Are you dewaxing? The fats mixed with clay always give me clog issues. I usually put a killa plate with celite to prefilter my solution down to 1 micron and remove most fats before going into the clay spool. Adding a celite/de cake on top as the first layer in your crc will also work
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Those ptfe sheets cut to 6 inch. Held in place with retention ring. 2 inches of celite 545 on that and then powders. My 6 inch has never clogged never need to exceed 50 psi and flow rates are honestly too fast…
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I’m telling y’all this W1 is tight, it’s got crystalline silica in it with the bentonite.
@spdking is correct that silica is going to make the powder more “flowy”—at least as far as I’ve experienced.
My stack goes like this:
BVV 5 micron sintered disc with Viton O-Ring
W1 (1 cup)
Celite 545 (1 cup)
Filter Plate Clamp
Retention Ring
6 Micron Whatman Filter Paper
5 Micron @Killa12345 disc
Filter Plate Clamp
Retention Ring
2 Micron Filter Paper
1 Micron disc
The material column is jacketed 6x48. The crc column is 6x36 dewax-sleeved spool (typically not used) with a 6” spool added to accommodate powders.
70/30 n-Butane/Propane @ -40C, jacket at same temp. Push through at 50-75psi with nitrogen.
Takes about 10minutes to push 40 - 50 lbs of Solvent over
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@Waxplug1 Instead of DE can I use AA? We have a bunch laying around, and I would like to use it up.
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If you’re not pre-wetting your media to ensure even, unobstructed flow (and to rinse out any submitting dust particles) before introducing your solution then both clogging and channeling are very likely to occur.
Over packing will also lead to clogging, especially when using a lot of clay.
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My experience and past reading contradicts the packing, usually the tighter the better.
And not pre-wetting doesn’t usually cause issues either, a few members pack the powders directly under their materials.
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Wetting the column creates a far more even and secure packing than any amount of physical effort you could attempt to impose upon a bunch of loose dry powder. I agree with you fundamentally that you need a tight pack for a good run, and I believe that rinsing your media is the best way to achieve it. Failure to rinse the media inside the column is also a pretty good way to end up with submicron contaminants in your oil. Furthermore, if there are other issues causing clogging (like a dirty sintered disc, unbaked/clumpy media, over packing, poor vacuum etc) you will know the column is bad and needs to be repacked before you ever put your valuable oil inside.
Rinsing media to observe proper flow and establish a sufficient solvent reservoir is 70 year old chromatography protocol that should not be ignored.
If the OP is having issues with every run and ISNT prewetting and IS packing tight I would bet rinsing the column will solve his issues with the first try.
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I think the vast majority of people are not following this protocol when running crc.
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In fact, with granular media it specifically says not to pre-wet
Granular media is not chromatography and also doesn’t clog so it’s not relevant to this post.
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Ok, but again, I’d say the vast majority of people are not rinsing their medias
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Nice I need to look into that some more.
Now what about being able to use AA instead of DE? 
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And I’d say that they should.
There’s no reason to ever run media under your material column. You can extract so much faster by batching your oil in solution in a separate vessel and then performing one big granular filtration OR chromatography run through rinsed, pressurized media which you can easily pack into your now empty material column if adding a separate column for filtration is not an option.
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I would never recommend DE. Alumina has a lot of great benefits and is exceptionally helpful for removing heavy metals.
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Loling at all your posts…
All I’m saying.
I’m confused why everyone rides your metaphorical dick…
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I can’t speak for the aa, but it’s pretty cheap to pick up some celite or de off of Amazon.
So far, the information given here is completely contradicting my own experience and all of the reading I’ve done here on this forum.
Murphymurri style
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