I’m asking genuine questions there’s no need to get mad. I’m not trolling either and what does Murphy have to do with this? I’m asking if any piece of equipment has been upgraded. The SOP for post processing could be the same but the crude could be a lot more purer now
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I know you have been following since the first “diamonds turn to chalk” post. I have stated multiple times how our process is the same and something drastic changed sometime march 13 2021.
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We’re all free to view the problem with our own bias. I’m not here to argue
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Maybe it’s lack of an impurity in the gas. Could the old gas have had something keeping the solution dissolved?
I still think it’s isobutane causing the fast crash lol. Here comes the angry mob with pitchforks
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If you extract with solvent above 0 psi (solvent pressure not nitrogen) you shouldn’t get crashing in your columns. The extract itself will fast crash during recovery if you recover fast. I operate at 50 psi and see no fast crash anywhere in my system. In a jar, sure. Switch to miners and raise the pressure.
our columns are never below 0 psi. Those pics were directly at the bottom of our material columns. Most the time there around 50-75psi to push. We charge the solvent tank to 75 then push -60 solvent through our 6x48 jacketed columns (just using vac on the jackets right now). Then it moves to the filtration set up, another 6x48 for surge tank followed by a series of step down filters and an area to add crc or not. Finally it runs through a .22um filter before it hits the collection pot.
Now our collection pot is never above 5psi and we sometimes see crstal formation in odd places. I would have to slow recovery down quite a bit to have more pressure. Or I would have to turn the heat above 90f.
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I would suggest raising the temp on your recovery. At 5 psi with pure N tane your oil should be around 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Ill try raising our temps there but then we tend to get terp carryover and can see it in the molesieves. I want the terps in my product not being evaporated out with the gas.
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Then just add a reflux column
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Look man, it’s definitely the gas because, like everyone else I was making diamonds years ago from fresh frozen no CRC and making diamonds from cured trim with CRC right as it was introduced by you, Waxy. Pyrex, mason jar, single cap, double cap, ran at -20, -40, -60, -80c, double distilled and filtered butane, triple distilled and filtered butane, hot crash, cold crash, etc etc nothing works. Every single run I do will fast crash.
You wanna know my parameters? I run 5lb at an 8:1 ratio with approx. -70c n-butane, extraction columns filtered down from 25um to 10um, to the CRC stack which I use 5% to 10% of the material weight in powder (either s60 or b80), and that stack is filtered from 25um (paper on top of powders to act as a “spreader”) staged down to 1um papers and sintered (still haven’t gotten a .2 or .1um, tho I want one.) And the collection pot is recirculating 120f water but it’s more like 100f after alls said n done. I usually put my mason jar in at 90f but now they’ll crash at this temp. They’ll crash at room temp, they’ll crash at dry ice temps, they’ll crash at 120f in the oven albeit a LITTLE BIT slower, but if I have to go past 120f on my terpy goo, do I really want to?
All the runs come out absolutely fire, but they just start to crash within a day, and when I come in the next morning they’re done and ready to purge lol
And you can look at my profile guys, I used to make great diamonds. I definitely know what I’m doing, I know I’m not a charismatic consultant like all of you but I know what I’m doing and what’s going on is not normal. I doubt that every single farm I run for is doing a similar procedure causing this fast crash.
Originally, I was cleaning my butane to tackle a quick benzene issue that had popped up with Diversified/Praxair/Linde/Exxon Mobil, carbon has worked and I’ve been cleaning all my butane with it since, in the liquid path and vapor path, but it hasn’t fixed any fast crashing. I’ve also never encountered the petrified stones.
Edit: just letting you know if you guys follow my Insta it’s just my personal, but I guess its also my work portfolio, there’s just a lot of non work related shit.
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Is there anyone running new gas, making diamonds in butane alone, and NOT getting fast crash and/or medusa problems other than @Waxplug1?
Also, for those this is happening to if it’s fast crashing all the time, how are you even growing large diamonds to have them later medusa out?
It sounds like there is already a solution in place for several people when it comes to using 13x, or alumina to adsorb the impurity.
Are there any people who are using 13x and/or some form of alumina on new gas and it not resolving their issue?
A concept I can’t seem to wrap my head around is if you have an impurity present that turns EVERY diamond from a batch into powder after a short period of time, how could it possibly be present in such low values that it can’t be tested for? My understanding is every square inch of every diamond turns to dust.
Has anyone filled a jar with diamonds you know will medusa, capped it with a septum, let the process complete itself sealed in the jar, and sampled the headspace?
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Oh yeah, I still have yet to try x13 and alumina, but I’ve put it in my equipment list. Just waiting for it to be purchased, it’s been slow. I also have my eye on a test sample of “Purolite® CT275DR”, Im just gonna reach out to them for a little. I saw someone mention to dred they had some coming and thinks it could pull amines from the solvent, if any.
Edit: I plan to use the purolite stuff as a liquid path filter, and possibly also add some to the vapor path because why not. The alumina I’m getting is in the form of sieve beads. The carbon I use is med granules/coarse. I would not filter any SOLUTION with these, only for cleaning gas.
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I believe that I have it in route currently
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If we ever do figure it out I’d love to dose a few pours with it since it leaves solution once the process is complete. Fast crashing sounds beneficial in certain cases.
Yeah, I’ve thought maybe carbonyl sulfide, but if there was enough to tear diamonds apart you’d think you’d be able to smell it in the jar, same thing for ammonia honestly. Now ammonium is odorless, but I’m not versed enough in chemistry to understand if you could have ammonium present as a vapor without it rapidly oxidizing back into ammonia, which you’d then be able to smell again.
More for fast crash: There’s always water as a possibility. We’ve seen it in the past. Winter shatters that simply won’t not sugar, crc made this a nightmare for some. Nice clean solutions exposed to humidity, especially when below the due point.
For medusa really: Finally, it could simply be the rate of growth is so fast in a solution so clean the only inclusions are from solvent at a percentage high enough to tear the diamonds apart when exposed to ambient temperatures at atmospheric pressure.
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I use pure n-tane and have never experienced either medusa stones or fast crashing
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New gas? And from which supplier?
My working theory states that wtfamine is some sort of tertiary or possibly even secondary organic amine (nucleophile) which is present at varying trace concentrations in the butane, and that wtfamine forms a temporary Lewis adduct with THCa, the adduct molecules arrange into a lattice forming bulk solid crystals of an obviously abnormal & perfect “THCa polymorph”, then the wtfamine disconnects from the THCa (due to a pure THCa-THCa lattice favoring higher stability), sending the wtfamine back into solution to latch onto another more energetically favorable individual THCa molecule (or dimer), which also settles back onto the growing crystal lattice, et cetera…
Let’s say, for example, wtfamine is THIS:
C2H5NH2 Ethylamine
…a primary amine which can form this cation:
C2H5NH3+ Ethylammonium ion (similar to a quaternary ammonium ‘salt’)
Well, THCa can only sort of donate that proton, like so:
THC-COO.H-NH2C2H5
…but since there is little to no water around, the THC-COO anion and ethylammonium cation remain together in a dative bond, as:
THC-COOHNH2C2H5 (ethylammonium THC carboxylate ‘salt’)
…and salts don’t stay dissolved in non-polar solvents, so the molecules desperately seek each other out and huddle together, precipitating as bulk solid…
But now that THCa molecules have found each other, they can hydrogen bond, and the ethylamine can break off as a stable neutral entity again!
…until it meets another THCa floating around in solution… 
mwah-mwah! Poor little wtfamine…
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Yes, @johnbigoilco , he’s right about adding the “reflux column” to the top of your collection pot. I used a simple 18"x4" shotgun condenser (19 quarter inch tubes, iirc) that I fed with the recirculated warm water coming out of the pot jacket. Solvent vapor (with any “mist/flakes”) traveled through the quarter inch tubes, and this ‘collimation’ of the vapors caused most of the terps to collect inside them, while the water warming them allowed droplets heavy enough to ooze down and out, back into the pot. You could cool the water, but I fear that would cause more problems than it solves. The “warm” water was really just tepid by the time it was getting into the shotgun condenser, anyway, fyi.
@Waxplug1 , I have also considered the same idea that perhaps the new butane is missing some impurity that was in the old butane and used to keep our THCa in solution… but with all the research and data presented by @SafeLeaf.ca , @ApisLabs , and @GasGuy-QEG , along with everyone’s news reports, anecdotes, photos and videos, I find it far more probable that there is a new (or higher concentration) impurity in the latest gas.
I am sure there are still caches of clean butane out there in the wild, and if it weren’t such a sensitive topic, I would ask to poll for user locations correlated with their solvent experiences then and now! It is even likely that at least SOME of the new batches of gas are clean, from those refineries who have outright refused to process the super-sour crude oil stock released from reserves as of late in efforts to stabilize gas prices. Sadly, the margins ARE higher on the sour reserves, so the refineries’ reluctance has likely waned to few and far between.
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Gas what are clean
Of what-the-fuck-amine
Are few and far between?
Sounds legit.
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Used kushco for a couple years but switched to gas logix about 6 months ago after I had a couple shipments in a row from kushco that had lots of mercaptans
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