Help Me Clean My Flask

7 Likes

Blurring the line between cookery and wookery…

5 Likes

Yeah, hence the excess warnings. It is not the safest choice but is a well known lab method if you are being that anal about cleaning glass.

Really if you are resorting to this level of cleaning you might want to consider just buying a new round bottom if alconox doesn’t get it.

4 Likes

We use a Scotc-Brite stainless steel scrubber. We wrap it to a magnet that has rubber around it, throw it inside the boiling flask with some EtOH, use another magnet wrapped in a paper towel on the outside and scrub it out. If room temp EtOH doesn’t work, we will heat up the EtOH on the mantel, then scrub again. Comes right off for us.

Alternatively, I bet if you did an LLE before distillation, that wouldn’t happen

1 Like

I have a brillo scrubby pad attached to a coat hanger with some rubber bands and heat-shrink tubing. I only need it twice a year, but it has never let me down. Alconox is great, I was also gifted PBW once and it works great as well.

Not much luck so far. The only thing that has helped at all was trying the rock salt in alcohol, but this maybe got 1% of the stains off after a couple hours of mixing. The alcohol was very lightly colored the red brown of the stains, but I didn’t see any real improvement on the stains. The next thing I will try is using hot ethanol, and if this doesn’t work, seeing if very hot crude oil will dissolve the stains back in during the next distillation.

1 Like

Have you tried alconox or no?

1 Like

No, I don’t have any. I was thinking about ordering some, but I am going wait until I’ve tried a couple more things.

It’s worth the purchase for sure

4 Likes

Sulfuric and hydrogen peroxide (piranha) is almost guaranteed to do the trick but as you’ve been warned numerous times- you really have to be careful how you handle it and then it would behoove you to neutralize it before trying to dispose of it. I only bring it up because it’s fairly cheap and accessible to most everyone. Not trying to sound like a broken record… Be extremely careful in how you handle it.

I’m not going to be trying the piranha stuff, I’d rather just have a dirty flask.

5 Likes

Solid choice…as is @pdxcanna’s suggestion to get some alconox

Alright I’ll try it

Send it to me and I’ll burn it off. Nothing organic will be left at >1000F.
No charge just drop it off or ship it here and back

6 Likes

Did you succeed?

1 Like

The flask is almost cleaned. I have been doing my clean runs with the dirty flask, and each time some more of the stains are lifted. I haven’t been able to find a good solution for removing it, but it seems like it can be prevented by filtering out all of the fats and waxes using a smaller micron filter and also not letting the flask get too hot and not stopping the stir bar until the flask has cooled (my system just gets hotter and hotter, so I am now ending the run right as the tails stop distilling).

That chain is good for breaking up caked on powers or crystals inside a rotovap flask. Good to use to recover product as long as its not a tar, not so good for cleaning.

1 Like

Chain on a pole ftw. Lil etoh plus good ventilation and a mask.

This shit works well for getting the crispyz out

1 Like

Are you attempting to clean just by mixing with the stir bar? If so I would try adding some elbow grease and aggressively shaking the flask.

I use kosher salt and everything is warmed up(not too hot), glass, ethanol or isopropyl. Be cautious of vapor pressure shooting fumes up at ya, take breaks in between shaking and let vapor out, do it multiple times if neccesary. I also have a bendable bottle brush, but usually don’t need it. You should be making a sort of salt/alcohol slurry 1:1 almost at first, the abrasion from this does the cleaning. I like wearing a respirator and glasses/goggles.

My routine look something like:
ISOor eth+salt> water+soap to remove salt and sometimes sugars> multiple water flushes until no suds> back to ethanol or iso only.
Then I like to dry in the oven overnight.

More glass is better, that way you can clean one while you run.

flail is wild.

1 Like