Awesome, thanks for the info.
Are you processing hemp or marijuana? I’ve been making hemp products from crude, but I’m about to start a cold ethanol extraction here pretty soon. Trying to figure out if going cold with a chiller is worth it…
Do you find that extracting at -45C requires a lot of post processing prior to distillate or going to isolate (if that’s what you’re doing)?
Hemp, and from what I’ve seen it’s more hassle, but you also keep higher margins and efficiencies when you skip the winterization step by extracting cold.
Almost all of our crude ends up going to distillate through a wiped film then into isolate, we decarb in roto after solvent recovery (going to have to come up with a new SOP for decarb when the FFE comes in) and direct from the wiped film operator seems like they have no problems with crude from our process/SOP, they can pretty much warm it up in a water bath and drop the WFE feed inlet into the 5 gal buckets we send to him.
COA’s on our extracted crude consistently come back in the 60-75% total cannabinoid range and from having this same distillate/isolate lab do whats gotta be over 500 kgs of crude at this point it seems like those COA’s from Botanicore are fairly close to what they’re seeing come out the other end of the WFE
I suspect we would get slightly higher margins if we had less temp cycling by going right out of decarb into the wiped film without the cool down and reheat, but until we get the equipment to make distillate in house we’re reliant on an outside lab to distill for us. Our throughput is simply too high to run through the short path we had.
Fluid CHillers does great work, and have good pricing too. Theyll build em however ya want too
I am the wiped film operator and I’ll attest to the quality of greenbuggys extract. No sugars/water solubles. Fully dewaxed. Cold makes the gold.
I got what you need, system in stock for 102 Gallons/Hr to -60 Deg C, plus other features.
https://www.greenprocess.solutions/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/40_Ton_R507_2Stage_Piston_System.pdf
We ended up buying a Fluid Chillers AIR20,000-ULT unit and Dynalene HF-LO fluid which we’ve been very happy with to cool down bulk ethanol using a jacketed & insulated 30 bbl brite tank
Interesting so it is the 1.6 Ton units? What was the cost?
How much ethanol are you able to chiller per hour? And does it reach the full -40 Deg C in the ethanol?
I don’t think they expressed power in tons but that number seems small. Cost was around $58k + freight for just the chiller as of about a year ago when we were quoted and put down payment in.
We cool our ethanol overnight and this unit is sized to cool 1000 gals in 12 hours from room temperature to -40C and yes it does reach those temps. Inline cooling would not work for our needs since we need ~80 gallons of cold ethanol at a time to fill our reactors.
Ok so 83 GPH roughly of ethanol.
20,000 in the name which appears to mean BTU’s ? I could be wrong.
and looking at the power draw of 460/30/60 volts at 39 Amps, which is ~16,560 kW at 50% effecieny would be ~ 8.26 kW or 2,36 Tons of refrigeration. So something in that range.
how much can you beat that by?
on what metric?
Size? Cost vs. Performance? Reliability? What Metrics are of greatest interest?
His system is setup to cool a reactor with pumped dynalene vs. pass through chilling. Our entry level model (2.5 ton) could be configured to do something similar when ordered in the pumped dynalene configuration. The 2.5 ton model is rated for -48 Deg at full load, but can reach -60 Deg C under no load. (see quotes below)
However finding a way to use the R-507 directly is more efficient due to pumping and total temp losses from dynalene going through multiple heat exchanges on the chiller and reactor itself.
I.e.
Chiller w/ R507 (@-48 C) > Heat EX > Dynalene (@-43 C)> Heat Ex (Or jacketed vessel) >> Process Solvent (-38 C)
(Assumes 5 Deg heat ex approach, this could be smaller with a more massive and expensive $$$ heat Ex)
vs.
Chiller w/ R507 > R507 Line > R507 ASME Flooded Heat Ex(Or ASME jacketed vessel) >> Process Solvent
If R507 is used is this manner the process solvent could theoretically reach very close to -48 Deg C under full load, and will trend towards -60 Deg C under no load condition in the process solvent.
The downsides would be more engineering and systems integration risk when directly circulating refrigerant from the chiller into the extraction room.
I just updated my quotes with some charts and cost projections, and added a quote for the 15 Ton (Piston) model, a 15 Ton Screw drive model is also available but much more expensive:
Long story short the 15 ton (Piston) drive provides the best value for money, a huge amount of capacity and saves you money via a waste heat recovery loop. The 15 Ton (Screw) model is ~2.5 times more expensive, goes to -60 Deg C and has the super cool screw compressors.
https://www.greenprocess.solutions/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/15_Ton_R507_2Stage_Piston_System.pdf
https://www.greenprocess.solutions/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/40_Ton_R507_2Stage_Piston_System.pdf
This!
I can get you the information to my engineer. He build our chiller custom to our facility. The system holds 300 liters of silicone fluid and gets down to -80 degree celsius.
what tonnage (or kW) is delivered at that temp(-80 deg C)?
12 ton chiller in a 2 ton frame.
As far as direct refrigerant heat exchanger for packaged chiller systems, why is the default plumbing a lineset to the process instead of plumbing alcohol back to the chiller? It’s a hell of a lot easier to run an insulated line with some compression/VCO fittings out to a plate heat exchanger on a chiller than to deal with a brazed/welded refrigerant line.
On that note, I would think someone would have made a cascade cryo system that hooks to existing facility chilled water. Something like an R23 to R744 cascade hooking to a 44 F chilled water supply could be very compact and efficient for these temperatures. Way better than a series-compressor design needed for the compression ratios that accompany the low evaporator pressures necessary for cryo temps.
Small tip, if you’re buying a cryo chiller consult with a professional AC guy. They can incorporate the heat load into your building climate setup.
This is extremely important, do you want to run in Wisconsin or Arizona? Big difference there.
That is the reason that I prefer liquid cooled vs air cooled chillers. There is still the factor of incoming water temp, but it remains more constant than the air temp.
Probably the biggest thing I miss from large scale industrial: Site Chill Water and Site Compressed Air. Hell, also the 80 ft liquid nitrogen tower we had on site… so many activities.