Xle 4040 passing sugar

[Clinkis]

Got my single post xle 4040 RO going again today after a little mishap with an end cap. I'm running a 190gph procon pump and operated it at 250-275psi. Worked great until got sugar over 10% then notice .1% in the permeate. Checked it regularly up til around 8% and nothing. Is this normal or should I be checking something?

[mellondome]

Xle should not pass sugar. You have an issue somewhere. You probably have been passing sugar the entire time, just now it is concentrated enough to detect.

[wiam]

Are you trying to go to 10% in one pass. I have gone to 11-14 with mine in two passes with nothing in permeate. I have also had issues with an adapter that put sugar in permeate.

[Clinkis]

I'm recirculating in a tank and gradually getting it up to that sugar level. What could possibly cause the sugar to pass? Membrane is brand new and I had it out yesterday and seals all looked good in end caps.

[BreezyHill]

I had the same issue for two days passing as much as 1% last season on new membranes.

The issue I had as I had the system turned up to much. You need to allow more concentrate flow away from the membrane. The engineers at the membrane manufacture said I had to much flow into the membranes and not enough exiting on the concentrate side and this was forcing sugar thru the membrane. I had to allow not less than 3.2 gallons from the membranes or I had sugar in the permeate. I could hit 10% in a single pass but was loosing sugar; so I decided to batch and maintain the evap tank while batching. When the batch was done I just fill the e tank and pull a new batch from the collection tank and do it again. Not how I had planned but it works pretty darn well.

I to had a mishap. My units heater failed and froze the supply pump and the prefilters. had a spare supply pump, got new filter and now have to get fittings to hook in the supply pump.

Next summer the RO goes in the cellar on a pallet and gets a new heater and a standby heater for the wait for sugar season.

The joys of sugaring.

[Clinkis]

Thanks breezy hill. I'll try it again this afternoon and increase my flows. I am doing it the same ways as you and, yes, it does work pretty darn well! I ran 80 gallons of 1.5 down to 15 gallons of 11.5 last night in about 45 min. Sure beats 15 hours with my old RO. Good luck getting yours back up and running. Pretty tough to go back to boiling raw sap.

[Clinkis]

So apparently I don't know how to use a sap hydrometer! Realized that if my cup isnt full right to very top my hydrometer will rest on the bottom and give a false reading. Retested and my hydrometer isn't detecting any sugar. Got it up to 11%. So my next question is how high do people push their sugar up to with these types of RO's

[BreezyHill]

LMAO...Well it is far better to have an easily corrected oops than to have been putting sugar down the drain.

Mine is nearly all back together, couple hours today and she will be all set.

Totally amaizing how "Plumbing supplies houses" don't have simple reducing connections. Thanks God for a friend that died and his wife asked me to take his copper fitting cases. He had two in one of the assortments he used. Otherwise it would take a week to special order a 1.25" to 1" copper reducer. Apparently nobody uses copper tubing anymore???

It does suck boiling raw sap. 10 hours yesterday boiling what should have taken 1-2 hours. And all that wood in the evap never to be seen again. Ugh!

Good Luck with the season

Ben

[Russell Lampron]

I never had any sugar passing when I used an XLE membrane and I recirculated my sap to 18%. An easy way to tell for sure is to boil down some permeate to concentrate the sugars. If you are passing sugar it will be easier to detect.

[Clinkis]

LMAO...Well it is far better to have an easily corrected oops than to have been putting sugar down the drain.

Mine is nearly all back together, couple hours today and she will be all set.

Totally amaizing how "Plumbing supplies houses" don't have simple reducing connections. Thanks God for a friend that died and his wife asked me to take his copper fitting cases. He had two in one of the assortments he used. Otherwise it would take a week to special order a 1.25" to 1" copper reducer. Apparently nobody uses copper tubing anymore???

It does suck boiling raw sap. 10 hours yesterday boiling what should have taken 1-2 hours. And all that wood in the evap never to be seen again. Ugh!

Good Luck with the season

Ben

Glad your getting it back together. I plumbed mine in with copper too. I had to boil raw sap last weekend and reminded me how much it sucks once you are used to boiling concentrate. I use propane so it's an expensive reminder. Good luck with your season too!