Boiling raw saw with an RO

[danno]

I'm re-running all my lines to the RO - here's my question.

When running an RO, are there times that you will boil raw sap or is it always concentrate? Such as when sweetening the pans during your first boil or if your evaporater begins outpacing your RO.

Will raw sap screw up the gradient in the evap causing you to make syrup in the 1st or 2nd channel of your syrup pan when you begin adding concentrate.

Reason I'm asking - when running pipe from my bulk tank to RO, I'm trying to decide whether to add a T and valve so I can by-pass the RO and dump right into the head tank from the bulk. My evap. will outboil my RO, but I will not add raw sap to evap if it screws up the gradient. I was only planning to concentrate to <8.

[ennismaple]

We haven't had problems with mixing raw sap and concentrate in the head tank and/or evaporator. Once it gets into the pans the rapid boiling mixes everything up pretty fast.

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Danno,
I agree with Ennis. I wouldn't worry about your gradient being screwed up. I didn't mix raw sap last year but I did change my concentrate percentage back and forth from about 8% to 14% with no discernible difference (except the draw off rate). You could always adjust your RO so you are concentrating to a lower % and getting more concentrate per hour to more closely match your evaporation rate.

[Russell Lampron]

Once you boil concentrate you won't want to boil raw sap. Start the RO sooner or start the evaporator later. The mixing won't hurt anything but the higher the concentrate % the lesser amount of fuel to boil it.

[Breezy Lane Sugarworks]

Like Russ said...Don't worry about boiling raw sap because once you use the RO, you'll never go back!!! Not only do you save tremendously on fuel and time but it seems like everything just flows and boils smoother.

[markcasper]

Once you boil concentrate you won't want to boil raw sap. Start the RO sooner or start the evaporator later. The mixing won't hurt anything but the higher the concentrate % the lesser amount of fuel to boil it.


RUSS, You just said the slogan that I was looking for!!! I am going to paint a pine slab with "Start the RO sooner or start the evaporator later."

And tack it in the sugar shack for all to see. :)

[Brent]

And put the T in anyway so you can go directly from the bulk tank to the head tank.

If something happens to the RO, (power failure, fuses, plugged filter or whatever, especially a sneak kind of failure) you'll have a chinese fire drill to get something into the evaporator before it boils down to a scorch. Call it cheap insurance.