Hey guys. Hope all is well with all. I am attempting to upgrade my tek and want to know what alternatives there are to dry ice to chill my ethanol to cryo temps for extraction. Currently using dry ice and it’s alright but I know there’s better alternatives.
Cryogenic freeZers on a budget?
Maybe a coil that I can dip in the bucket of etoh? Jacketed solvent tanks? I don’t know lemme know what ideas you got. I soak 4 L of ethanol in one pound of herb and then use that same etoh 3 more times before straining and evaporating in my roto.
So I would need something capable of chilling etoh that has already been mixed with biomass.
Sorry if this post seems wasteful.
Also my financier just said that doing bucket tek in Home Depot buckets is bad because the Ethanol breaks down the plastic ? He wants to get all stainless buckets. Can someone tell me he’s wrong?
Methods for Cryo ethanol
Your volume a Cryo freezer is the best solution for your volume is small
Do not place more than 20 kg at a time in the freezer so to go easy on iT s compressor
Make sure You work in stainless steel by then a insulated sleeve on the stainless steel "Bucket and a lid " make a lot of sense
if they are financing, and have concerns, they ought should buy a better bucket.
if they’re not a chemist, they should look harder before making statements regarding chemical compatibility…
Home Depot buckets are HDPE last time I checked. Better to move away from plastic in favor of stainless for other reasons though. Plastic likes to crack at colder temps.
The white buckets are the food grade ones. I think all food grade buckets are white in order to keep people from mixing them up - the dyes used in the plastics are also probably not food grade and may not be tested for as many contaminants and toxins.
The buckets themselves also have to be manufactured using a higher standard of cleanliness and in facilities that have tighter controls over a myriad array of contaminating factors. The material is not the process.
tried tracking down info on how cold is too cold for HDPE.
so far all I’ve found is the glass transition temp for LDPE.
not sure that it translates well into real world performance, but it’s enough for me to get some samples and experiment. Certainly suggests that Polyethylene is my best bet.
Edit: although now I know I’m looking for the glass transition…
UHMW PE …becomes brittle at temperatures below −150 °C (−240 °F)
and
HDPE Properties:
Flexible, translucent/waxy, weatherproof, good low temperature toughness (to -60’C), easy to process by most methods, low cost, good chemical resistance
so perhaps kicking that bucket isn’t such a big deal after all
I used to run bho and cracked a bucket trying to get my closed loop out of the dry ice bath. Finally got it out but ended up using that same bucket months later for an etoh wash and immediately was like fuck. Lesson learned. Smash cracked buckets cause one day you might use them for something other than dry ice pellets.
