Condenser is truth. Wfe settings

So ive finally got my wiper working and have been doing testing with it alot through these lockdown times.

What ive found is not the norm, but i have more tools and toys then most people and work alone, meaning i dont look for jobs and dont have anything to prove by disproving others methods in order to get hired for either consulting or as a worker for someone else… no offense to people who work for other people… but dont try to discredit others to get a job especially with bullshit you may or may not know is true or not… but anyways… i dont have the overhead people do… i have only expectations of top quality… Literally no bulk. Nothing… just quality… so take that into consideration

I took my yhchem wiper, i added an extra feed heating section in the idea of a 3/8” stainless tube 12” long wrapped in heat tape with a pid attached. Im using dynalene 600 throughout the heat section so i can heat everything to the point of melting the wiper blades if i want. Im running a diffstak 160 and have an accurate gauge next to the column, my column has the port at the top which i prefer for these tests as it seems to be more accurate on removal of just heads. I can remove mains from the main column but it requires alot of heat… which is fine because ive been able to use some really high condenser temps.

The diffstak has another gauge on it showing me the health of the pump pressure after the trap. All tests were done beyond 0.75mtorr after the trap. Regardless of feed rate i was able to keep this.

I used two column jacket temps, 190C and 210C… primarily 210… as with the vac depths at the column of 80-120mtorr i should be seeing alot more then thc on the condenser… which at times i had… and found it was based on one specific parameter.

I have a coil condenser after the main column to, so a majority of the work is done by that, not the cold trap filled with dry ice and acetone. It runs at -20 to -15C depending on load work.

The dry ice does alot on the first pass. Which i have been decarbing/deterping/and deheading in one pass at 14L/hr currently. But for this we will talk about mains pass.

Lets talk about the process and length at which the material feeds through. Starting at 80-90C within the hopper, it feeds into a main heated line through a peristaltic pump. The heated line takes the material to 140C by the time it makes it through this. The material may or may not pop through this line like a rising film.

The next stainless tube is set to 180C. This brings the temp of the material to near the jacket temp before it has entered the main column of the system. You need to know your heat sensitive parts to attain this. I did this with stainless parts and am only unsure of the plastic cap supplied by beaker and wrench. Which is a very flimsy design for a wiper connection… should be a compression fitting to kf-25 or better. IMO… but i digress…

When the material enters the column, if it has been properly passed before hand it may pop a little initially but usually slides into the column and is wiper around. With a column temp of 210C there is a very obvious amount of distillate condensing above the basket and trying to roll down in, throughout the run. This is accentuated based on condenser temps of the column.

The main concept of this entire post is about what happens next. Since the entire system is stable, vac depth attained, material stability… very consistent temps, very consistent speeds. Wiper blade making little difference and seeming to matter the higher the flow. You can pull and extremely good fraction even at high jacket temps based solely on condenser temps. It seems to be the only temp that makes a difference if you rule out all other factors… vac depth, feed rate, jacket temp, input temp, wiper blade speed, etc…

Lower registry
The lower the condenser temp, the wider the band that comes off the material. Meaning, if you use 70C at these parameters (king of the crutch’s sop) you will get a very dark in volume fraction… probably holding alot more non desirables both above and below the boiling point of your cannabinoid fraction, essentially if you didnt do a good heads polish. But the volume removed will be more. So these types of passes are good for removing all the mains and tails away from tar fractions, for a pass like that. But ive found 100C to be just as appropriate for speeds as high as 7-10L per hour depending on the width and length of the wiper heat transferable range.

(Wiper heat transferable range meaning the area where the wiper blades meet the material, to where the material leaves at the bottom)

Upper Registry

So the next series of tests i did was the upper temp range of the condenser.

I ran the condenser temp up to 160C, i found that my removal of fractions from the residue was greatly reduced across all feed rates. In equal portions. But worse at higher speeds. Though! What i did learn was that the higher i went on condenser temp, the more near to only cannabinoids i got and the better the color in both volume and in small amount. I found that the higher the temp of the condenser, the more selective i could be. This is great for taking a first pass material, absent of all tar and making great water or yellow liters… and leaving behind the red fractions… the selectivity was amazing. I did not venture above 160C because i did not want to risk the plastic gl- whatever they are connectors on my yhchem. But they held well at that input temp at full circulator speed.

Heres how i imagine this is working.

We have two surfaces, imagine one is positive temp, and one is negative temp, just like a magnets, positive and negative. All the material that can vaporize off the positive temp, does. The negative side will draw from that only what bandwidth it can handle and allow the rest to move on. This happens the length of the column. So the bandwidth of possible fractions at the top vs the bottom is different. It has a 3 dimensional push and pull effect that looks alot like two christmas trees with one inverted and they overlap. (May be too much for some to visualize but you will eventually) regardless of visualization, there are two things learned here.

Increase the condenser temp, get a better color but need slower speeds to get (all of it)
You have increased the top upside down christmas tree

Decrease the condenser temp and you increase the likelyhood of undesirable tails colored bodies, unless you flood the system more, giving more of the material to be possibly condensed, like a buffer that holds back the tails. You have increased the rate of the bottom xmas tree because the amount of bandwidth left at the bottom is substantial enough that tails may not appear.

I like 3 passes on the wiper, i havent noticed degredations at these temps… mainly because having material see 210C for maybe 2 minutes vs an spd at 4-12hrs… big difference. I love my spds and i wont ever stop working with them. But i also am not prejudice in this industry because all science is interesting to me.

The three passes

  • Decarb/deterp/deheads in one pass… vac will be what you base this out of and the condenser/jacket are set to maximum, to keep heads out of the main column. Take both sides, add them back together and do second pass.

  • Second pass removes mains and tails from tar at diff pump vac depths. Jacket max, condenser at 60-120C depending on flow rate, and size of system.

  • Final pass. Based on feed rate and knowledge of the wiper, jacket max, feed rate and condenser to match known outcomes. But i prefer 2-4L/hr with condenser between 130-160C irrespectively. Both mains passes should have extremely stable vac depths.

Every wiper is different, but rule out all of your settings and rely on one to give you change. I only change wiper blade speed to compete with any flooding from feed rate. Once its reset, i then go back and reset condenser to Adjust for the expected color and outcome.

I believe @densone has some info to corroborate on my theory.

There is more to come on this concept, like pics and videos

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Fucking epic write up thanks for sharing brother💪

If everyone spends this downtime honing skills/processes and diligently keeping notes their will be much invaluable content created. This is that opportunity we’ve all been wanting. The chance to take a break and get everything organized that we never get around to in everyday life.

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Are you making your own dry ice?

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Currently have a immersion chiller i just borrowed

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I like your two Christmas trees analogy! Thanks for the report! Havent tried too much decarbing/deterping in the WFE yet, gonna have to try that soon

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If you’re having color problems your not stripping all the heads out which will only be a problem if you waste residence time to heat the crude up. The longer the terp strip ( as long as your at the right parameters) the easier it is to get a good color

https://www.instagram.com/p/B290oY6gpKH/?igshid=d0q7gc951ti3

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7peqrVBvHp/?igshid=12zqq811bd5g

My 1 pass sop will be out soon ( I’m going to skip the terpene strip)

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Here’s a photo of the standard SOP that’s floating around here and in GLG. The one in the left is the common method people talk about. The ones on the right are more geared towards @anon42519203 research.

more photos coming today in a large run with temperature adjustments. I think this SOP can technically work single pass and look really nice. But I’d personally rather 2 pass it. This is what the residue discharge looks like. Obsidian.

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First pass color, 7L/hr, dont have a volume in jar pic as im doing some mid processing currently on it.

Lower temp, i believe 120C at 3L/hr

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First pass happening now. Here’s a look at the material. Getting 10-12 liters hour. 8” YHCHEM single stage.

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I usually dial in color by starting around 165C (vacuum is always around 2.5x10-2 torr), and reducing until Im happy with color. Continually recirculate tails. The rate of tails collection will become faster than that of distillate—then I’ll “squeeze” remaining cannabinoids by increasing temperature.

Here’s a picture. All these temperatures are evap at 2.5x10-2

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https://www.instagram.com/p/B8ej5YxBFk3/?igshid=1rksx7f0v7slk

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8esjQ-BHYw/?igshid=glmji6kvyc8j

This was made on a 6 inch steel 2 stage yhchem with the evaporator at 183c cranking at 9 to 10 liters per hours

If your running fast you can run hotter, as codistillation can only happen once the majority of the cannabinoids have been removed

Why can’t crude with solvent in it get above the solvent boiling point? Because the solvent will boil and remove heat from the mixture, same is true with cannabinoids when you distill. If your crude is 70% cannabinoids it can’t get above the boiling point of the cannabinoids till all the cannabinoids are evaporated, once that happens codistillation will happen.

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Dont get me wrong, im glad you try things and do experiments for your own methods… so this isnt meant to insult. But im not using this post to circulate a bunch of new ideas, id like people to actually try playing with my concept and go from there. Youre recirculating rather then testing this theory. If anything ill just pull the post because theres no point if we just gum up the post with random all over the place methods.

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Maybe I misunderstood but I digress on that last point- You can overwhelm the evaporative cooling with enough heat input, look at what happens when you run a distillation too hot- you codistill tails- the less cannabinoids in the mixture the easier it is to reach a point where there is heavy codistillation of higher BP compounds is occurring-

Compounds do not need to be at their boiling point to evaporate and distill, the mechanics of the separation are completely dependent on the constituents in the starting mixture

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@Rowan theres a few other aspects im trying to pull out involving the two surfaces, free mean path momentum of flow, saturation of vapor path… check out the xmas tree concept.

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Edit: oops somehow I missed that whole paragraph. Blame the two hours of sleep I’m getting Due to trying to navigate this apocalyptic hellscape

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Deleted by poster

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Read the original post… this is why i didnt want alot of posts unless people were working with the tech concept and reporting back

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I will def be trying this out when I’m set up, I am going to have a glass wiper v similar to yours, it’s a ychem with branding and mods by a US company I hadn’t seen before, can’t recall the name- but also will have an steel version so I’ll be able to run side by side and see if the heat transfer from steel has much of an impact than the expected lower overall operating temps.

Super concise write up, I learned a ton of short path concepts and techniques from the hot condenser tek but it was a lot harder to follow- this was likely a good thing cause I read and re-read many times to ensure clarity.

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It’s so easy i have guys 2 weeks into running a wiper and other than a residue clog it’s been amazing.

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Sounds like you’re booty tickled a little

Sorry youre mad that you can’t run a wfe properly to get the performance I can

No hot condenser tech necessary unless youre doing 1 pass

Funny my sop is up on the GLG website and yours isn’t

Don’t forget who told you about raising the feed temp months ago, glad to see your using my tech finally