Homemade filter press

[hookhill]

This has been discussed in the past but I was thinking of making a filter press and was wondering if anyone had detailed information on how to do it. One sugarer made one by buying the plates, motor, tubing etc separately and another suggested making the Lapierre style (kind of a pressure cooker). Would it be possible to take and old pressure cooker, fit it with a air inlet and run compressed air into it to force the syrup through a filter? Ther has got to be a lower cost solution other than expensive plates and motors.

[DirtPoor]

There is something less costly , its called a felt filter, sometimes we do have to pay for something we can't make. Buy a press now when the price is the cheapest.

[brookledge]

I'm the one that replied a while ago that I built mine from parts. As I said before when I built mine there were no types available for a small operation. Now they make ones for the small operations,grant you they are still expensive but they hold there value. The one thing about mine is that when I built it I only wanted to filter about 10-15 gal at a time. So I only bought 2 sections and one plate. I made a long spacer out of pipe to take up on the threaded rod. Since then I have bought another plate and section to filter about 20 gallons at a time. If and when I need to I can buy the remaining plates and sections to filter about 60 gal at a time. If I remember correctly it cost me about 1/2 to 2/3 the cost of a new one.
As far as any way to do it cheaper with the plate type the biggest expense is the cast alluminum plates and sections. Maybe look into the syro-filter type and see if there is a way to build that type cheaper I'm not familliar with that type.
Keith

[JasonS]

I was just wondering if anyone has ever tried this - I was thinking of making a homemade syrup filter out of a pump and a whole house canister type filter. Would this work? Has anyone tried it? Is the syrup to thick to pass through? I'm thinking that it won't work, because if it did someone would sell it.
Thanks,
Jason

[brookledge]

Jason
I don't think the filter will stand up to the high temps with the constant pressure but if you have a small gear pump give it a try.
Otherwise I have never heard of anyone using one to filter syrup.
Keith

[maple flats]

The only whole house filters I have ever seen are rated for cold water only, and I used to be a dealer.

[Jim Powell]

Jason,

I've been working on this idea since last spring, getting ready for this year. Last year was my first year, and I realized I could waste a lot of syrup in the filtering process. I will be very small scale, 32 trees and about 45 taps for this coming year. I have built a system that I've yet to try. I have bought a few gallons of cheap syrup to just test though. It does work well on water.

The system consists of a 5 gallon pressure cooker fitted with a (filtered) compressed air line, and an outlet tube that extends to the bottom of the cooker. Pressure then drives the hot syrup up and out of the cooker through a hot sediment filter from Rusco: http://www.rusco.com/html/hot.html The finnest stainless steel mesh you can order is 74 microns. I happend to have some food grade, high temp fine poly propylene filter cloth which i have wrapped around the SS element. I think it will work but just don't know yet. It was great fun to build though!

I looked into the whole house water filter you mentioned. There are hot water versions, available mainly through photography supply houses. I bought one, and you certainly can get very fine high temp rated filters for them. It may work just fine, although I think you would have to mount it upside down to make sure you don't have a quart of syrup held up in the filter housing. I decided to focus on the smaller Rusco system because it is so easy to clean and I can see inside it.

[royalmaple]

Jim-

Pretty interesting, keep us posted on how it ends up working.

[timbers]

This past September I was at a sugarmaker shoppe in Flesherton On who has made a similiar sort of set-up. He has a 2 x 6 oil fired finishing pan connected to a ss pump. The pump forces hot syrup thru a ss cannister that has a removable ss filter, after the syrup goes thru the filter it goes back to the finishing pan and continues to be cycled until he feels its "clear". At this point the syrup is pumped to his bottling station.

I'm not sure how long he has been using this set-up, however he showed me a few of this "test" glass bottles that were several years old and they are perfectly clear. He sells this systems for $5200 cdn. He also has his protype for sale it has cloth filter not stainless for $1800.

We were very inpressed with his set-up. sap ladders, 2200 taps etc

Ian

[hookhill]

Great ideas lads!! Can you post some pictures of your pressure cooker filtering system. You beat me to the idea. I was thinking that a pressure cooker might be the way to do it.

[small_operator]

That's pretty clever using the Rusco filter. Can you give me a rough idea of the cost for those filter elements.