I like that word crowdsource
Both of those options sound great. Having everyone’s opinions and suggestions would be best to see how we can then form SOP’s.
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Here is a safety tip;
When pulling a vacuum on extract in a boiling flask for the first time, NEVER pull it when the extract is hot.
Example: I had extract with residual iso and water in it. I cooked it in my mantle in a round bottom flask to rid it of the solvent. Then I hooked up the vacuum thinking to pull out last traces. Extract was still hot… upon pulling a vacuum the adapter on the flask blew off and the flask looked like a whale clearing its blowhole with my extract being statistically dispersed evenly across my lab table… ouch.
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It’s fine to start while hot 70-120 c, it just needs to degas. I would start ramping slowly on the vaccum controller. You used too much vaccum at once. Step down slowly and control the boiling. Only once you are maxed out on the controller you can increase mantle temp.sorry beaker!
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I decarb at 200F and then let material cool to 150F before it enters the BF and have not had any problems.
What are best practices for containment and disposal of spent filter media and solvents?
Use a waste bottle, dump any solvents to be disposed of into it. Take it to your local chemical recycler. Filter papers contaminated by lipids may be thrown in the trash , provided they don’t have residual solvents.
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How about safe handling and disposal of media full of pesticides?
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Collect the waste in a labeled waste can, take to the same place as the waste bottle.
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It is very important to properly dispose of solvents and contaminated media to avoid environmental contamination and compliance issues. Depending on producer scale you can reach out to hazardous waste disposal company like Ingenium to manage your waste streams and remain compliant with local EPA standards. They are a great company to work with and help train you to properly deal with your hazardous waste.
In the mean time be sure to clearly label and record everything you put into your waste collection container as well as a collection start date.
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Hey does anyone know if rotary evaporator’s must be inside a fume hood in CO, Denver specifically. How I would go about finding this information for myself? The only thing I could find was that the equipment needs to be nrtl rated, nothing on whether or not it must be inside of a fume hood.
The reason I ask is because we have ours in a hood and it completely screwed us because it’s to short to have a vertical condenser. Without that we can no longer use any of the cool features that make it worth what we paid lol.
Is it a buchi? You can get many configurations of those to fit wherever. How big is the evaporator / hood?
it is, i havent thought about a shorter condenser head is that a thing, right now we cant use a foam sensor or auto dest or really any of the features that make it cool with current setup.
with the current one we are only about 6 or so inches shy of being able to do it with the normal vertical one. I will measure it out on monday though and start looking for things to fit that way, you the man @Soxhlet any other info or ideas are appreciated!!
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The condenser should be able to “lay back” by adjusting the flask angle. If that doesn’t work these guys have a nice solution, they make a hood specifically for buchi and other model evaporators.https://www.aircleansystems.com/lab-safety/equipment-containment/rotary-evaporator-enclosure
Here is a thing on angle of the dangle
buchi angle White_Paper_angle.pdf (206.3 KB)
See the arrangement at the very top of the pic? That is probably the best choice condenser for a low fume hood. You can use all your accessories as well with it.
Another option would be a lab fume extractor “arm” or “duct” ask you inspector what they prefer.
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We currently have the A setup on the top left and with that guy you cant use the foam sensor autodest, make it continuous flow, and a few other things because it doesn’t have the port on the side. You can only do it with the vertical configuration, because it has the extra port to throw all those things.
Thanks so much for finding this we had 2 reps at the install and they made it sound like there were only 2 types, the one we had, and the one we tried that didn’t work. I have both fingers crossed that the one on the top right fits perfectly!
Next Question Everyone,
Using a hot plate/magnetic stirrer to stir ethanol/crude co2 oil, is this a horrible no go? In theory it sounds like a bad idea. However I feel like I’ve read it in sops, our hot plate magnetic stirrer is inside a fume hood if that makes any difference. Also we wouldn’t do over 100f as to not degrade it, most likely.
I had my first go at winterizing this week and lets just say it wasn’t easy. The crude was cold and had a soft rubber consistency we were doing a 4:1 mix and it was extremely difficult. I was considering putting my ethanol in a warm water bath at 120f before adding it, to make the crude a bit less viscous if the hot plate is a no go. I will probably add my other questions to the winterizing thread to keep this about safety, but any tips or tricks are appreciated. Thanks for the help!
Better is an overhead stirrer, you won’t believe the amount of cuss words you can say about stalled stirr bars in viscous mixes.
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Lol We are working with an overhead stirrer now, and I can imagine trying to fish anything in or out would be awful. Could I set it our beaker on top the hot plate to make it a little less viscous and use our overhead stirrer for the stirring? I don’t know if ours is a rotor/stator like the one cat scientific has is that a necessity for this application?
no need for a fancy homomogenizer in this application. cheap immersion blender should work. 10:1 is a more reasonable ratio for winterizing.
using a sealed mason jar and shaking it (paint mixer anyone?) gets the job done in my world.
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