Hello everyone! I would like to talk about the negative consequences of the hot condenser tech and the full bore system have and come up with solutions. The hot condenser tech idea/concept is to only allow your desired cannabinoids to condense while allowing co-distillates to continue past the liebig condenser and get condensed by a cold finger or cold trap. The full bore upgrades/models allow a similar negative effect. The increase of vacuum/CFM can allow things to shoot past the liebig condenser and cold trap that might of not made it before. I have seen my cold trap become over run with hot co-distillates/heads and I assume some vapors made it past my cold traps and into my vacuum pump.
To solve this I have placed a coil condenser (made by chemglass) in between my receiving flask T-joint and my heads flask. Im currently using an ice water bath and fish pump to cool the chiller. This small change allows all the hot co-distillates to be condensed into the heads flask. Before they would bypass the heads flask and reach the cold trap. My cold trap now looks clean again and I think I avoided needing a secondary cold trap. I would imagine condensing more volatiles and co-distillates would allow for a deeper vacuum as well. This is similar to summits laminar path kit but costs a lot less ($80 vs $550). It doesnt have a place for any vacuum gauge but personally I dont see any need for a vacuum measurement here.
I would like to hear from experienced distillers the pros/cons of adding a coil condenser after the receiving T-joint. Ill tag and link below the people ive seen do this and videos of cold traps being over worked.
@anon42519203 https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxk1q31BXGu/ (I noticed when you started/made this tech that you upgraded to the Stanley cup style cold trap)
@Kingofthekush420 (his account is private but if you follow check out April 30th or May 20th posts)
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Id like to see a pic of that
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Im away from my lab right now so I cant show you my setup but here is a picture from summit showing where the coil condenser would go. I use a t-joint so I can swing my receiving flask up during heads fraction and swing it down into position to collect main body. My setup is very similar to LS full bore in the sense that it also has a collection flask for the heads separate than the cold trap receiver. Ill include a picture of that as well. My idea is to combine the advantages of both models to limit the work done by the cold traps.
Go back waaaaay into my posts and youll see the original condensers i used… the best i found was the reflux condenser from chem glass. It has a tube in the middle that allows the material to split from the central vortex and be thrown into the walls of the condenser… just make aure youre condenser is at 30C…
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Didnt summit just do this to all their condensers? I thought @spdking king said all their new model heads have that bar that splits the vapor.
Ya i had that done to my models… theyre too uncontrollable at full speed otherwise.
Thanks for the reply! Are you taking about this type of reflux condenser?
https://chemglass.com/condensers-reflux-1
What makes you say to say keep the secondary condenser at 30C? I’m running an ice water bath and its working fine so far.
Thanks for replying! I see that one of their models has the independent coil so you can turn the flask up during the heads fraction.
I dont have any data to back this up but I imagine that the coil condenser that is part of the laminar kit works fine for regular runs but with hot condenser tech it might be not enough. For the same price or cheaper you could get a chemglass reflux condenser like the one I added in my previous post that is longer and has more surface area for the vapor to condense on.
Is the secondary coil condenser that bar that splits the vapor?
I am using a Summit SPD-8 head, large bore with a coil in the head and a hollow key for vapor temp, a liebig condenser before the collection flask, and a dimroth condenser after the collection flask, before my cold trap. This has a laminar flow 90 degree elbow before it hits the pumps.
I’ve been running my head condenser at 100c, liebig at 155c for heads, dropping to 140c once on mains, and dimroth at 120c to rocket vapors into the CT or out of the pump, I drop it to 55c right before I hit mains.
I’ve seen an increase in the of quality (color) of distillate produced using this method, however I am still working out the kinks. Works awesome for 2nd pass and I am not getting any blow over. I think I’ll need a second cold trap for first pass due to the amount of heads in my crude-it is not cleaned as well as I would like to, no washes or chromatography.
I am looking for some advice on what others have the condenser temps set to.
Is anyone else trying to run first pass in the large bore laminar flow systems?
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