For the cost of a replacement (40.00), I toss mine out in the garbage. I fight with mine after ever spd run. Spending 40 on a new one vs cleaning it is well worth it in my book.
I’ve tried acetone soak, iso soak, etoh soak, simple green, etc, nothing touches it.
Ethanol reflux for the whole SPD, then acetone to finish the boiling flask after 1st pass runs, 2nd pass runs I just use etoh. Sometimes I use RO water to clean out white misty crap that smears on the glass after drying. I use nitrogen to blast it dry.
If only we had BF with big enough holes to fit our hands in 
Colorado Extract Systems 5L SPD has a flask like this! Has that o-ring clamp style. Was still easier to clean with solvents than elbow grease tho.
did a lil more searching and found this; Amazon.com lmao
That looks neat, but your stuck with their head design, I’m having @David make me a 5L with a 100/60 joint for cleaning and 34/45 for the head, hopefully it helps
Super old thread but just wanted to mention a great way of drying is using your vacuum oven. Doing this ensures that all residual solvents or water is evaporated.
Have you ever made Aqua Regia?
What’s that?
For the 45.00 it costs for a new 2L bf vs spending time and materials cleaning it, tossing it in the bin is cost effective.
I have another run I’m doing on Wednesday.
Their setup leaks and distillate hits the ceiling of the lid and comes back down. Very slow.
I agree. I actually use your 5L setup now! :^)
Just relfix with alcohol. People are super lazy and want something easy. But reality is cleaning is to be done when it’s hot while wearing kevlar gloves. If you wait and allow it to harden and clump up you have to dissolve it again and mostly refluxing over time will strip it.
You are supposed to use hot steam alcohol and use it while the sludge is hot, this will clean the flask and it will look like new Everytime without any marks. We were able to clean our flasks after use and never ever see any char or clumps. The issue is people are lazy.
Also allowing those char and burned things to dry to flask essentially ruins it. There are what’s called micro fatigue crevaces along the glass where the temps affect it most. The black tar actually embeds into those cracks as microscopic as it is and causes fissures to open up and is the root cause for early failure.
When. You are done pour your batch into a bed of sand and use alcohol steam and your glass will look new Everytime.
If you have black char on your glass that’s hard to get rid of you are performing user error on a system maintainanfe after your run.
Aqua Regia “Regal water” is one of the only mixtures which solvate gold, and platinum hence the name.
it is a 1:3 molar mix of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid and has some really interesting properties and backround- the stuff eats organic matter up and is super corrosive, and is used in labs when the glass has to be absolutely and completely clean- literally etching the surface of the glass.
the history of it is really interesting, ill just copy these snippets from wikipedia:
“ Aqua regia was first mentioned in the works of Islamic alchemists such as [Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi] (854-925),and then later mentioned in a work of [Pseudo-Geber] (ca. 1300). The third of [Basil Valentine’s keys (ca. 1600) shows a dragon in the foreground and a fox eating a rooster in the background. The rooster symbolizes gold (from its association with sunrise and the sun’s association with gold), and the fox represents aqua regia. The repetitive dissolving, heating, and redissolving (the rooster eating the fox eating the rooster) leads to the buildup of chlorine gas in the flask. The gold then crystallizes in the form of [gold(III) chloride], whose red crystals were known as dragon’s blood. The reaction was not reported again in the chemical literature until 1890.
[Antoine Lavoisier] called aqua regia nitro-muriatic acid in 1789.
When [Germany invaded Denmark] in World War II, Hungarian chemist [George de Hevesy] dissolved the gold [Nobel Prizes] of German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist [Carl von Ossietzky] had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the [Niels Bohr Institute] It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.
Honestly if your crazy enough, heat a flask up to 500° for an hour then as it cools down (i’d say around 25 mins of cooling), add a little room temp [not freezing!!! ]190 proof ethanol and start swirling (SAFE DISTANCE FROM FACE AND POSSIBLY OUT DOORS) . Then I swish it out with hydrogen peroxide and wait and hour or two before I put them back into my oven at 500° F for another hour.
It works for me.
*Forgetful not lazy. I don’t think a lazy person would be doing anything that involves a glass boiling flask. Nonetheless, try to figure out how to clean a glass boiling flask.
any time i find myself doing something where I am making sure the first aid kit is next to me as a part of the SOP prep-
I have to stop and think “is there a smarter way of doing this that does not risk damaging my equipment or body?” if yes- I do that thing instead.
once you work your way up to reactions that generate or use reactive gasses, you’ll find yourself being more careful with everything you do, cause chemistry can and will kill the everloving daylights out of you in extremely unpleasant ways.
It is best to develop good habits early than try to unlearn them when you wanna play with the more delicate stuff, so handle all solvents as though they will hurt ya, you don’t wanna absentmindedly sniff the wrong flask yaknow?
Bad idea, it won’t seal like you think.
It’s not forgetting. How do you forget to clean your tools. It’s like saying a concrete guy forgot to empty the mixer barrel and it settled as concrete. It’s called being lazy and avoiding a responsible task. Always clean when done. Otherwise your just the same dude making excuses why a mixer drum is filled with solid concrete.
Just read about it. Pretty cool shit.
I swear to god I heard a chef use this exact same comparison when dealing with a new hire but he was screaming it at the top of his lungs.
That’s the difference between making a excuse about forgetting vs being lazy. Nobody likes stupid excuses.