Sizing an Ro

[firetech]

I did a search and not much came up on sizing. Not wanting to live in the sugarhouse 24hrs a day we need to consider an RO. Here the stats, 30x10 (5ft)drop flue (5ft) finish pan, about 55 gal/hr ,wood fired,1000 taps.What size RO do I need to keep it about 5/6hrs to boil. We will need to dump the collection tank(300 gal) at least once before we are all collected. So the Ro can be started before we fire. We have 100amp service in the sugarhouse. What happens if we go to 1500 taps? Thanks for your input. Herb

[Russell Lampron]

As a starting point you want an RO that will produce enough concentrate to keep up with the boiling rate of your evaporator. It should be sized a little larger to compensate for slower flow rates as the membrane gets clogged with age. With the evaporation rate that you have now a 250gph machine should be about perfect. It will produce about 70 gallons of 8% concentrate in an hour if you do a single pass.

Starting with 2% raw sap you will be removing about 3/4 of the water to get to 8% concentrate. If it took you about 20 hours to boil 1000 gallons of sap before it will take about 5 hours to do the same concentrating to 8%.

Adding additional taps can be compensated for by recirculating your sap to get to higher concentration percentages. I get mine into the upper teens this way. Last season with weak, barely over 1%, sap I was boiling the 18% concentrate from about 700 gallons of raw sap in about 2 hours with my 2x6 evaporator.

[firetech]

So I'm understanding is that I would need a 250gph unit min, now if I was able to get a 600gph unit used doing about 480 I could dial it down to keep up with my evaporator? where do you find RO 101 or RO for dummies?

[tuckermtn]

I have a similar evaporator capable of around 50 gph (or just shy of 1gpm). I have an oldie but goodie 500gph memtek RO. When running the RO last year I would typically set my output at around 2gpm. the extra would just wind up in the feed tank. if there were two of us around, one would boil and one would watch the RO (its in the barn, 200+ feet away).

The first time it really hit me about the benefits of the RO was when I looked in the permeate tank for the first time and saw 500 gals of water I DIDN'T HAVE TO EVAPORATE!

I like having too much RO. On a couple of occasions we squeezed it down, slowing the output to around 1.5gpm- we made 10%. To do that my pressures were in the 350 psi range. I have NF270s so I didn't want to push it. 10% is good for me...

I was looking for a 250 gph unit like Russ mentioned when I was shopping for ROs- but this one came along and the price was right. very happy- now if I could just figure out a way to get it in the sugarhouse- time to think about running some real power out there I guess.

[spud]

Herb,

If i was you i would go with a smaller Ro. Not only will you save money but it should be all you need. There are two way's of looking at this. Do you want a Ro to keep up with your 50GPH rig or do you want to keep up with the sap coming in from the woods? On a 1000 tap woods with high Vac you might get 2000 gallons of sap in the course of 12 hours but that might only be around 170 gallons per hour coming in from the woods. You can buy smaller ROs brand new for not alot of money as opposed to buying someone's used unit that might have problems. There is a guy on the Trader who just bought a RO from Water Guy's and i am waiting to see how it works for him. If it works well for him this will be real good news for all the smaller producers.

Mike

[vtmaplemaker]

go bigger is my theory, you can buy a 600 gph for not alot more then a 250.. why not buy the bigger one for expansion, and safety of mind??? not to mention they are a dime a dozen used....

[spud]

I don't know guy's,

I still think the smaller 250GPH RO is plenty big enough. Even if you increase your taps to 1500 i don't think you will have more then 250 gallons of sap coming out of your woods in an hours time. If you did have 250 gallons coming out of your woods then your 250GPH RO would keep up with it and give you 63 gallons of sweet sap to boil. Your rig boils 55-60 gallons per hour so things would work out just fine. The way to make money in sugaring is to buy only what you need and not what you might want. When and if you outgrow a smaller RO or a Sugaring Rig then you can buy the next size up. I'm sure alot of folks here on the Trader have run themselves into great debt buying equipment they really don't need. Sugaring is not that much fun when you have to give all your money to the bank. :rolleyes:

Mike

[PATheron]

Im going to throw my two cents in for what their worth. Id go with the 600 personally and this is why. They normally dont do the rating becouse of various reasons. Itll really do about 480 probly as an average with cold sap, etc, etc. You can upgrade taps that way and once you own the equipment sap line is short money with a quick return. If you dont expand you have it really quick and easy in the sugarhouse and if you do you can handle the extra taps. I know from running a small evap and having to recirc to a larger percentage that you spend a lot of time waiting for the ro's to be done so Id go with a bigger one and have it done quicker. Plus your still ok with a 100 amp service. Theron

[Dave Y]

The rule of thumb for RO sizing is 1000 taps for every 100 gal of capacity. so if you have 1000 taps or less I would by a 250,unless you are planing on expanding. then get a 600

[Thad Blaisdell]

I would also go with the 600 if I were you. You will have the capacity to recirculate the concentrate to higher percentages. This will allow you to cut your boiling time even more. Then as you expand, as you are talking already of adding another 500, you will be able to fit it in. Being able to boil at higher concentrated amounts will save you valuable time in putting up wood. A lot of factors to consider. You have to ask yourself several questions. Am I going to expand and if so to how many and how soon. Would you rather boil for 2-3 hours or 4-5 or more? Biggest question is how much do you want to spend?

Another question I woud have is if you are on vacuum?