I think you missed the point of my post… the beads in the sieve are alumina silicate (or activated alumina) so my point is crc has activated alumina and silica gel is also a desiccant ( a hygroscopic substance used as a drying agent) so a case can be made that crc will remove moister from the solvent ?
Oh man I totally did read that wrong my bad bro 
That is a good question though I’m not sure 
It makes sense thinking about it like that im curious if it might help a little bit.
I would assume the sieves wouldn’t really be used as much if the crc acted like a sieve itself and I know most guys on here run a sieve or filter dryer no matter what.
Some people throw a bed of alumina on top of their crc to help with moisture (on live resin runs I believe), I think it was @Krative
Some people have talked about drying solvent with powders etc, but I’m unsure how far the conversations have come…
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I would suggest against leaving your media to act as the desiccant for your solvent. There is a reason why so many people bake their media. Unwanted moisture can add a slurry of different problems during your run and generally locks up your filter stack.
Dealing with a mol sieve will save you a ton of headaches IMO.
Plus beads be cheap
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Beads are also reusable for this purpose, where media is not…
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certainly won’t work for the “I don’t bake my powders” crowd…
as far as vac/ing N2 out of your solvent tanks, to do that safely the best solution is a N2 permeable membrane. see Tricks of the trade - #124 by Soxhlet (I suggest reading the whole thread. all kinds of gold in there…)
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Nice. I switched my recovery to passive as well using a 3/8" line and 3/8" condensing coil. The reason I was asking is my solvent tank is a welded 1/4" fitting so I was worried about a bottle neck at that point. I’m def. recovering faster then my Cmep with 1/4" lines. I’m waiting on a couple things in the mail as soon as the come I will have dual 3/8" lines with dual coils. I’m hoping this really speeds things up.
Since the switch though I’ve been running into a new problem. I have one line that has been clogging even with 60psi of pressure behind it (nitrogen). I’ve checked all my hoses and ball valves they all seem to be free of debris. The only thing I can think of is water in my lines freezing now that im running everything so cold. Only thing that trips me out is it’s only happening to one spool, and not the other.
@Hansel Do you think the dual 3/8" lines will recover as or near as fast as a 1/2" line?
It will still rip with 3/8. Imo
I don’t have first hand experience with 3/8 line though.
The ID of hoses vary a decent bit, so it’s hard to say without hoses in hand which will have a larger vapor path.
After going from 3/8 to 1/2 on my recovery side…I will slowly up my injection side to 1/2 as well. I believe when going to bigger colums, more flow upon injection will aid in a thorough extraction.
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Ya that makes sense.
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For example, my 1/2" lines oddly have an ID of .420 inches. I believe my 3/8 lines are in the neighborhood of .28" to .30" if memory serves me.
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@TwistedStill So maybe a faster recovery with dual 3/8" lines then one 1/2" line? Since you would be close to .60" ID instead of .420" ID?
The difference in vapor path size for .300 diameter x2 vs .420 diameter is something like .003" squared. Negligible. But with dual 3/8 coils you would have notable increases is coil surface area…ya know…the surface area that does the condensing. So I would imagine dual 3/8 coils would be superior if set up properly.
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Roughly how fast are you injecting through the coil? I’m always going somewhat slow on my injection, around 2-3lbs a min at most.
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lol I see my math doesn’t add up. On the other hand I’m glad to hear that the dual set up should be effective. I’m excited to see my recovery rate.
Now I just have to figure out this clogged line. It just trips me out that one spool drains out very fast, and the other one is very very slow.
I inject at a similar rate. I’d like to be set up to move more solvent though these 6" columns…faster. But honestly I need to stop…this is becoming something bigger than intended.
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Sorry guys I haven’t checked the thread in a while.
The best way to vacuum down your solvent tank is to get a Venturi vacuum pump. It uses air pressure from an air compressor to create a vacuum, there are no electrical components to the pump itself. The air compressor obviously can still act as an ignition source, so keep that outside of your blast room.
Cole Palmer makes nice high quality Venturi pumps. Don’t cheap out like I did at first, get yourself the best Venturi vacuum pump they have and a nice compressor. The saved time is worth more than the maybe $200 you’d save getting a smaller setup.
When your solvent is chilled it should create a vacuum on its own because the butane gas is condensed into a liquid. After adding nitrogen to the solvent tank, if you bleed to 0PSI you still have nitrogen in the headspace. You can definitely use a regular vacuum pump if you want, butane is liquid at low temps. It’s the gas vapors that is dangerously flammable, so make sure to only do that when Your butane is exceptionally cold.
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Thank you bro!
I think I saw a bad ass venturi pump attachment from @Dred_pirate on here ive been wondering if I should grab that thing…
Ok cool i am actually gonna be trying to go to passive next run so im gonna have my tanks on DI. Ive never pushed with nitrogen through my solvent tanks so once I get all the butane into the collection I bleed off nitrogen back down to 0 psi then I can vac down from there somewhat safely?
Just covering all the things I can think of so im safe about it!
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Yes thank you bro!! 
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