Is it windy where your sourcing material?
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Not terribly, but it has been hazy. Looking at the wildfire map now to see how far the fires are.
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That’s an awful lot of charcoal for only 10bs of material but not impossible. Anywhere in the equipment that could have caused buildup/concentration of that “stuff”?
Edit: sorry I was scrolling quickly, thats almost certainly from the cartridge filter if you have an AC filter inside. Maybe just switch that out and give it another run, see if the charcoal goes away
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Maybe they were burning shit on site? I’ve known some folks who apply biochar to their fields.
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Only place I can think of is the filter housings. I thought I was cleaning them out pretty good, but can’t hurt to clean them better.
I don’t use AC filters. Just plain old PP cartridges.
That’s a good thought, I will ask! That’s a pretty common soil amendment if I recall.
Thats why I was asking if maybe you had reused your filter. Could be that the filter failed prematurely and your seeing the result of that.
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Yeah that’s probably out. That much AC left over in the housing would be visibly noticeable for sure
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Is there a by pass on that filter set up? Is it open? That’s a whole lot of black and white crap making it through a 1 micron filter. Are you pushing or pulling it through the filter?
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Might be carbon silt from being around fires.
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Not sure what you mean by bypass. But here is a pic:
Pull vac on a keg and pull tincture thru filters and into keg. I have not been using that 100L keg and have instead been using a 20L collection pot that opens from the top allowing me to clean it very good between runs. Haven’t used the big keg yet because I was afraid something like this would happen where the filters are letting shit slip by.
Then theres a similar set up before the rotovap where rotovap vac sucks tincture thru filters and into rotovap.
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I hate to toot @spdking ‘s horn, but that hochstrum filter he sells is pretty damn good. When the edge of your filter paper is still white after pulling a bunch of sludge through there it isn’t letting anything around it.
That shit got through there somehow
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Yeah I did 2d filtration for a long time to filter extractions. Ultimately too slow. So I switched to the cartridge filter and they seemed to be working perfectly for a while, until now.
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Whoever you are getting the trim from needs to get a new carbon filter in their room. The old carbon from their carbon filter is getting blown onto the weed and then into the trim once they trim it.
filters like this come in grades, the ones rated for ultimate filtration are 95% effective. pore sizes can also be nominal. A 1um nominal filter is more like a true 2um. If any filter manufacturer claims 100% capture they are lying to you.
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I haven’t seen anyone claiming complete capture, but that would certainly start with zero blow by around the filter. The amount of crap that made it through/around op’s filters makes me think blow by before the difference between 1 and 2um
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one thing is for sure AC particles can be tiny as all heck!
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the only filter I’ve ever cleaned up ac with is 0.5 micron
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Like @Soxhlet said, filter efficiencies very by type of filter. A string wound cartridge performs differently than a thermally bonded filter vs a pleated polypropylene filter. If you are interested in discussing your filtration options, and the different efficiencies and micron retentions, etc. Please don’t hesitate to reach out via our website www.ErtelAlsop.com, or DM me.
As for bypass and what @Dr.stanky is talking about, it is when your filter does not seal properly, and it allows fluid to go past the actual filter medium. Additionally, if you are not paying attention to your differential pressure, then you could actually push (or pull) smaller particulate through the filter media than what the filter is rated for.
Again, let me know if you need any help.
One word of advice, is if your eyes can see it, then it’s larger than 1 micron. Chances are, larger than 5 micron.
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It sounds like an air filtration problem possibly an air balance issue. I see this a lot. Especially in the desert areas. The fine sand has everything you can think of in it. It seems to create ph issues and contamination at a certain level