Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Any hardware used for mashing, fermenting or aging.

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Corerftech
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Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Corerftech »

Mods, please excuse the misplacement of this question if placed in the wrong forum category. PLeae move as needed!

I have a need to pump at this point, a sugar wash that was fermented.

I am asking from the standpoint of NEVER having fermented a sugar wash but need an analog for a test of a variety of beer sources!!! The pump conditions are such that it is HIGH pressure and pushed througha VERY SMALL orifice. So clogging is a serious concern. Think a patio mister nozzle..... but not quite as fine.

Asking for experience not in pumping but rather what is typically found both in sugar washes and also normal beers (grain, fruit, etc) for viscocity of the "liquid only" and how fine the particulates might be if the wash/beer was strained/filtered through maybe a steel strainer, then cheese cloth, then maybe a cotton filter like a pillow case. I know mash is MUCK, but in all the pictures I have seen, there is an aweful lot of watery fluid with MUCK floating or settled. Id like to know about that strained fluid.

I need to be able to pump the water/ethanol without fouling the pump. I do understand that in the mud/mass that is being filtered away, there is a good bit of ethanol that needs recovery. I intend to process that alcohol in the solids via a batch pot. My hopes are that maybe upwards of 75% of the available ethanol is in the filtered liquid and filtering as above will render a liquid that has small enough particulates remianing so as to NOT foul a typical water pump (small 3-4 gpm, 12v or 120v unit). Any idea of what percentage might be stuck in the muck after a thorough straining of the muck?

Ill add this to the question:
Once the above steps are taken to filter the fluid, do you think the particles would foul (or pass through) say a 100 mesh SS filter element? 100 mesh is 100 holes per inch (1000 holes per sq inch). Those are pretty big holes generally speaking.

Bascially the ferment needs to be clean enough to pass throug a shower head strainer mesh. If it can "ALL" get through that, then Im home free.

I intend to order a low cast brix refractometer for this weekend and make a quart of sugar wash to see how things settle out or otherwise get filtered. But a sugar wash is not what I will be fermenting, it will have too little solids. Real sugar stock will be plant based and there will be all manor of STUFF in the beer.

Any experience or thoughts would be appreciated. This pump thing can get expensive and to minimize expenses on the pump and preserve its integrity over time, I really need a fairly clean(ish) fluid to pump.

Thanks in advance for the insight.
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Salt Must Flow
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Salt Must Flow »

The pump conditions are such that it is HIGH pressure and pushed through a VERY SMALL orifice. So clogging is a serious concern.
What pumps are you looking at? I've used multiple types of pumps and never had an issue with any of them with a sugar wash. I think the largest particulate I've seen in my sugar washes is tiny bits of crushed oyster shell and that wouldn't clog any pump I've ever used.

You can pump/transfer a fermented wash different ways. I find it easiest to suspend a submersible pond/aquarium pump into the wash, pump the fermenter close to empty then pour out as much as I can leaving any settled solids in the fermenter. To make it even easier, you can just pump most all of the water out and simply forget about what's left. Personal choice.

I have never racked or cleared a sugar wash. I've never filtered a sugar wash and never found even a hint of a need to do it. I suppose I'd ask what will you be fermenting that needs filtered? Will you be fermenting on grain/fruit or other solids? IF there is a need to filter, I know of at least a few simple ways it can be done. How big are your fermenters?
Corerftech
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Corerftech »

Sorghum is the feedstock, sweet sorghum juice.
It will have tremendous amounts of cellulose and chlorophyll left after pressing and a fair amount of solids removal. But those solids have good sugar and I’d prefer to leave in for fermentation.

Fermenter size (none exist), anticipated 350 gallon totes.

Pumping will be to 20-60psi and sprayed into a column for fractioning.

The nozzles will clog but that’s expected and can be likely gotten around. Premature pump failure due to suspended solids (a continuous duty pump for 8-10 hours) or a clog (or many clogs) will kill the system.

Hopefully that highlights the need enough for more though.

I sure appreciate the experience on the pumping. I feel a bit less concerned but not out of the woods yet.

I do pump coolant that is pretty nasty for my horizontal bandsaw in my machine shop. I use a crappy HF submersible. Deals with metal bits pretty well, not those sink to bottom.
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Salt Must Flow
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Salt Must Flow »

Well that certainly clarifies things. I wasn't expecting it was something of that scale.

There are lots of different ways to go about filtering a lot of material like this, some more convenient than others. One way would be use a fork lift, raise the tote above an empty one, point the spigot straight down and gravity feed the wash through a filter sock/bag. It could be something as simple as a cotton pillowcase or a specialized filter bag. That would get rid of the largest particulates and a good bit of the smaller ones. It wouldn't take long to then run the material through an X micron filter bag for fine polishing of particulates.

The most convenient method would be to use an pump with a pre-filter and a fine post-filter (or series of post-filters going from fine to finer to not clog your nozzles).
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Yummyrum »

Filters that that collect stuff need to be periodically cleaned , backwashed or replaced .
I’d imagine you would have a changeover system so you can do maintenance on the fly without effecting production.

I’m curious why you need to inject wash at such high pressure into a continuous stripping still ?
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by NZChris »

i question if you need such a small orifice and such a high pressure.

Some industrial distillers put solids into the column and eject them from the bottom of the still, no filtering required.

On an industrial scale, an inline centrifugal separator can get rid of solids.
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by LWTCS »

I think a key element would be to get yourself an array of several fermenters going.
So that you'll have something to get started, something working off, something settling out, and something ready to run.

This way you can rack off a time or two prior to excessively fouling your filtration system.

Conical fermentation vessels with a proper racking arm would likely save you a ton of materials handling.
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by LWTCS »

Also, on the sorghum fermentation/fermenter design, a somewhat large outlet just below your max fill will allow you to drain off excessive skimmins on the surface that get put into suspension by way of co2 production.

However the skimmins are usually only delt with because they will impart an acrid "green" tasting quality in the finished spirit.
Since you are not making spirits perhaps simply allowing all solids to fall out if suspension is the best way to preemptively handle premature fouling on your filtration method?
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Corerftech
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Corerftech »

India has dome some research into atomizing feedstock being delivered to a still.
Id like to experiment with spraying a very fine mist of feedstock into a heated chamber as a stripper function.

Else I will only need to have a simple injector to squirt juice into a continuous column for complete one pass distillation.

I thought about use of swimming pool flocculant, like I use when water is cloudy from dead algae in my pool. It works very well. Or a clarifier that floats the same. But as it turns out, dead yeast is helpful for a future batch as food for new yeast. And if there is any sugar in that solids mass, or ethanol, I will want to harvest it if I can. So contaminating it with chemicals is probably not a good idea (worthwhile in the long run).

Ultimately squirting feedstock (or even having it just drizzle in) will probably be the method, not using very high pressure and keeping it simple so a good amount of debris is likely ok.

The submersible pump is probably the way to go as suggested earlier. I beat on cheap ones pretty bad for coolant circulation on my horizontal bandsaw. As long as it doesnt dip all the way into the chips in the tank, it just does its job.
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Demy »

My opinion if you need something very clean is to let it settle as much as possible then pass the ferment into a wine filter system (pump + paper filters). Oenological clarifiers could be used (example bentonite) but I suspect they would not be effective because the composition of the fermented sugar is different from a wine. This is a special case for your question.
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Ben
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Re: Pumping, viscosity and particulates left in a sugar wash after ferment, filtering for pumping. Odd question.

Post by Ben »

You could probably use a low pressure pump to push through filtration, into a grant with a float valve, draw from the grant to your pressure pump. Use a float switch to turn of the HP pump if the grant gets low.
:)
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