So I apologize if if it’s already been outlined, but I’ve either missed it or it wasn’t discussed specifically… but at what proof is the etoh undesirable; by undesirable I mean when will it start to pick up sugars
I understand that if my roto is looking milky then my etoh clearly has too much water in it
In case anyone’s wondering I’m starting with food grade 190
…and you should keep it there!
you’ll see problems by 180.
how folks get to 140 before they notice I’ll never understand.
edit: most folks don’t taste their recovered solvent either 
Ok cool, I’ve been “ditching it” into an empty tote when it hit 180
re-proof it. molsieves. still. ffe. most can even achieve 190 from a rotovap. until they hit tails…
You think I can get it reproofed in my roto, really?
Yeah I was talking to @magisterchemist the other day about doin it in an FFE cause we’re headed that route in the near future
Still was an idea, was gunna message @tweedledew if I needed gear cause I read some old posts where he seems to be the man to go to
Also thought about the molsieves but I don’t think it’d be economical using the 3a sieves unless I could find a fantastic price on em and had drying them out down pat, so I could reuse em
Is there a solvent that’s better then ethonal when it comes to making distillation?
Define better
Well I guess I should say whats the best solvent to use for winterization stage and then scrubbing stage? I’ve been using ethanol or hexane but haven’t noticed any difference, I was curious if there was a solvent that makes the winterization step more effective and if their is a different solvent to use after winterization to scrub or before distilling.
Some would argue that methanol is best for winterization as it crashes fats at room temp and has the benefit of recovering faster than etoh
Ive been hearing methanol for winterization as well, run it hot and then do a warm filter then a semi cold filter and then a depp freeze filter
Room temp, no cold filtration as far as I know.
Don’t people do a warm filter as in room temperature then a mild chill filter then a deep freeze filter for a three stage filter to just be extra filtery lol
It’s somewhere around here but someone has said they didn’t crash out much more (if anymore) when they chilled their methanol. That being said I have found quite a few things that people have said, to be not true at all.
For example: dewax and winterization, in fact, work incredibly well after decarb/devol; on the forum i had read the opposite of this. Try things for yourself to sift through the BS
There are very few on the forum that are 100% truthful and want to lead you forward, others would rather send you some misdirection
about? Done a few different methods to winterization and have noticed that when I break it down into 3 temperatures I get better results, but km trying to level my game up with a membrane skid, for now though I’m trying to figure out which solvent works best for winterization then scrubbing aka polishing
It’s pretty trivial…they call em “proof up beads” for a reason…
Can’t you just throw mol sieve beads into the roto ball with the solvent? I’ve heard that’s the easiest thing to do but have not tried it myself.
That should do the “proof up” bit. Wont dry the beads though (which is the bit @FTGLabs was concerned about).
Received this via text recently from a former employer. It was the first time they had run into “wet” ethanol in almost five years…
Actually the second time. It happened on my watch once…and don’t know how I fucked up either…
Edit: had another buddy (my still building mentor) call me yesterday because the “ethanol” they were called in to reproof was testing at 40 proof, and boiling at 204F
My best guess is they’re dealing with heptane. Either a horribly wrong heptane denatured reuse/recovery scheme, or extractor (now bailed) was using straight heptane (and didn’t pass that along the the folks with the farm…).
We use meoh to winterize and we do a room temp filtration and then into the freezer at -10c overnight and then a secondary filtration the next morning which always pulls more fats and waxes.
The room temp removes the majority and depending on your material it may pull enough on the one filtration.
yeah, I almost tagged him in here too…
