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O/T - shop built centrifuge for clarifying juices?

motion guru

motion guru

Diamond
Joined
Dec 8, 2003
Location
Yacolt, WA
I will start by saying I don't want to buy an old cream separator.

My kids and I have been making Ginger Beer the last couple of years and while we have the juicing, recipe, carbonation all ironed out, we want to clarify the juice right after juicing.

I have a large number of surplus servo motors and drives and am thinking I would like to build a centrifuge to separate the fines. Is anyone aware of a simple centrifuge design that will allow processing of small amounts (< 1 quart) of high viscosity fruit juice?

I have tried filter presses and the like, we waste too much juice and the fines are small enough to pass through even the finest filter press materials I have tried (< 5um).

Thoughts?
 
How about getting a surplus medical centrifuge? I have seen some that take a large test tube where your quart could go into two tubes.

When you make your Ginger beer do you start out with ginger like you get fresh in the grocery store?
 
Have you seen - googled fuel polishing - fuel centrifuge, should be easy to make and also easy to tear apart - clean as needed. Little more than a spinning cup with a rim in a box, simply set spinning and slowly pour liquid in, heavy bits fling out to the walls get held there by the force, liquid over runs the rim with the force and gets caught by the outer box. works about as fast as you can pour stuff in too.
 
SIP6A said:
How about getting a surplus medical centrifuge? I have seen some that take a large test tube where your quart could go into two tubes.

When you make your Ginger beer do you start out with ginger like you get fresh in the grocery store?
Click to expand...

We buy ginger root from a bulk Asian food store.

Its a lot of work but makes for a good time with my sons. We have learned a lot after trying champagne yeast (exploding beer bottles), different accent spices, different kinds of sugar, honey, etc. Now we typically use Grolsch bottles with the wire bails and ceramic caps with gaskets. We have no interest in selling it as we would need to charge $10/bottle to make it worth our while.

The closest store bought brew we have found is Goslings Ginger Beer.
 
motion guru said:
We buy ginger root from a bulk Asian food store.

It's a lot of work but makes for a good time with my sons. We have learned a lot after trying champagne yeast (exploding beer bottles), different accent spices, different kinds of sugar, honey, etc. Now we typically use Grolsch bottles with the wire bails and ceramic caps with gaskets.

The closest store bought brew we have found is Goslings Ginger Beer.
Click to expand...

Interesting where I live we have lots of Sassafras growing. I have been collecting the bottles like you mention. I have been buying bottled lemonade from our local Aldi's store for $2.49. Drink the lemonade and you left with this nice heavy walled flint glass bottle. I want to make some Root Beer. Are there any books you could recommend?

Todd
 
I deal with laboratory centrifuges a lot. A rotor large enough to swing 1/2 liter bottles is pretty big, although the ones I'm used to are made for 13,000 rpm. You probably don't need that much speed. I think the simplet thing to make would be a a Sharples-type design, with I believe is similar to a cream separator. I'm thinking a hollow conical aluminum rotor about 6" diameter with inward (toward the center of rotation) sloping walls about 1.5" high, and with a surrounding vessel to catch the clarified product as it spills over the top. It could be feed continuously from the center until excess sediment builds up in bottom corner of the rotor, and then easily cleaned to continue. Flow rate and speed can be adjust to optimize. There are small machines like this built for lab use, but I haven't seen one in years. Bioconctainment issues have reduced their areas of application.

Settling the big stuff out by gravity might be a good preliminary step if time is available (e.g. overnight).

Jon
 
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SIP6A said:
You can't live forever.

Let's see they fed the rats the equivalent of there body weight every day for two weeks and they got sick. Boy I bet nobody say that coming.

How many people got cancer from it between 1876 and 1960 when it stopped being used?
Click to expand...

Not many. From Wiki:

"l. In that role, safrole, like many naturally occurring compounds, may have a small but measurable ability to induce cancer in rodents. Despite this, the effects in humans were estimated by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to be similar to risks posed by breathing indoor air or drinking municipally supplied water.[SUP][9][/SUP] In the United States, it was once widely used as a food additive in root beer, sassafras tea, and other common goods, but was banned by the FDA after its carcinogenicity in rats was discovered. Today, safrole is also banned for use in soap and perfumes by the International Fragrance Association."

Alcohol is much much more dangerous as a carcinogen and toxin. But, no chance it will be banned, again.

Denis


 
centrifugal purifiers are simple things. I spent a few years maintaining large marine fuel systems. Did lots of work to big purifiers.

With a centrifugal purifier you will lose a certain amount of fluid when you shut it down.

The "simple centrifuge" bowl type deals for oil cleaning probably work OK for what they are. If you make something similar, but add some sheetmetal plates with radial guides on them I think the efficiency/throughput would go way up.
 
SIP6A said:
Interesting where I live we have lots of Sassafras growing. I have been collecting the bottles like you mention. I have been buying bottled lemonade from our local Aldi's store for $2.49. Drink the lemonade and you left with this nice heavy walled flint glass bottle. I want to make some Root Beer. Are there any books you could recommend?

Todd
Click to expand...

Having grown up with copious amounts of Sassafras as a kid, we didn't KNOW it had a strong natural carcinogen component. Commercial bottlers who still use it CLAIM to have sorted a way to separate the 'bad stuff' out. I'd do one Hell of a research job before going 'all natural' with that critter.

In any case, it always tasted like dirt boilt in dirty socks to me. I'm a sarsparilla fan!

:)

Bill
 
jdgoguen said:
There are small machines like this built for lab use, but I haven't seen one in years.
Click to expand...

Ukraine's "Motor-Sich" has been selling small ones for milk and juice kitchen use for 'a while' now. I've seen them online the USA. Chinese folks use other variants that I have not yet seen imported.

In both cases, the local economy has access to all sorts of fresh fruit, unprocessed dairy, & c., and are not so wealthy - nor TRUSTING - as to be making Big Bottler richer than they already are.

Bill
 
Monarchist said:
Having grown up with copious amounts of Sassafras as a kid, we didn't KNOW it had a strong natural carcinogen component. <Snip>

Bill
Click to expand...

You might not have known because it doesn't contain a strong or even a pretty weak carcinogen. It barely qualifies.... Alcohol is thousands if not millions of times more carcinogenic and toxic. In other words, alcohol certainly is a carcinogen, sassafras might be one. So, drinking sassafras root beer poses virtually no risk and is a heck of a lot safer than drinking "real" beer, wine, distilled spirits, brandies etc.

Denis
 
dgfoster said:
You might not have known because it doesn't contain a strong or even a pretty weak carcinogen. It barely qualifies.... Alcohol is thousands if not millions of times more carcinogenic and toxic. In other words, alcohol certainly is a carcinogen, sassafras might be one. So, drinking sassafras root beer poses virtually no risk and is a heck of a lot safer than drinking "real" beer, wine, distilled spirits, brandies etc.

Denis
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's comforting, given how much - usually as tea rather than root beer - we had growing up.

Folks have different tastes, but it still tastes like dirt boiled in a dirty sock to me, though.

What we DID like was DIY Birch-bark tea. Probably poisonous?

No matter. "Birch Beer" is still on the shelves here and there.

I rate it more refreshing, less cloying after-taste than root beers.

Bill
 
Seems like the suggestion to use oversized test tubes makes sense. Proportions of something like dieameter being 1/6 or 1/8 height would concentrate solids well leaving the supernatant in an easily decanted or siphoned column. In my home and probably a fair percent of homes the centrifuge, motor, and controller are just waiting for installation of the tubes. I am referring to my wash machine which has a safely enclosed, high speed ( this direct-drive washer really spins fast), and powerful drum into which stainless fabricated tubes could be placed on a spindle which allows the tubes to tilt in respone to centrifugal force I honestly would explore this possible solution. Medical blood centrifuges are small scale versions of this solution.

The wheel may already be 80% invented!

Denis.

My attempt to get the thread back on track after being guilty of diversion....
 
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