This is my vacuum releaser. I built it from 12" PVC watermain that I pulled out of the garbage pile at a local construction company, aluminum that I bought at my local metal supply company, lexan that I bought and had machined at a local plastic supply company, and blumbing that I bought on Ebay, Amazon, AliExpress, and at local hardware stores. The large white pipe and the clear check valves are from CDL.
I spent the day today cleaning everything, replacing a couple of o-rings, and putting the machine back together. I had a big vacuum leak that it took me a while to find but I eventually managed to get the main releaser chamber down to 26.5 inhg.
Uh, cool! What does it do to the maple syrup?
This machine is part of the machine room. The machine room pulls the maple sap from the trees into an IBC which I use for main storage then runs it through an RO system to reduce the amount of water in the sap and to concentrate the sugar. When the sap comes out of the tree it is around 2 to 3 percent sugar. Maple syrup is 66% sugar. The sugar is increased byh boiling. Large producers use oil or gas fired boilers. We use a wood fired boiler. The RO raises the sugar level to around 10% sugar which means that 70% of the work of getting from 3 percent to 66% is already done.