Wondering what equipment to use for your various filtration needs? Look no further than this, your ultimate guide.
If you are using a centrifugal separator (Delta CUP) more than likely you are using a 73 micron or similar bag to process. Whether you process cold or not, your process stream will include biomass particles smaller than 70 microns that need to be filtered out. For this scenario, we would recommend a bag filter rated at 10-25 microns. This bag filter would collect most of the biomass and debris from your stream. We would follow this with a lenticular depth filter to remove particles down to 1-2 microns. If you want to remove color and did not do so already in an upstream process, a second lenticular housing with a carbon filter is added to the line. To polish the stream and remove carbon that came off the previous module, a 0.2-micron cartridge filter should be added as a fourth stage.
If you are using an agitation tank to extract from biomass, in our opinion the filter press is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to achieve this separation. A filter press will also be quick, efficient, and recover most of your solvent. The filtrate from your filter press may need to be further refined by a lenticular depth filter, though a bag filter would not be required in this process.
If you are filtering CO2 heavy in waxes or CO2 crude, bag filters and lenticular filters are not an option. Lenticular modules are expensive and will become clogged quickly with waxes. Bag filters also become quickly clogged and filter bags rip or let waxes through with increases in pressure. Your best option as a craft or medium-sized operator is a filter trolley. There is no other solution currently on the market that is as cost-effective and simple to use as a trolley. If you are a large operator, your best option is a filter press. Since presses are not made to filter down to sub-micron levels, a press should be paired with a filter trolley, lenticular filter, or a cartridge filter to achieve a polished filtrate.
You can read about bag filter limitations here.
Other considerations you should consider are chemical and temperature compatibility. Please see table for some important details.