Butane Contaminant Demystified

@Dukejohnson One guesses they get their CO2 sequestered at the hydrocarbon refineries… which is also one of the original compounds at fault for our issues from the hydrocarbon refineries. Seems someone made some inferior assumptions about the chemistry of the petroleum reserves and/or erroneous calculations in the physics of existing systems that had far-reaching implications in the (waste)product flows! :exploding_head:

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John Raquet, the Chairman and Founder of Gas World, a leading news outlet covering the gas industry, says the dome is still producing CO2, but has elevated levels of other hydrocarbons that do not meet food and beverage standards for use.

maybe it was John who told the Oregon Legislature CO2 was a hydrocarbon…

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:nerd_face: :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :rofl: :skull: @cyclopath

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wonder if it’s fracking related. lol.

Seems like the dome

is located right amid the Hullburg oil field.

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But see that’s the very unfortunate thing about this industry. It’s really less than 10% of oil and gas’s concerns. As such that being said they don’t really give a fuck about us, or the things we are doing.

Maybe one day when things go federally legal we’ll be able to set up a national standard for gases that are issued to extractionists. It’s a thought but once we have that overlying legality it’ll be easier to set up standards for all labs, and it’ll be a bigger bargaining chip for our small subsection of the oil and gas industry.

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Medusa/fast crash project update:

I’ve been relatively quiet about my efforts to organize a coordinated Medusa project, as closing the loops continues to elude me.

What I envisioned was a source of gas scrubbing cartridges/columns and enough participation from our group to test our efforts over a representative sample of our industry, by having multiple gas sources, extraction lab testers, and analytical labs.

The plan is to empirically test two possible solutions to remove residual Methanol and Diethanolamine, as well as sulfur compounds.

The first solution being the use of resins, clays, and beads, and the second is water wash. Water wash having a possible second application removing terpenes from recycled LPG.

I contacted the analytical lab that I’ve previously used for the Mystery Oil tests and after waiting a week for their director to return from vacation, he declined involvement due to their current work load and short staffing.

Timberline CBD has offered the use of their SRI GC/FID to look specifically for methanol and diethanolamine, but will require a standard for diethanolamine.

In addition, if the issue is in the PPB range, it will provide limited insight, so we still need a full-service lab available to us for anything in depth.

I contacted Vici Metronics’ new project manager Isaac Delgado, who committed to working with us by supplying standard test cartridges for removing methanol/diethanolamine, as well as sulfur compounds for our project, and to analyze the spent cartridges upon their return.

Duke Johnson and Dred Pirate volunteered to test the Vici Metronics proprietary scrubbing cartridges against known “spicy” LPG, but alas the project stalls at that point.

Isaac at VM immediately came down with Covid and only returned to his office the end of the week before last.

My E and voice mails to him went unanswered, but I was able to make phone contact last week, at which time he committed to calling me midweek and having the cartridges out the next day.

Alas, he didn’t call Wednesday or Thursday, so I tried to contact him Friday and was told by the receptionist that he was not available. My subsequent voice mail asking him to return my call went unanswered, so I’m left clueless as to what is going on with Isaac.

My apologies, I can only say that I had excellent results with Vici Metronic’s previously, as well as their carts for reducing Mystery Oil.

We may learn more, but it doesn’t matter why, we need a solution in our hand sooner than later, so I started looking at alternative scrubbing column suppliers and will report back.

Propitiously, Photon-Noir has given us a heads up on Carbon Chemistry’s upcoming solution, which will not include the column but will include DIY recommendations on column packing and reclaiming the spent media for reuse.

Dred Pirate and Highestzen are both experimenting with water wash, and beyond connecting them for collusion, I’ve only watched with bait on my breath.

Dred Pirate reports frustration with inconsistent results and Highestzen is also seeking an affordable test lab, which brings us full circle to my plans to organize separate circles that include a gas supplier, their customer, and an analytical lab, so as to test more of a representative sample of the gas supply, as well as diamond/fast crash processors.

While our first tests by DJ and DP on known spicy gas might be successful, sadly that doesn’t directly translate to problem solved, and what is needed is to test our solution on a representative sample of the gas supply from multiple sources.

I suggest direct customers of those suppliers, because it saves sample transportation and chain of custody of the LPG issues, without adding significant costs.

Refreshingly in alphabetical order, we have four gas suppliers volunteering their part, namely Apis Labs, Quality Extractions, Safe Leaf, and Solvent Direct.

Apis was able to organize a circle including Timberline CBD and their own lab, and Highestzen buys from Solvent Direct, who has lab access, so we ostensibly have an opportunity there.

Are there any customers of Safe Leaf or Quality Extractions, who are experiencing negative issues with Medusa/fast crash and would like to participate in testing???

I say negative issues, because seemingly some extraction labs consider fast crash the best thing since sliced bread, so one size doesn’t fit all.

Having not seen the final paper on why Methanol and Diethanolamine are the bad actors and wishing to know more about how they entered the process, I did some light research of my own and discovered that Methanol and amines are added to crude to react with and remove the CO2 and sulfur compounds, which are turned into salable products like elemental sulfur or sulfuric acid.

Seemingly Methanol absorbs significantly more sulfur under high pressure (1000 psi) than it does at low pressure, so they saturate the methanol with sulfur under high pressure, bleed it off and then reduce the pressure so it dumps its load of sulfur and is ready for recycle.

Amines are also added to remove H2S and CO2, but it looks like not everyone uses just Diethanolamine, but instead an amine mixture that includes (Mono)Ethanolamine, Diethanolamine, Methyldiethanolamine, and Diglycolamine in various combinations.

Begging the question of whether any of the other amines are present in enough concentration in some gas supplies to be problematic, as well as whether one remedial cartridge fits all??

My apologies that my part of this project continues to drag out, but with key folks out sick with Covid, coupled with traits brothers and sisters in our industries share with cats with regard to herding, it has been two steps forward and one back.

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I feel that I would have to use more water than what I am using and/or the problem needs more retention time within the vapor path. If I were certain that more water were to capture more of the impurities, I’d implement a second chamber. Which is unfortunately just more time to clean and reset every day. Which has begun to be not worth the time

Out of frustration I am going to see if the ion exchange beads are worth the cost for a consumable that I don’t plan on trying to regenerate. They can be, but it a whole new process that takes up a considerable amount of time. Versus getting rid of them and using new fancy beads daily. So far, they have given the best results yet for getting rid of the rapid nucleation. I was even plagued with it on a strand that doesn’t normally have an issue.

I am very interested in trying these cartridges, in hopes they can get rid of the problem at hand. I am also waiting for @GasLogix-Adam to get his cartridges or scrubbing skids available, along with their facility back online and upgraded. Do you two know if you are testing the same thing or are you both going down different paths?

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Good question! @GasLogix-Adam, could your elaborate on your efforts?

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What would you have to say about these test results directly from a tank that did indeed have the fast crash effect? Clear of Methanol and Diethanolamine

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This was a test from a tank that was added into a clean system that produces the fast crash or a sample from a tank that fast crashed when added to your big tank?

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A poor detection limit on DEA doesnt mean it’s not there. The lack of methanol would tell me this gas isn’t going to created Medusa diamonds that chalk after seperation but nothing here says it won’t quick crash until you fix the detection limit in the amine.

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Still waiting on the ION chromatography testing for amine detection, but this was directly from the cylinder. Once we started using that tank we had massive fast crashing issues

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This is why analytical methods have to be validated for each analyte.

Just any old HPLC run won’t do for every analyte.

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tertiary amines are “neutralized” in merox treating and not removed, the primary and secondary have been in use since the beginning of time…

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I wish i never sold my 1 lb unit and we couldve tested the gas in there from 2013(sold it like a year ago) Anyone have any really old solvent tanks with gas in it still? I mean if they test positive for the things attempting to be removed we could confirm whether the removal of these(or amount concentrated within) is relevant to the issue at hand.

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I got some old 60#r’s, but they are the gas that started the whole the hydro carbon company thread.

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I would have questions about test limits, because there is some concern the problems begin in the PPB concentration range.

I would certainly be curious what the mystery peaks are and would be seeking a lab who has the equipment and experience to identify them.

The petrochemical labs know the sorts of things typically present and about how long they take to pass through the column relative to other known, so might make SWAG guesses from your printout if it had some known reference points.

I note that our experiments are intended to determine if it is in fact methanol and diethanolamine, those plus something else, or none of the above.

Our end results don’t always turn out to match our starting hypothesis but eliminating everything it “ain’t” narrows the search.

I’m reminded of a project in my hoary past where extensive Six Sigma research and analysis by learned and credentialed experts showed that vibrations from a jack hammer sitting on an isolation slab were causing hot tears in solidifying exotic alloy investment castings in another department, yet when the most sensitive instrumentation available was attached to the cooling station, no vibrations were detectable.

When we stopped using the jackhammer vibrations as an excuse and started looking again, we found the real culprit was gating design.

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Have you done any mixing of liquid butane with water or just bubbling through it?

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Hey brotha! Apologies on my delay I’ve been so busy but that is definitely in the works! I really want to know what those are being from the tank directly, not a CLS systems solvent tank. I also want to do more tanks from various sources just to have a visual map and I feel like that would help out so much. I’m just slacking on the financials of a lot of the testing currently. Definitely will be jumping to identify those though and do more tests. Will also get info on limits to answer your questions.

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Are things that are not showing up in the ppm level really effecting this volume of solution or are people using incorrect testing methods to find the impurities