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.
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
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…)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!