I think you give the population too much credit unfortunately.
This COA is from a new cylinder with our washout and purge prior to fill. I had sent out this week due to the current news, same wash out is done with every solvent direct cylinder that comes into KAPLAN.
Good lord.
sometimes you have to fire clients
I agree, but the moral of the story is End Users are introducing foreign substances into these cylinders and if your gas guy is just refilling and going off exterior appearance or “smell” you are gonna have a bad time.
Can hydrocarbon chains “cleave” and create different hydrocarbons ?
Can we be concentrating the amount of benzene that is there in minuscule amounts ?
Can this be avoided with like 3X or more distillation
Aluminosilicates are used for cracking hydrocarbons already, albeit in much more extreme conditions than a CLD
Could crc media ever possibly do this?
I would think it highly unlikely, but maybe in trace amounts when using alumina? I’d think we would have seen some bad test results by now though given it’s history of usage
So a bunch more research on my part. I had one contaminated tank from a batch where the rest of the tanks were clean. Must have been contamination from the tank itself.
Yes, Hydrocarbons can be cracked into smaller molecules. Requires high temperatures and the presence of catalysts to crack.
No. If benzene is mixed with another hydrocarbon, it will remain in the blend unless it is fractioned away. Fractioning is a process that separates hydrocarbon species using temperature, pressure and a tall column allowing the target species to be collected.
No. The hydrocarbons cannot be separated by distillation alone. Distillation basically leaves particulates and very heavy oils behind the distilled hydrocarbons.
This thread was started to discuss testing labs experiencing more failures for benzene content. Extractors are properly focused on their businesses. Now that there is a problem with excessive benzene, they are forced to focus on the quality of hydrocarbon solvents they purchase. We’ve considered cylinders, bulk tanks, burp-back from inexperienced extractors and scuzzy coffee cups. I suggest that the problem is in the gas itself. There is bad gas going into the marketplace and it’s not coming from us.
The industry standard specification for instrument grade n-butane is 99.5% purity. This allows 5,000 parts-per-million of non-N-butane in it. In order to get a higher purity n-butane, you need to process the whole batch to reduce the total contaminates to 5,000 ppm. Let’s call this level “PURIFIED”.
In order to get that gas to 99.9% (the impurities in the material are limited 1,000 ppm) - - you have to process the 99.5% to remove 4/5 of the 5,000 ppm contamination. Let’s call this level “RE-PURIFIED”.
To get to 99.99%, the impurities are limited to 100 ppm. You have to process the 99.9% to remove 90% of the contamination in the 1,000 ppm product. Let’s call this level “RE-RE-PURIFIED”
As if that’s not challenging enough, some n-butane has been claimed to analyze to 99.996% allowing total impurities of 40 ppm. They would have to continuing processing to 60% of the contamination in the 99.99% material. This would be called “RE-RE-RE-PURIFIED”. When I consider all the work that needs to be done to step through the above purification levels, OR to go directly from 5,000 ppm to 40 ppm contamination on a production level, I suggest we face the facts and call this purity level “BULLSHIT”.
A facility can run n-butane through molecular sieves, proprietary media, activated charcoal, semi-activated charcoal, non-activated charcoal, coffee filters, talcum powder, frankincense, Eggo waffles, this, that and whatever. It doesn’t matter - producing 99.996% pure n-butane in volume cannot be done.
*** I edited this post to make it more pleasant. ***
Call it what you want, you have an open invitation to the facility to show us what we’re doing wrong but I’ve discussed as much about our process here as I’m allowed.
As to the source of the benzene, the OP here said he traced it back to a contaminated tank. I’m seeing it in Washington from labs we don’t service (and notably, not from ones that we do). So if it’s impossible that it’s from Diversified and it’s not from us, what are the rest of our options for getting to the bottom of it?
Meh, you’re comparing fractional DISTILLATION to distillation, no they are not the same, but to say you can’t “separate by distillation” is a smidge off. You can, you just need to try a lot harder than driving your distillation at 30C over your targets BP…
Cyclopath - Yep, you’re right. I was comparing fractional distillation to phase distillation that extractors typically perform. Probably should have gone into more detail, but I’ve been accused of being verbose.
The reason we have always just called the impurities in butane “mystery oil” is because it’s just mineral oil. They are totally random mixtures of alkanes/cycloalkanes etc that come from petroleum. No two samples will match. Most of the chemicals in it do not exist anywhere other than petroleum distillation and are totally random chemical configurations. Bunch of random dinosaur juice.
Don’t say that too loudly, someone will turn it into a marketing term
I always wonder if these threads increase business to the gas suppliers that participate.
When re-distil the supposed ultra pure gas… 2 exchanges chambers [filters] filled with AC before and after condensation.
N-beardtane - When I joined this group, it was to share information and perspectives to help members needing assistance. I’ve been very critical of some vendors and have started more than one pissing matches.
Some group members have favored us with their business. I’ve even messaged a few asking for consideration if their current vendor should ever fail to meet their expectations. It doesn’t matter much to me who group members but from, so long as they are aware that buying on price alone can put potholes in their road to success.
Remember when X-tane was selling these flammable gases in refrigerant cylinders that were designed to hold non-flammable refrigerants?? Very dangerous and completely illegal to ship. Not many people knew that. Hell, X-tane might not even have known. We did.
Don’t buy these:
ahhh no man big arse cracking collumn did not break the azeotrope
how is boiling a cylinder going to do it.
whats been stated here is that coa’s are often not the best
thing to believe in but rather your own analysis is the only
way to know.
you will find a great supplier and then prove they are great.
but as you are producing a food grade product you will never
trust them.
its your job as the producer to check that it is what they say it is.
food grade.
but not too purify if its not food grade its not food grade.
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