I first ran into this problem about a year ago, couldnt get the gas to transfer over at all, eventually the psi got so high the filter literally busted through. (it was a mess) but we had to purchase a new filter. A year later I ran into it again, but I only noticed it running frozen material. We used to just take apart our filter and clean it with ethanol but that eventually wasn’t working. Now we purchased a Digital Ultrasonic Cleaner and clean the filter every three runs or so. Haven’t ran into the problem since. Hope this helps
1 Like
Which means you’re precipitating thca as you depressurize…
1 Like
This is your problem, pull the filter from the bottom of your material column, it’s clogging up with trichs that your socks are letting thru
Pull the filter out the material column and send the mixture to a CRC with only DE (Celite545) in it, preferably 6’ in diameter with a 5um and/or 1um sintered discs at the bottom and you’ll get great flow, the particulate (trichs) can be scrapped off the top of the DE to save media between cycles.
4 Likes
could you be fast crashing thca and it clogging?
5 Likes
@Myrrdin I agree with you and that’s pretty much what we do.
You want any trich/plant solids that get out of the socks to be moved over to crc column with the solvent solute. Even if you want no color remediation there should be a small bed of DE or zeolite on top of a slow filter paper and 1 um sintered disc. The solids that were clogging the filter paper now get trapped on/in the DE or zeolite. Of course be sure to sonicate the sintered discs every however often your sop calls for to keep then unclogged.
As @cyclopath mentions, there should never be a large pressure differential across filter hardware or thca can precipitate, adding insult to injury.
3 Likes
You absolutely should be running the material in socks to reduce the load on your sintered discs. As mentioned, celite 545 will definitely reduce the rate of blinding, add a thin layer of granular adsorbent and further reduce the rate of blinding.
1 Like
SAME! Shit blew right out!
ETS will recommend coffee filters under your socks.
From the looks of it your discs are incredibly dirty. You may want to purchase another filter plate and keep a clean one on hand to swap every other day or so.
Also, remove the elbow, ball valve, and line from the bottom of the column and inspect it for THCa. That could be clogging you up as well.
3 Likes
Thanks, homie! We have begun to flush solvent to clear the clog after every 3 runs or so. We also purchased a spare disk.
I haven’t tried the industrial coffee filter yet but that is my next move.
1 Like
I like to use duda diesel 25 micron sheets
Amazon.com .
You cut them to the size you need they work great and have the best flow . They also make sizes down to .5 micron . You just want to have a sintered disc at some point after to catch any small fibers from cutting the fabric .
2 Likes
What sized sintered disk does the job?
I ran into this problem about a month ago. My conclusion was that it was the material I was working. I had 2 different Pheno’s of LA Kush Cake. Blasted 5 runs without a problem it went smooth. Once I has switched material my filter was clogged by the 2nd run, the column right after filter was full of material and was already flipping. Matter of fact the one Pheno took 24 hours to flip, meanwhile the other ones took a whole week to flip. Not sure what caused the material to flip almost instantly but switched Phenos and didn’t run into any issues until I ran the other Pheno that clogged my disc.
1 Like
Do you have any hypothesis for what the difference actually is?
Does your hypothesis include an explanation for this?
I ended up getting 3 more sintered discs and I’m having the crew swap them when they start noticing a back up.
We clean the disc with warm ethanol and that seems to clear it up.
The initial cultivar we were running was kush mints and it was a heavy yielder. Lower yielders don’t cause as much clogging, from what we’ve seen.
2 Likes
Thats hilarious you say this because i just had the exact same issue with kush mints myself. Im in Michigan. I just leave a little butane overnight when my chillers are off and that dissolves the thca back into the butane and cleans my filters off. Need to just run more solvent to avoid this. Solution saturation problem
1 Like
Put your filters in a beaker of ethanol and run through sonication bath then clean ethanol rinse and I blast them out with compressed air then into the vac oven to bake out residuals. It will help a lot. Also staging any filtration with some coffee filters to help prevent buildup on the screens, make sure you’re swapping them with each sock. Also if you’re using the 3’’ crc that ets provides I would suggest a 4’’ or above I use the amp. equipment and have no flow issues with the recipe given above even after 6-7+socks and 700g+ grams of media.
2 Likes
Suggesting…?
Suggesting there is a saturation point issue. Either need to manipulate pressure or temperature/amount of solvent being used.
My only explanation would be the quality of the material wasn’t as good. It also reflected when I washed the different phenos for hash. The same Pheno that was clogging yielded better at 4% meanwhile the other only yielded 2%. I’ve never seen something flip almost instantly at room temp neither so that was a telling sign.
I had similar issues, especially when running cold for diamonds
Just need to get a bizzybee filter or something similar and stage it all the way down
I just got mine the other week so I’m experimenting but that really caked stuff you can almost wash for hash. I’m running a 50 sock then going 40,20,10,5