@Demontrich so I was hoping to get that deep of a vacuum, haven’t been able to achieve, not sure if it’s because of hosing, leaks, or even my pump whether the sogevac is strong enough to get that deep of a pull or if I need it rebuilt or something. Ran it blanked off this morning. Got 580 micron on it. Decided to change oil again before I run second pass, got down to about 380, so I know the pump itself isn’t quite up to the standard we’43 trying to achieve.
@Cryo13 what was dumping was definitely terps. All the etoh was stripped and material was fully decarbed at that point. Two reasons it started dumping terps like that is 1: because of the shorty head having less path to travel, it flows pretty well. And 2: because I had turned the system off and changed pump oil, then re-engaged vacuum on the system which ripped off the first part of the terps pretty quickly. Essentially made that fraction jump through, sort of bump over from going from atmosphere to running vac pressure at that temperature.
@Killa12345 how should my vac gauge be situated to achieve accurate readings?
Sorry I couldn’t update yesterday for the rest of the run! I reached my max responses I could do within the 24hrs allotted!
So to sum up the rest of the run, I finished up the head fraction around 185-190c I believe, and the got to a thicker milky looking fraction at about 195c. Let that run for a few until it cleared up, then opted to switch to my third flask due to liquid volites condensing in my ‘mains’ flask. I need to figure out how to stop that from happening.
Mains flowed for a couple hours or so from 196.8c to about 208c at the end of tails at roughly 850 microns throughout.
Results were quite good for this run and some of the better distillate ive made I would say. That may be due to changing pump oil after all the volatiles were stripped and getting a deeper vacuum than I usually do on first pass. Couldn’t seem to completely remove the milky layer from the mains though.
I’ll attach some more pictures and videos to show how the rest of the run went periodically.
Right now I’m loading up the boiling flask again to go ahead with a second pass on the material. I’ll keep you guys updated on this run to note how this run compares to first pass. Blanked off vacuum with fresh oil this morning and it pulled to about 380 microns, so we’lol see how we can do during the run, I reloaded that’s much higher than the standard we are looking for.
With the pump blanked off, and you only got down to 380 microns? You may need to change oil 1 or 2 more times, or do a kerosene flush, or score a better pump. 380 blanked off is not that great
Got the system running for second pass rn. Added 1L of distillate that was bought with the first pass I did last time to clean them both up. So roughly 1700ml of material in the bf.
Made sure to wait a decent amount of time to let the last of that milky layer come through and it seemed to pretty fully come out without any visibly passing through into the mains. Looking good on second pass aside from sitting at 645 microns. But while I was typing this it has been steadily decreasing. we’re now at 500 micron. First picture is the first fraction I split before switching to mains
The pump kinda depends how much $ you wanna spend, the alcatel go for around 300+ used, edwards e2m28/30 go for around 1900+ add shipping also the edwards we got through high5 was 1900 and 400 to ship
Both are fully capable, and neither are technically the “best” theres always gonna be something better
The Alcatel is tits. Blanked off I was getting 4 microns, mid run the highest I hit was 58 microns. I got a rebuilt one from eBay at $880 plus like $150 shipping, but only because there was a drought of the fuckers when I finally got around to buying one. Looks like they’re getting listed again though, definitely recommend scooping one up. The rebuild kits aren’t too bad either, and from what I’ve heard they’re not that complicated. Especially compared to an Edwards.
Also, not sure how relevant this info is to you right now, but I found my vac level and head temp fall very noticeably once I got into the tails and even more dramatically further into the tails. I expected the opposite to happen on the tails, but others have confirmed my experience was fairly standard. Just something to watch, because I really couldn’t tell by color until I was well into the tails.
I use an edwards 30, though i only run a 2 liter setup, i can reliably pull down to 1 micron in the main body. It could definitely handle a 5 liter setup, as long as you carefully clean and properly grease your joints ultra low vacuum is possible and boy does it help. I frequently have my main fraction coming across at 155-160C vapor temp and 175-180 on the mantle.
Dear friend
You are walking a fine line
Distillation under the. Conditions You are
Dooing have large margins for error
A do You know your max vac depth for a isolated pump ?
If so connected to your rig there should not be more than 100 micron diffrance during mains
Unless your pump would have a low cfm to handel the vapor
If there is a larger diffrance there its. A leak in your system
If this leak iis in your vapor path the oxigen beeing sucked in can isomerize your thc to cbc
Wich You won t notice on a visual but on a lab report When the damage is done
Please proceed with caution
Hey, so the run was finished, the pump pulled around 400 and stayed during mains fraction. The pump blanked off was only able to pull down to 385, so I would believe there was no leak in system, or isomerization to CBC.
I will be looking into a new pump soon that will more easily pull a deeper vacuum.
With a deeper vacuum will it make pulling tighter fractions an easier job to accomplish?
What is the main reason for your cautionary tip? Due to the higher vacuum being used to pull fractions? Or the worry that there is a leak in the system
