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Rotary Evaporation Systems
I’m sourcing out a rotary evaporator 5-10 liter and was wondering if anyone has an opinion about brands like Buchi versus those from other companies such as USA Lab, etc?
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7 Replies
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We have rotovaps in stock. paul@distillery-equipment.com
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Buy your rotovap from Paul. Chinese has really caught up with the short path systems because of MMJ. His hardware is gonna be as good as a Buchi for 1/4 the price.
Paul, can’t wait to meet you bud! See you may 4 to unpop my specific mechanical welds! Yeehaw American manufacturing!
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Spare parts is what you need to focus on.
Not that spare parts for Buchi or the other high-end brands are cheap, they sure as heck aren’t, but they are widely available.
Keep in mind though, at a certain scale, straight vacuum distillation is going to become a whole lot easier.
Rotovap is cool at small scale, but you are going to hate every time you need to clean the fragile glass condenser, which is basically every time.
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We have spare parts for all of our lab equipment in stock. We have a wide selection of roto vaps up to 100 Liters. We have a huge selection of vacuum stills from 8 gallons to 2,500 gallons. We have lab chillers of all sizes at really great prices. We sell all models of Welch and Edwards vacuum pumps as well as some good Chinese and South Korean vacuum pumps that give you a lot of bang for your buck. We also have short path stills up to 20 liters. We also sell wiped film evaporators.
We use a Rotovap for hemp to CBD processing. We use it to remove residual ethanol from our CBD oil befor further processing in our short path. In that application there is no need to clean the condenser every day. If you are just running ethanol through a glass condenser why would you need to clean it everyday?
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If you use a rotovap for botanical extractions, gin, etc – you tend to leave a lot of “flavor” on the condenser – which has a huge surface area.
The product in a rotovap is usually what’s left over in the boiling flask once the solvent is removed. Thus the solvent side (condenser) doesn’t need to be setup for easy cleaning.
For solvent extraction, no prob at all, but if you use it the wrong way, like we do for gin, it’s a pita.
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Okay I understand. Our 8 gallon and larger vacuum stills have tube and shell condensers and are easy to disassemble and clean. Your advice is good advice. The other thing about lab glass is if you drop it or bump it, it is gone.
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Truth – I can’t imagine doing large scale botanical extraction in the boiling flask of my Buchi, and I even have the bigger 4l flask.
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