Good to know about substrate changes at 250F. People always worry about caramelizing LC (I don't), but the many hours at 250F might be a problem. An interesting rule of thumb in Chemistry is that reaction rates double for every 10C change. Water boils at 100C, sterilization at 15 psi puts the water at 121C. So what this means it that the reactions (e.g. 'caramerlization') would be doubleXdouble (20C difference) = 4 times faster. That would explain why the sterilization affects the substrate way more than anticipated just based on the temperature increase. I'm sure the pressure also increase the reaction rate, but I don't feel like revisiting the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia :(
We can't wait to move on from our Bubba's, but they are not a bad option for a startup farm who doesn't have room for a shipping container or boiler money yet and is busy making mistakes in every other direction. We're at the point of running ours 5-6 days a week though, so they rarely turn off. When we first got started sauna steamers required modifying to run continuously and were notorious for failing or build quality inconsistencies within the same make/model so it seemed like Bubba's was the move.. It feels like we're moving backwards but nowadays sauna steamers have better internals and don't require tweaking to run continuously so we're moving towards pumping sauna generators into our Bubba's barrels so that we can cut our run times down from 18-22hrs to 6-8hrs and will cut our electric down a lot since the sauna generator will feed 2 tanks at once. We operate out of a 1200 sq ft facility and are not allowed to have anything outside so we've had to get creative. NOTE: the only way this setup works is if you have very soft water, but the perks are the barrels are a container that doesn't have a lot of negative space to waste steam on, and you can roll them covered into a lab easily without handling
Good to know about substrate changes at 250F. People always worry about caramelizing LC (I don't), but the many hours at 250F might be a problem. An interesting rule of thumb in Chemistry is that reaction rates double for every 10C change. Water boils at 100C, sterilization at 15 psi puts the water at 121C. So what this means it that the reactions (e.g. 'caramerlization') would be doubleXdouble (20C difference) = 4 times faster. That would explain why the sterilization affects the substrate way more than anticipated just based on the temperature increase. I'm sure the pressure also increase the reaction rate, but I don't feel like revisiting the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia :(
We can't wait to move on from our Bubba's, but they are not a bad option for a startup farm who doesn't have room for a shipping container or boiler money yet and is busy making mistakes in every other direction. We're at the point of running ours 5-6 days a week though, so they rarely turn off. When we first got started sauna steamers required modifying to run continuously and were notorious for failing or build quality inconsistencies within the same make/model so it seemed like Bubba's was the move.. It feels like we're moving backwards but nowadays sauna steamers have better internals and don't require tweaking to run continuously so we're moving towards pumping sauna generators into our Bubba's barrels so that we can cut our run times down from 18-22hrs to 6-8hrs and will cut our electric down a lot since the sauna generator will feed 2 tanks at once. We operate out of a 1200 sq ft facility and are not allowed to have anything outside so we've had to get creative. NOTE: the only way this setup works is if you have very soft water, but the perks are the barrels are a container that doesn't have a lot of negative space to waste steam on, and you can roll them covered into a lab easily without handling