Thanks for the reply 
yeah some glass may be useless for my needs. And thanks for the info about the vacuum regulator!
No problem! One thing to keep in mind, if your glass is china brand, watch out for wonky joints. Some joints will just never seal correctly, chemglass is prettu good with their joints but their glass pieces arent always the straightest. Meaning if you are twisting glass, the slight angle change could cause alot of stress on certain pieces. Anything that is going to be turned or swiveled when in operation, i would just outright buy american glass, like from Prism glass. Every single one of their pieces have been straight as an arrow and beautiful joints. Everything else in my system is ordered off ebay from china suppliers.
Only thing american made is the boiling flask, head, the distribution adapter (#12 in your pictures) and my vacuum pump.
Look on ebay, youll find alot of labs closing up and “liquidating” their equipment. I found a circulating chiller/heater for $600 including shipping. And a edwarss e2m18 pump for $1,100 including shipping. What i did was lowball the hell out of what u see (make offer), for example tbey wanted 2.4k for the pump, i offered $600, we ended up settling in the middle at $1,100. If your in no rush, definitely go this route, youll save almost 50% sometimes. Most of time the sellers are just liquidators, they see it powers on and just want cash for it to be gone.
The pump is rated to 1 micron ultimate vac, and i hit 19 on first test. Even if the pump isnt working optimally, rebuilds are usually in the $600 range, so $1,700(if u have to rebuild) for a $5000 pump isnt bad.
All in all, it costed me about 5k for my setup and im hitting 80 micron on first pass and 32 micron on second pass.
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If you had a vacuum pump capable of pulling a deep vacuum there is enough glass there to run distillate. It would not be fancy but assuming the ground glass joints are all compatible in size then I picked out enough glass to put a rig together nearly identicle except larger than the way I run just a terpene pass but can go on to cannabinoid.
You do not need a dedicated condenser for the distillation of this stuff at all. You do have to understand what it is precisely you are accomplishing and further commit to accomplishing that without any fractionating devices at all. The distillation sould be a simple vacuum distillation and no fractioning device needed if you are able to dial in temps and know your pressure.
It is amazing how little glass you need to produce very high purity.
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good for etoh!
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I would suggest just getting $500 head from lab society.
if you really want to distill tonight with what you aleady got heres a drawing of how to set up your current glass.
Messed up on the end a bit, but basically use #17 as your vacuum piece.
You will need to find another thermometer cap for #11.
Make sure you submerge #2 in dry ice ethanol bath then try and layer dry ice to the top of the flask so vapor has to travel somewhat through the last flask before hitting your vacuum.
Your distillate will start clogging in #10 if you dont heat gun it. Also wrap the bottom of #10 piece and top of boiling flask with as much insulating material as possible even if its just a simple aluminum foil, but make sure it its not combustible.
Here is a picture of my system for reference.
1-2L 2Neck Boiling Flask from Summit Research $183
2-2L Thermowell from Vacuum Dynamics $55
3-Standard V1 24/40 Head from Lab society - $495
4- 10/30 25mm Thermometer from Lab Society -$85
5- 24/40 Three way Adapter from Prism Research Glass (PRG-1095-01) -$57
6- 1L Recieving Flask from ebay ~$20
7- 100mm Liebig Condenser from ebay - ~$30
8- lol i forgot 8
9- 250ml Recieving flask from ebay ~$15
10-24/40 Three way Female from Prism Research Glass (PRG-1100-01) -$59
11- 24/40 Dewar Condenser from Ebay - ~$140
12- 24/40 to kf25 PTFE adapter from Beaker and Wrench -$87
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Bro this isn’t even my thread but the fact that there are people on this board with such helpful advice shows just how badass a foruum like this can be. Mad props for taking the time to help this guy out. I have learned so much already myself here and I’m grateful for you all.
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I have to share his sentiment ^^^. The diagram, and extent of the answers I received are just beyond appreciated and more than anyone has to do. Of my many, many hobbies, this message board is the most active and essential board I’ve utilized. A quick explanation of my situation is i have a great opportunity to take over some cool lab work, small scale for now with the ability for up scaling to whatever I can prove is worth doing. This is just a start to show how clean / what products I can produce from an excess of crude we’ve produced. Plus, who doesn’t want to learn how to distill!? Thank you all, I shall pay it back one day when I know enough
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i am going to assemble and try out the rig as thetetra guy laid out. thank you so much for that! Would you guys recommend getting a cow, and a more appropriate head and condenser? my goal is this… to show my “employer” what kind of final product can be achieved with the crude we have. Its kind of like a proof of concept thing, where they may see a great result and want to invest in a whole new nicer setup. So maybe ill get this going first. This is my first ever trials with distillation, so perhaps its better i start off with what i have and see how it goes. Ive researched a lot, but i guess i just gotta get my hands dirty and see what happens we just got a welch duoseal 1400 pump, so theres that. Thanks again everyone, i hope i have some cool results to share soon
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I would go with a cow myself.
When you get up and running, post up some numbers of you will.be so kind. I’m 3 weeks from my 1st distillate run. And really dont want to screw up 400ml of crude. That will hurt my pocket royally!
i will be happy to keep you updated on my trials and errors. Im sure you will see me posting tons of questions as well as i go along lol. Im going to try and start running some stuff with the setup as suggested above, and at the same time start researching upgrades. thanks again
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is there a particular valve i should be looking for? or are we talking a regular type gas valve? Im assuming i want something with finer “tuning” and not just a ball value or something… thanks
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Definitely not a ball valve, you want something similar to a needle valve. If you are going the stainless steel tube full bore route, then this is the valve i got, you can find it cheaper, but i wouldn’t go too cheap or youll be probably be fighting a leak.
Using the barb or gl14 connection for the vacuum i was only able to hit as low as 230 micron after a half hour of waiting. Now that ive upgraded to full bore, it takes about a half hour to hit 27 micron with system loaded and nothing on but the pump.
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thanks for that… heres another novice question… what would be the best way to connect that to my distillation system. Im thinking, coming out of my pump, is a 1/2 barb. I would connect a hose right to that barb, and send that hose to another barb fitting,which adapts to a kf-25 fitting, and then to one inlet on that valve… going from the the other kf-25 would be kind of the same idea? kf-25>barb>hose> barb>reducer>gl14 on glassware?
just trying to see the flow of it with different adapters.
I’m in the same boat. I should have the rest of my parts for my short path here in the next week. I don’t wanna ruin the lb of crude I have here as it took me a minute to save this amount up.
We should make a thread together so other members trying to get Into short path don’t have to eat threw all the junk.
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well in that case, follow along with my posts because i for sure am a novice and trying to round off all my knowledge before i jump in haha. glad to see were taking the journey together!
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I’m setting mine up with that exact right angle kf25 valve to a kf25 cross. The top kf25 is going to my bullseye. My bottom one is fitted with a vacuum relief valve. The other is a kf25 to 1/8 barb to the gl18 fitting on my cow.
ahh, i see it in my head now… i quick google search of some kf25 to barb, and the kf25 cross painted the picture for me now
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Hey man. So I began constructing my kit as your diagram, and first problem I ran into was the first recieving flask is too close to the mantle and won’t fit. Second problem is the 2nd flask is too close to the first flask lol. I found some female to male extenders, would this be sufficient or can it cause some sort of unwanted result by extending the tube. A vigreaux column would fix the first flask issue by making it higher up. I included a pic of the second flask kind of tilted to fit without an extender but I assume they both have to be completely straight. Any suggested site to get good quality extenders?
