Cooling sap after the RO?

[Bucket Head]

Being a "homemade" equipment kind of guy, I don't pick up a catalog very often. But today I happened to thumb through a D&G catalog and saw a sap cooler for cooling the sap down after going through an RO. I did'nt know they made anything like that. I knew RO's warmed the sap during the process but I never heard how much the temp. went up. How warm does it get after ROing? How much warmer if you go from 8% to 10% or up to 12%? Are any of you guy's cooling your sap afterwards, and if so how are you doing it? Just curious after seeing this machine in the book. Thanks.

Steve

[802maple]

The sap is warmed up by the friction of going thru the pumps and and many other things in the machine.

The best thing that I can tell you is not to cool it but to heat it tremendously in the evaporator. That will help it maintain quality the best. LOL

[Bucket Head]

802,

I knew the RO process warmed it and how it did it, I'm just curious as to how hot the sap gets. I did'nt realize it got hot enough to warrant a machine to cool it down. I was surprised to see that machine in the catalog. How hot does ROed sap get?

Steve

[802maple]

It only warms it up a few degrees, usually3 or 4. But if your sap is already warm (ie a warm day) it could certainly lead to earlier troubles in bacteria growth as you now have concentrated what bacteria that was already there 3 or 4 fold and the extra warmth doesn't help. I think this unit is to cool it down beyond what it even started out before you ro'd it just to help out.

[Amber Gold]

If RO'ing increases sap temp, does it make sense to recirc. sap?

I'm only planning on concentrating to 8-10% this year, does it make sense to recirc. to those levels or do it in a single shot?

[Bucket Head]

Thanks for the info. I understand the warm sap and bacteria relationship. Thats why we say treat sap like milk- keep it cool to prevent spoiling too soon. After seeing the machine in the book, I was thinking the RO process raised the temperature considerably- not single but double digit increases.

Steve

[802maple]

Josh, If I were you I would recirc up to 3to 4 percent and then start feeding your evaporator with the 8 to 10 percent as I don't think your 250 will keep up with your rig going to 8 to 10 percent in one pass although it would be close. Recircing will cool it back down when you go back to the raw sap for a short while. I like to not keep concentrated sap around long so I set the RO to go slightly faster then the evaporator and when I have 10 gallons of sap in the feed tank the fire is started and we are off to the races.

[Parker]

Being a novice with an RO I think I might get a littel more than 10 gallons in the feed tank befor I light the fire......mabey like 300 or so.....

[Amber Gold]

Thanks Jerry...much appreciated.

[shane hickey]

My name is shane and I'm new to ro my neighbor has one that he wants to sell, the membranes are 6 years old. How can you tell wether the membranes are still good or not? The ro is 10 feet long and 4 feet wide with 4 membranes
he never had it hooked up and he doesn't know how many gallons it does in a hour, it has 2 three phase motors on it. I was wandering what something like this would sell for. And how many gallons an hour this will approx. do.
any info would be helpful there are alot of pieces to it. and I had never used or seen one work

thanks shane

[maple connection]

Hello Shane,
That is a good ? on the R.O. The only way you would know if the membranes are good would be to run them in the machine or send them in for a production report. They cannot freeze or that will be ruined. They should be stored in a membrane storage solution. The three phase motor kind of scares me. Not to many people have three phase power. Not sure if that would be a problem for you. The other thing I found out when I was looking for a R.O. was The plain R.O.'s that were used for water needed alot of modifications To make them work in the maple industry. I would make sure it was used for sap. Find out more on the membranes and double check your power supply.
Hope this helped, Kevin

[shane hickey]

kevin, I dont have 3 phase power, but can you change the motors, the most important quetion do you know what this might sell for. I do know that the membranes were not in any solutions but the unit is it a heated shop above 60 degrees.

[802maple]

Being a novice with an RO I think I might get a littel more than 10 gallons in the feed tank befor I light the fire......mabey like 300 or so.....

Come on Parker, live on the wild side, anybody can do it with 300 gallons. You have got to want it?

[maple connection]

Shane do you know what size the membranes are 4" or 8"? There is a unit for sale that has 4, 4" inch membranes And its going for $1500.00 with single phased motors. But it needs another pump addded to make the R.O. function correct. This upgrade is between 3 and 4 thousand dollars. This machine would do about 300 gallons per hour. 150 permeate 150 concentrate. Each 4" menbrane should do about 70 gallons per hour 35 permeate 35 concentate. A 8" should do 500 to 600 GPH. 250 concetrate 250 permeate. Depending on the type of membrane being used.

[shane hickey]

kevin the ro, the membranes are 4'' round and 4 feet long and there are 4 tubes or membranes there are 2 motors that are 3 phase, but they wont work because I need single phase. He's asking $1100.00 which I didn't think was a bad price but I didn't want to buy it then end up putting thousands of dollars into. He never had it hooked up and theres a lot parts in boxes. Like i said an ro is forign to me. It would really help if I knew what it looks like when its all together other then tube and valves and hoses in a box. He said it weighs 700 pounds.

[tuckermtn]

shane- do you know if it was set up with maple membranes? it sounds like a non-maple RO to me...if you have to buy maple membranes than for 4" they are something like $300 a piece

does it have a piston pump like a magnakist or a long skinny one like a tanakaflo? to switch motors on a magnakist pump is pretty easy as they are belt drive. don't know on a tanakaflo.

do you have any pictures?

[shane hickey]

Eric, The motors are hooked to gears that are hooked to a squeeze pump. If I bought the rite membranes then this should work ok, Rite? I was told around 300 gallons an hour, Does that sound right? Does the sap get hot coming out? Theres a large liquid cooler on this unit and I was going to bi pass it.
He told me I can Bring it home and try to get it to work before I buy it, which I thought was real honorable of him, If it doesnt work then I wouldn't be out nothing.

shane

[jfroe939]

Here's a pretty low-tech idea and probably inefficient. Suppose you had the following items: 120 quart cooler, 40-50 feet of 1/2" copper coil, low-capacity pump such as you might find in the wife's outdoor flower garden fountain, small length of maple tubing, unlimited ice supply.

Put the copper coil in the big cooler with each end of it sticking out near the top. Then pack the cooler with ice. Hook up the pump (assuming it has an input and output end) to the warmer sap and have it push the sap through the cool copper coil and let it come out in your insulated holding tank. I don't think you could bring 75-degree sap to 35 degrees after this, but I would have to think you could get it in the low 50's. I'd think the longer your copper coil and the more exposure time it'd have to an icy copper coil the better. So, either the slower the pump the better or the longer the length of the coil to expose to the ice the better. Obviously finding enough cheap ice is a problem and getting enough throughput if you have a large volume of sap to cool down is a problem too. The theory of it works it's just the practicality of it that lacks a little. Maybe substitute a college-size refrigerator for the ice. Even a small chest freezer too as long as you kept liquid moving through it. Keeping the door shut/insulated becomes the next problem for that.

[twobears1224]

if something has 3 phase motor and you don,t have 3 phase power close by you can use theses to run the motor.

http://www.surpluscenter.com/sort.asp?catname=electric&keyword=EPPC

delbert

[maple connection]

You would have to buy a converter or( Add a phase) there called. They can get exspensive and its still not a true three phase so its kind of hard on the motors. But yes it can be done.

[maple flats]

Assuming the 3 phase motors were the right size, you would be well under powered if you ran a phase converter. They are quite inefficient.