Carbon filtering with a cartridge

[needmorstuff]

Does anyone carbon filter vodka using a cartridge?

Volumes are very low, probably no more than 50 litres per run.

Being suggested the attached would work at a rate of 4 litres per minute.

CleanPore-Carbon-Datasheet-2.1.pdf PVI range - Industrial housing 10 inch single cartridge.pdf

[TwentySevenBrewing]

Following this post, once we get up and going I will need to carbon filter as well. We will have a larger volume. Is the housing made of stainless steel?

 

[Kindred Spirits]

 

1 hour ago, TwentySevenBrewing said:

Following this post, once we get up and going I will need to carbon filter as well. We will have a larger volume. Is the housing made of stainless steel?

 

I would recommend filtering larger batches through granulated carbon, its a great way to polish your finished spirit

[needmorstuff]

3 hours ago, TwentySevenBrewing said:

Following this post, once we get up and going I will need to carbon filter as well. We will have a larger volume. Is the housing made of stainless steel?

 

Yes its made of SS. But this is only for small volumes.

[richard1]

I for one will tell you that it makes a huge difference when you pass neutral through vodka.  Way way smoother.

 

Going forward all my neutral will be carbon filtered including that for gin production.  A neighbouring distillery whom exports gin to the USA also carbon filters his neutral for gin production.  He reckons that the gin is seriously improved.

 

This is my carbon column that I build.  The secret to this is an extremely slow flow rate for maximised contact time.

carbon filter assy.pdf

[Southernhighlander]

If anyone needs a carbon filter housing just let us know.  We build them in all sizes including some very large ones. 417-778-6100 paul@distillery-equipment.com

[needmorstuff]

Doesn't anybody use a cartridge then?

[Kindred Spirits]

I personally like #2 or #4 stainless filter housings, you can find them all day on ebay, they have all the fittings welded on, and are standalone. Just get the needed hoses and you are off to the races.

[needmorstuff]

Not following that. I just googled #2 steel filter housing and it got me to a bag filter housing. 

Now, I already have a ss bag filter housing and bag filters.. is there an option there for me?

Or am I missing your point?

This is my housing,  I've got 1, 2 and 25um filters.

 

https://www.gapswater.co.uk/acatalog/Spectrum-Inox-Size-1---2-316-Stainless-Steel-Bag-Housings-SBH_SPC_112.html

 

[Kindred Spirits]

1 hour ago, needmorstuff said:

Not following that. I just googled #2 steel filter housing and it got me to a bag filter housing. 

Now, I already have a ss bag filter housing and bag filters.. is there an option there for me?

Or am I missing your point?

This is my housing,  I've got 1, 2 and 25um filters.

 

https://www.gapswater.co.uk/acatalog/Spectrum-Inox-Size-1---2-316-Stainless-Steel-Bag-Housings-SBH_SPC_112.html

 

Fill the bag filter with granulated activated carbon, then let your vodka/neutral slowly filter through it.

[needmorstuff]

1 hour ago, Kindred Spirits said:

Fill the bag filter with granulated activated carbon, then let your vodka/neutral slowly filter through it.

Thanks, I thought that might work, good to have confirmation.

Just need to find a UK based supplier of carbon now

[richard1]

9 hours ago, Kindred Spirits said:

Fill the bag filter with granulated activated carbon, then let your vodka/neutral slowly filter through it.

Personally I would not recommend that as the diameter is way too big.  You need to rather look at height and the liquid taking a very long time to pass down i.e. contact time.

[Kindred Spirits]

9 hours ago, richard1 said:

Personally I would not recommend that as the diameter is way too big.  You need to rather look at height and the liquid taking a very long time to pass down i.e. contact time.

It has worked great for all of my clients I have set it up with. The key is letting it soak on the carbon for an extended period of time, letting it slowly trickle out of the bottom of the housing. Sometimes 24 hours or more. 
 

If it’s not the way you would want to do it that’s fine. I just know my clients are now making super smooth finished product with a readily available housing which can also be multi purpose for other filtration needs. 

[needmorstuff]

So the takeaway here is that cartridges are not the best solution and that contact time is key.  How I do that is secondary.

I already have the tri clamp spool, adaptors, the bigger filter and bags. So it all comes down to process, ease of use and cleaning.

I think filling the bag will be much easier that a narrower tube and the bags are ready made filters/housings for carbon. On the downside that's a whole lot of carbon.. 

Does carbon have to be food grade? Because a quick search leads me to lots of aquarium type granulated activated carbon on the UK.

 

[Pour Decisions]

I use an activated granular carbon cartridge and it works well enough for me!

[needmorstuff]

18 hours ago, Pour Decisions said:

I use an activated granular carbon cartridge and it works well enough for me!

I am hearing back from a few suppliers (amazon/fileder) that they have customers doing this and the key is very low flow rates.

Good to hear from an actual person and not a supplier.

[lowerylisa1]

I'm currently using 30" activated carbon fiber cartridges and 30" cartridge housings (both triple and single) purchased from http://stpats.com/index.htm. Easy to use and affordable. Works great for 1000s of liters of vodka. If you decide on the triple housing, I suggest getting the blanks to fill the empty cartridge holes when not in use. Their website isn't the easiest to share, but their customer service is great!!

[richard1]

@lowerylisa1 The above does not efficiently work and is a waste of money.  It is still better than nothing and it does help a bit.

 

Reason is, in a cartridge, you are flowing from outside through the cartridge wall thickness to inside and out.  i.e. your contact time is maybe at best 0.5 seconds.  With ideal and proper carbon filtration set up, you need to flow through a mass of carbon bed say 0.5m to 1m thick and this needs to happen as slowly as possible.  This gives you huge contact time with way better results.

[needmorstuff]

I am getting more people tell me they use a cartridge, on and off this forum. Some just loop the liquid and pump it round a circuit for a few hours at a slow rate to increase the contact time.

[Kindred Spirits]

1 hour ago, needmorstuff said:

I am getting more people tell me they use a cartridge, on and off this forum. Some just loop the liquid and pump it round a circuit for a few hours at a slow rate to increase the contact time.

You said it right there, the main thing is contact time with the charcoal. You can pump it, use gravity, or any other means you want to pass it through. As long as you have a system that works for you go for it.

The main thing is you don't want to do a single pass through a cartridge like @richard1 mentioned. Doing that is a waste of time and money because the contact time is so short its not really polishing your product. It literally is just a filter at that short of CT.  You can pass multiple times through a filter housing with recirculation and a pump, but then you have to babysit it. Otherwise you can get a gravity setup, and just set it and forget it.  

[MichaelAtTCW]

One tangible benefit that carbon cartridges have is a much lower hassle factor. Dealing with loose carbon can get messy. With a cartridge you pop it in, and pop it out when you're done.

A lot of our small customers use carbon cartridges with great results in a loop with a little Flojet pump or the like. Larger customers tend to use carbon lenticular, or plate & frame filter sheets. Lenticular modules have been really popular with breweries making clear seltzers to remove colors/odors. Regardless of the form factor, lenticulars and sheets also require sufficient time in contact, but both offer much increased surface area over cartridges, so they tend to perform better even though the liquid's time in contact is about the same as with cartridges.

Using plain old gravity with a cartridge might work and get you the best of both worlds. Dunno. There is usually some pressure differential to overcome in order to get through a cartridge, so it may be impractically slow. We sell small peristaltic pumps for dosing ingredients, adjuncts, etc. (think bentonite, enzymes, or sulphites). They're capable of going slow enough to reliably push in the milliliters per minute range. It would be possible to use one get gravity-like (or even slower) flow rates to reaallllly maximize time in contact, and get you "set it and forget it" results through a cartridge without having to use loose carbon.

[Kindred Spirits]

Hey Mike,

Just curious how often do the ventricular filters need to be swapped out? I see a system typically would run about $3,000-5000 with it mounted on a cart and all the hoses, maybe more with an additional pump. 

Most startups are looking to pinch pennies, so I can get them setup for about $800 using gravity and granular. Gradually the granular loses effect but it’s only about $100 a cubic foot bag. So it’s not too bad to swap that out. Even if they want to be conservative and swap it out fairly regularly it would take a long time to get to the amount of the lenticular setup.  

[MichaelAtTCW]

I wish customers would give us more feedback about exactly how many gallons they run through a filter before they need to change out, but we mostly just see buying patterns. Smaller craft facilities go many months without changing (or at least without reordering).

Carbon lenticulars are used pretty heavily in cannabis processing. We saw a lot of this when ethanol extraction was booming a few years ago. The users would turn the green sludge into a clear, golden oil. Even the processors of "low-grade" cannabis oil, which is terrible stuff, get at least a few hundred gallons of usage out of a carbon lenticular before needing to swap out. Distillery usage needs are comparatively much lighter, so onstream life should be much higher.

Edit: one of our cannabis ethanol extraction customers just came in, coincidentally. I asked him how many gallons he gets through a carbon filter. They're a pretty high-volume user processing stuff much dirtier product than spirits, and he says as long as they protect the carbon with a filter upstream, they can get 5,000-10,000 gallons through one before needing to change out. That's a sample size of one, though, so YMMV.