ETS Mini-MEP - Recovery Coil Clog? I think?

Hey guys,

Went to recover my solvent and quickly noticed the gauge on my Corkin approach and quickly pass 300 and max at 400psi, which is way above normal.

Stop the machine. Closed the valves. Verified the pump and all the lines are completely clear.

My pump connects to machine through the Mol. Siv. and if I isolate the mol. siv and remove the solvent line that connects IN to the recovery coil, I can feel my Corkin kick air through the line, which eliminates everything but the coil. I eliminated the tank and the tank hose by trying two different recovery tanks and two different recovery lines.

Now my R&D with the coil. I disconnect the connecting lines to the recovery coil, tried to shoot air and 200% ethyl through. Nothing. I connected my pump to the reverse end of the recovery coil to shoot higher psi through it backwards. BAM. Clog broke and shot the ethel through the coil and now air can pass through.

Now I attempt to recover…The gauge on my recovery coil will read the psi from it to the tank, however when the pump runs it usually goes slightly above my tank pressure and just moves up and down slightly during recovery, as it should.

However, this time nothing happens the gauge won’t move at all which leads me to believe there is a clog again?

Thoughts ideas?

Sounds like moisture in your system turning to ice and clogging your line. Change your molecular sieve beads.

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I second what @710ST said, you have water frozen in the coil most likely.

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Turn chillers off, let system thaw out. Disconnect out port on injection coil and do a quick push with N2, point the coil line away from you or it will shoot whatever’s clogged your way. Good to have the injection coil line point inside a bucket. That’ll work if it’s your injection coil. Hope that helps.

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400PSI :thinking:

Hope you’re actually set up for that sort of pressure.

As stated repeatedly above, your coil almost certainly has ice in it…

do you know how to test your mol sieve?
how often do you regenerate them?
How?

see: Molecular sieve beads and perhaps some of the dozen or more other threads linked to that discussion.

Eg: Why is my bho green? (another classic sign of water…)

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Change Mol. Sieves more often, I like leaving them under vac at night too, this exact thing happened to a lab I worked at on my first day because they weren’t using mol sieves running only fresh frozen before I showed up.

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Thank you guys. Sorry didn’t respond.

You were all 100% right. Mol. sock changed out.

The clog in the coil cause the Corkin to exceed 350psi (it was noticed quite quick and shut down) but remained at 350-400psi because the clog in the coil and never went through the relief valve because it couldn’t reach it.

I thawed the coil. ETS’ system came standard using a sauge quick disconnect for the recovery port, when I removed the quick disconnect -60C Propane decided to shoot out quite quick and burn my hand to hell through a mechanix glove. Shits cold yo.

I personally think putting a quick disconnect there is stupid design seeing as how it gets dripped directly on it from the fucking inlet coil right above it, no way overtime moisture wouldn’t get there. Anyways, I removed all suage quick disconnects from the ETS machine and have just opted to hardline everything, as I’d rather torque a wrench than blow the fuck up.

Proprietary design lessons.

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I hard lined too, quick connects are cool but gaskets inside get messed up fast when running in cold temps.

While those quick connects do tend to leak under vacuum, and removing them is a reasonable response, it is far more likely that the water that blocked your coil (in your gas) was extracted from your biomass…and failure to maintain/regenerate your sieves allowed it to build up over time.

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but it’s been said that if you run cold enough you don’t need a mol seive because there isn’t any moisture

-latent sarcasm

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Definitely don’t deny that. Though the sock was brand new and had under 25 runs on it.

In-addition to the sock, I utilize a PIAB to remove the atmosphere from my first my material vessel, then both my honeypot and mol. siv. prior to any run.

The quick-connect leading from my solvent tank to the inlet coil is also beginning to fail, has to be due to the temperature of the solvent. I have a rep from Swage coming out to review my system this week, I’m curious what they will have to say about the temperatures and their stuff.

Already had Corkin out. That was somewhat disappointing to learn the T91 could’ve been designed WAY better for my system had ETS done some research.

What do you mean by this?

The design on the T91 is fixed…ets may not be using it correctly, but nothing they do should affect Corkin’s pump design.

Something about it being the T model if I remember correctly, there is a much safer version of this compressor for this utilization. You’d have to contact Corkin for a better understanding of why, there was also concerns on how cold you can recover with the Corkin.

Edit: It’s a compressor.

ok. so what you meant is ETS could (should) have spec’ed a more appropriate model pump… if they’ed actually talked to the manufacturer?

my understanding is they prefer to be feed pressure rather than vacuum. you’re heating the recovery pot yes?

@Roguelab?

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Correct! Corken happen to be an Oklahoma based company, so when things went south with ETS it was actually quite convenient to have Corken techs come to my facility to help me better understand what I had bought. They were quite fascinated how their pump was being used.

However the sheer force of the thing could recover without.

Heating my honeypot is actually my Achilles heel atm. That same communication should have been done with Huber as well, because the build of my system, I can’t heat beyond 10-12C without compromising my CC902 temperature significantly.

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Shoulda got the Haskel EXT-420, loud as fuck but works great.

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@Distillight what I did with all my qc’s on my MEP was went to a local shop and had them order me the strongest o rings that are the same size as the ones in the qc(there are 2 different sizes). I didn’t have any more problems after changing even running the coil at -80.

I had to make sure everything was lubed because they were almost twice as thick as the original oring but I didn’t have any more leaks. If you want I can try to hunt down the size and thickness and all that fun stuff of the ones I got, I just bought 100 of both sizes and they were pretty cheap and way cheaper then getting the full rebuild kit when 90% of the time its the oring that is chipped from not plugging in straight and being really cold.

If you haven’t been doing so, rub a tiny bit of coconut oil on the male tip of the qc line that you are plugging in to the machine and try to do it as straight as possible, never force it when it is cold. Hope this helps.

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Thanks man!

I do the coconut oil trick! It does help a bit.

That would awesome if you could hunt them down, it’s the same QC’s regardless and it’s 100% the o-ring inside that fails are certain temps. I HATE hearing the “ba tss” of propane dripping from a QC onto a cold solvent tank. I didn’t think to check if they made better o-rings, just thought they woulda been included I suppose.

To my brothers in arms
Yes creating vapor on these big recovery units is a though task
I solved it with the following measures
The collection pot
Has a jacket
It has a internal coil 1/2 diameter pipe that is but 2" smaller in diameter of the pot itself
It has a botom endcap with a coil welded on that stands in the middle of the collection pot
And at last I have a 12" deplegmator that heats the solvent coming in
You need a innert gas push to make it work
I chose to place it inside the collection pot but should not be necessary

The pic of the fitting is what I use to go treu the cap with 8 mm tubing to get warm water in the deplegmator
You need to drill a 8 mm hole in the 1/2" part to make it pass treu
This is not the original endcap with deplegmator but I hope it gives a clear understanding of it s use

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Damn brother, that’s next level.

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