of us are pushed towards systems from these small scale manufacturers is because of regulatory requirements to have an engineering stamp from an approved firm like PSI in order to get the blessing from the city and fire inspector.

As for “tap water” being efficient, that’s very much up to the temp of water coming out of the main and the cost of that water. Use it & lose it cooling solutions aren’t very appealing if you live in an arid area.

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I agree with you that what is available to the industry is “pilot scale” but the other options are too big for the buildings that most of the industry operates in. I also agree that there are units in other industries that can do way more recovery than ours. But I don’t think the options listed above would hit 225LPH personally but again I’ve never run those systems and I don’t know anyone who has run those systems. Which I do feel says something about those systems.

Tap water can definitely be efficient and who says you have to use it and lose it? At the end of the day though if the system can run efficiently off tap water imagine what it can do with an appropriate chiller. I’ve also hear that pinnacle is going to be dropping a 300LPH system.

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Future has posted a few times saying they get 2gpm (450 liters/hr) with the agile stainless unit using tap water and then propane heated.

And Delta posted a video of their unit (for 150k) clocking 170 liters/hr on ig yesterday