Ran my first go today, all was well but the end threw me for a loop. Distilled roughly 1500 mL of butane solvent into my 1/4 system. Pressures didn’t seem to be going higher so I figured it was a good time to put the collection pot in a warm water bath. There was noticeable liquid butane in the recovery pot, but after some time eventually a successful distillation occurred, no liquid butane and nasty mystery oil in collection pot. Pressure was up on the recovery pot, confirming butane in the recovery pot. With my distilled solvent and cleaned collection pot, I connected the material column and prepared for a material wash, put the solvent in warm water bath and put collection pot on dry ice, solvent about the collection pot. Once some pressure built in the recovery pot, I engage the washing of the material. Saw liquid butane moving into the collection pot, but almost no ambered/yellowed coloration. Liquid butane in the bottom of the collection pot, and assuming crude oil. Put the collection pot in warm water to purge off butane back into the recovery pot, no butane left in collection pot. Broke open the collection pot to see almost zero yield, looked like mystery oil quantities in sense of yield, small. The material in the column looked unspent. At the end of the process I off gas all the systems, a minuscule amount, yet still some liquid butane in the recovery pot. I am kind of confused and just looking for insight and questions. Thanks guys
lets see your plumbing…
I can see a way of running a MkIII terp that would give you almost zero solvent through the actual biomass. don’t know if that’s what happened, but it would be the simplest explanation if it is possible with your setup.
I am running a 1/4 system from @Killa12345, added a tee for some pressure gauges. At this point I only have one PTFE hose, so I’ve had to reconnect and bleed off the air slightly with my solvent. Moving the line from the necessary ball valves at certain points. Ideally I would have more PTFE hose and a dual port on my recovery, but for now. Stumped.
presumably there is a little more to it?
connecting just these bits with a hose and adding solvent would give exactly the results you describe…
It puts the cannabis IN THE TUBE
and then connects the hose again 
I was hypothesizing a route for your solvent that bi-passed the cannabis. Which is possible with a bottom flooding rig like the MkIII. I don’t know if that’s possible with your setup. if you’ve only got one line, it will take several pictures to show us what you actually did.
edit: re-reading your description, I’m wondering if you didn’t lose most of your solvent to a leak.
Those pictures are of the recovery and collection pots. The collection pot doesn’t have the material column on it, but it was on when it was ran. It’s not like some crazy step was missed 
The operating procedure was followed correctly, I just am not sure if I missed something.
I followed this procedure, and have read many many posts and known the thermodynamics and concepts of the system. Why I was so flabbergasted when nothing came out. Part 1: 1lb Passive Closed Loop System from Best Value Vacs - YouTube
The system was pressure tested at 60 psi for a good 48 hours, I suppose a leak could have occurred when attaching the material column.
so you’re distilling into the vessel with a single valve. then running solvent out of that into your column (not currently pictured). does that vessel have a dip tube? how are you ensuring liquid solvent => your material?
edit: plaintive cry from the cheap seats…
you’ve giving me the vapors!
folks successfully sell post extraction material as “fire” all the time…so the alternate hypothesis is definitely “you got took”.
aka: I got nothing…
correct. tapping butane into the vessel with watch glass, using a tapper. heating to distill into the single valve vessel. I can see liquid butane in the collection pot, when its evaporated out, the pot was cleaned up. trying to attach a picture of my mystery oil, I did produce this! 
This is pretty much the exact same outcome of my blast, except more honey color and less particle pollution.
Maybe I did run into a leak, I was outside blasting, and was trying to kind of be hyper aware of pressures and noises. Shit happens though.
Also it wasn’t material I purchased, it was something I know had trichomes on it, not saying it was top shelf, but it came from my own personal co-op. Some popcorn buds and shake. Figured I wasn’t balling out on nug runs to learn. Maybe I’ll get the camera more involved next run.
I appreciate your insights and knowledge @cyclopath
I’m curious if you got serious channeling with the butane through the liquid and it shot straight through.
Didn’t pack it tight enough?
What would cause this? I gave the column a nice firm pack but not overly fucking packed, excuse my lack of exact pack-ness. Also, the material column appeared not terribly spent, I am familiar with spent material. Maybe a small diameter in middle of column appeared wet/run.
Thinking I did pack it enough. At first I was like too packed!? yet that’d lead to nothing running at all.
There was noticeable liquid butane in the collection pot before recovery of either product or distilled solvent, seen with the sight glass.
column diameter and length?
amount of cannabis in the tube?
1500g solvent into the system is based on number of cans tapped?
can you define “noticable” as used here?
you could see what ALL of that looked like before distilling it into recovery vessel?
did you see anything like the same amount of liquid after washing material column?
How fast did you open up the valve? Channeling is exactly what you are saying happened when you say
Maybe a small diameter in middle of column appeared wet/run.
@kingofnights I tried to be cautious when opening the valve above material column, but the recovery vessel valve was wide open. Should this be done slowly or a quick open?
Left most valve wide open to let solvent into line, slowly opened right most to allow solvent to wash material column. Middle valve is for when I’m recovering butane after a blast/distill.
@cyclopath The column is 1.5" x 18". It’s posted to run 90-135 grams of material. I pushed just over a quarter pound, at like 123 grams of material, shake/popcorn buds. 5 cans of neon 11x at 300 mL a can. This wasn’t exactly what I washed over my material. From what I understood was I can distill more solvent than needed, just have to keep an eye on color change when doing the material wash.
Noticeable liquid butane, could see liquid in the splatter platter through the sight glass. Could see it bubbling up, evaporating off when put in the warm water bath.
My next thought was crunch some numbers and figure out minimum amount of butane I’d want to wash with.
cyclopath:
did you see anything like the same amount of liquid after washing material column?
there appeared to be similar amounts of butane in the collection pot after both distill and material wash.
possibly my column wasn’t cold enough to condense the butane into liquid for wash?
I don’t necessarily need a liquid and a vapor line do I? I can run them interchangeably? The recovery pot that came with my system only had one valve port.
Did you put your recovery tank upside down when you did your run? Dumb question, but gotta start at the basics. If you don’t have a dip tube, you have to.
How much butane was in the collection tank when you started recovery? You had 1500ml to start with, your collection tank should have been pretty full, even with channeling at its worst, I’d say you should have a few grams of extracts at least.
No such thing as dumb!! I actually did not… I had read much and watch some videos of guys running. I never had seen them run the recover pot upside down. I’m going to guess 9/10, this is my issue.
I had put my recovery pot in a warm water bath to push the solvent through. I hadn’t even thought of condensing into liquid before the wash
I have my solvent sitting in a water bath now, should I let that cool down, invert and then shower material?
Again i recognize I should have had more visuals!! Cheers all
You can do it now, but your solvent doesn’t need to be that warm actually, just warmer than your collection vessel. You can use room temp solvent if your tank is on dry ice.
You can upgrade to a 2 port cap like this. The dip tube is a piece of ptfe tubing that’s fitted into the npt port so it doesn’t come out. It works really well for being ghetto rigged lol.
Took the price out, not sure what size your tanks are, that was for a 4" cap.
Had some left over distilled butane from “run”earlier. Trying to get that washed through. Collection pot is on DI and pulled a vacuum. Getting ready to invert the recovery pot and wash! Hoping for positive results! This community has been amazing!!
Too amazing. I will definitely be looking into this for future blasts. Definitely my speed 
Good luck!
Let me know how it goes man! Message me anytime, I’m happy to answer any questions you have, if I don’t have the answers, we’ll try to figure it out together haha