Every gallon of ethanol your lab recovers is a gallon you don’t buy, don’t store as hazardous waste, and don’t pay a hauler to take away. Our batch solvent recyclers distill spent ethanol back to near-virgin purity — recovering roughly 98% at about 30% less than buying new — and every unit in the line is Class I Division 1 rated for flammable-solvent environments. Line the tank with a recovery bag, run the cycle, lift the residue out clean.
Where a Batch Recycler Fits in an Extraction Lab
If you run a falling-film evaporator or rotovap, that equipment handles your in-process recovery. A batch recycler covers everything they can’t: fouled ethanol from winterization, tank and equipment cleaning streams, off-spec batches, and the waste drums accumulating by the back door. For smaller labs, a batch unit often replaces an FFE entirely — at a fraction of the capital cost — handling primary recovery a batch at a time with almost no operator attention.
Class I Division 1 — the Whole Line, Every Size
Ethanol vapor makes electrical classification non-negotiable, and this is where our line is different: every SR-series recycler is C1D1 rated, from 8 gallons to 64. Many lab-scale recyclers top out around 15 gallons — when your throughput grows, you’re forced into a different class of equipment. With the SR line you scale batch size without ever leaving the hazardous-location envelope, and your fire marshal reads one familiar spec on every unit.
| Model | Batch Size | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| SR30V | 8 gallons | Craft labs, winterization waste, cleanup streams |
| SR60V | 15 gallons | Small-lab primary recovery |
| SR120 | 30 gallons | Mid-size labs outgrowing benchtop recovery |
| SR180 | 48 gallons | High-volume processors |
| SR240 | 64 gallons | Multi-line facilities |
Outgrowing Your Current Recycler?
If your lab started with a small benchtop or lab-scale still and production has outpaced it, you don’t have to change how you work — just the batch size. Trade up within a C1D1 line, keep the same simple fill-run-empty workflow, and keep buying the same style of recovery bags in a bigger cut. We stock bags for our machines and most other batch recyclers — if you tell us your current model, we’ll match a bag even if you never buy a machine from us.
The Running Costs, Honestly
A batch recycler’s recurring costs are liner bags (a few dollars per cycle — see case pricing), thermic oil once a year or so, and gaskets as wear items. Against that, most labs recover enough ethanol for the machine to pay for itself well inside a year — faster wherever disposal hauling is expensive. Send us your monthly ethanol purchase and waste-drum numbers and we’ll run a free, no-obligation savings estimate on your actual figures.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is recovered ethanol clean enough to reuse for extraction? Distillation returns ethanol at near-virgin purity — the contaminants (fats, waxes, chlorophyll, dissolved solids) stay behind in the liner bag. Many labs run recovered ethanol through their normal proofing/QC step and reuse it continuously.
What does Class I Division 1 mean? It’s the National Electrical Code classification for locations where flammable vapor is present under normal operation. A C1D1-rated machine is built so its electrical components can’t ignite that vapor — the specification fire marshals and insurers look for around ethanol processing.
How is this different from a rotovap or falling film evaporator? Those recover solvent as part of your extraction process. A batch recycler is a standalone still: pour in dirty solvent, press start, come back to clean ethanol and a bag of residue. No vacuum pump babysitting, no chiller loop, minimal operator time.
Do you supply the bags too? Yes — we stock high-temperature recovery bags in nine sizes, in case quantities, shipping from the Chicago area. They fit our machines and most other batch recyclers.
Solvent Recycling Systems supplies solvent recyclers, recovery bags and consumables to manufacturers and processing labs nationwide. Talk to us about your recovery volumes — we’ll spec the right size the first time.
