On Sat, 06 May 2017 19:56:42 -0400, Neon John wrote:

On Fri, 05 May 2017 08:25:06 -0700, wrote:


I don't know how high a vacuum I ned. Certainly not milli torr levels.
But the food will be as dry as I can make it befaore vacuum packing.
The vacuum is to just remove as much oxygen as possible.

Yes, you must use milli-torr levels of vacuum. I used to do
industrial refrigeration on the side and I've worked on some
industrial size freeze-drying equipment.

The food must be frozen as rapidly as possible to at least -40 to
prevent cell damage and maintain the food texture and flavor. Then a
vacuum considerably lower than the vapor pressure of water at the
operating temperature must be applied.

Ice's vapor pressure at -40 is about 25 milli-Torr. You'll need to go
below that to achieve any speed.

I don't recall the operating pressure of this plant but the vacuum
system consisted of large turbomolecular pumps backed by LN2 moisture
traps and large rotary vane roughing pumps.

I'm really surprised at the low prices of the Harvest Right home
freeze dryers. I have a vacuum system in my lab capable of 10E-6 Torr
and I know what the used equipment cost. They must be skimping on a
number of things. For sure they don't have a cold trap or else
moisture would not reach the backing pump. The backing pump looks
like a chicom knockoff of an Alcatel.

In any event, neither freeze drying nor any of the other stuff
survivalists are doing are required to survive a month. The key is a
whole-house generator and a propane tank large enough to run it for
about twice your anticipated outage - just in case. And a month or
so's supply of food.

With a whole house generator, your refrigerator, freezer, induction
range (or gas range if you must), your well pump and your HVAC all
continue to work as normal.

I live in a place way back in the Tellico mountains called Green Cove.
25 miles from nowhere. based on experience I keep a couple of months'
supply of food on hand. Two medium sized freezers for my meats and
ordinary canned goods for the rest of the supply.

I have some freeze-dried meals from Wal-mart mainly because we both
like them and they are VERY quick to fix when we're tired and don't
want to cook. I have a hot/cold water dispenser that dispenses from a
5 gallon jug so fixing a freeze dried meal consists of tearing open
the package, holding it under the hot water spigot and filling the bag
up to the line.

I have a 250 gallon Cubitainer out back beside the generator. This
holds enough water if our well pump goes out to give me time to get
someone in to fix it or in an emergency I (slowly) fix it myself. I
do keep a spare well pump and plenty of PVC tubing. My pump is
oversized because I have it set up for firefighting with a 2" hose
standpipe away from the cabin and a switch to route power away from
the breaker panel and directly to the pump from the generator.

My generator is a 10kW propane powered, automatic transfer Onan unit.
I have a recording power quality analyzer and I used that to determine
what the peak and usual power demands were. I then talked to an Onan
engineer who recommended a 22 (or maybe it was 24kW) generator.

I looked at the fuel consumption figures and said Nyet! The automatic
transfer switch has 3 load shedding relays that shed one load after
another if the generator is overloaded. I connected the electric
water heater to the first stage (4kW) and the wellpump (about 2.5kW to
the second one.

Based on experience, I should have bought a 12kW unit. The water
heater gets shed whenever someone is showering (water heater and well
pump) at the same time the 2.5 ton AC is running. No big deal. It
simply requires longer recovery before the next person can shower.

I did some other things too. I put a soft starter on the AC
compressor and designed a little sequencer that starts the compressor,
the condenser fan and evaporator fan at 5 second intervals. A soft
starter is headed for the well pump but I haven't had time to get one
and install it.

I bought a 500 gallon propane tank. If I had it to do over again I'd
get a direct burial 1000 tank. The reason is the propane company
doesn't like to make a trip up to fill a tank unless the level
indicator is at or below 30%. 30% of 500 gallons ain't all that much
run time.

The system cost me about $6,000 with me doing the installation. I
paid a contractor to install the transfer switch because that has to
be permitted and the service entrance cut into. I can pull a permit
but I'd rather have the inspector see a "good ole boy" rather than a
stranger. Worked out perfectly.

IOW, for about the cost of that decent size freeze dryer plus a hoard
of food and water that I'd have to store and keep rotated for
freshness, I installed a system that lets me lead a normal life during
an emergency. Multiple emergencies.

Right now is a good example. Thursday morning we had a high speed
wind storm with linear wind speeds of 85 MPH recorded. The wind took
down a huge tree that clipped the corner of my neighbor's cabin and
took down the utility service, primary and secondary. My place lit
back up in 15 seconds.

I helped cut the trees off our 25 mile access road. Using an electric
chain saw and permanently mounted 2.5kW inverter in my truck, of
course. No smelly gasoline to mess with or keep fresh and no saw to
try to start in cold weather. When it was over with we counted 96
trees down. I cut about 10 of those.

OH, and BTW, the power is still off. I can imagine what that 25 mile
right-of-way looked like. I saw all-terrain utility line trucks
access the ROW next to my hour about an hour ago so maybe power will
be on in the AM. Meanwhile we've lived live normally with only a
couple of exceptions. We've allowed some of our neighbors to grab a
warm shower and wash clothes.

The worst we've ever had was the blizzard of '93 that dropped 2 feet
of snow on an area more used to a foot the whole winter. The road was
blocked with so many trees and ice that it was closed for 12 days. The
power was off several more days.

I had an extremely quiet RV generator mounted on a cart that I rolled
out of the garage to operate. It was set up to run on outboard motor
gas tanks so no pouring gasoline. I had 5 7 gallon tanks. I ended up
pumping gasoline from my truck even with running the generator only
part of each day. That sealed the deal for a propane generator.

More than one way to skin a cat!

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address


Well done Sir! Well done indeed!


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