These are my findings that stemmed from all your amazing suggestions:
1: increased heat during recovery
2: lessening recovery rates as new cold solvent is being fed into collection vessel to bring cold solvent to temp as it enters the warmer recovering solution. Once the solvent had stopped feeding into collection base I close off the valve connection to the material columns and CRC’s, then open my recovery ports to 80-90% to increase recovery, but not so much that the solution being recovered doesn’t offset the heat being produced through the jackets (causing crashing), then pour.
Since this slight change in SOP’s not one grain of sugar has been found in any slabs and the slabs that have come out have now been stable at room temp for a week without separation. I’ve dealt with the odd slab sugaring in the ovens or sugaring on shelves after packaging, so this newly discovered “Medusa stone” problem was just an accelerated crashing/separation problem I’ve been encountering for years. It’s amazing how one very simple change in SOP’s solves multiple problems across the board.
If anyone out there is experiencing sugaring/ separation either in the collection vessel or shortly after pouring, try increasing heat to your jackets, and lessening recovery rates until all cold solvent being fed into your collection vessel is up to temp before initiating higher recovery rates.
Look at the most recent post to the chat I just made.
This to me screams cold crashing on your end, and is exactly what happened to me. The areas to get cold first are obviously those without sufficient heat sources (gaskets and drain ports). Slow your recovery until all solvent coming in is up to temp before upping your recovery rates. This allows all those “cold zones” to remain at temp as cold solvent is being inputted. When you overload your solution with factors that decrease temps (cold input solvent + high recovery rates), your solution will crash in the “cold zones” first, which will work it’s way across your entire solution. Hope this helps!
Have had this for a couple years and is in the patent approval process… It is kinda funny sitting here developing new methods then a year or two later watching everyone pretend to “invent” this new idea I came up with. Not much different than my GD1 or RCMS that there are now knockoffs of that no one apparently wanted back when I released it but all of a sudden everyone needs now.
@Quality Increase your recovery PRESSURE. By doing so, you increase the boiling point of the solvent and therefore will prevent cold-crashing from taking place. This also LOWERS the enthalpy required (heat content) to boil an equivalent mass of solvent as would be at a lower pressure and can INCREASE your recovery rate by 3x or so with the same heat source and compressor.
Pinnacle wasn’t running butane/propane so that is kinda moot, might as well mention yellowstone also. Good deflection.
I released the thermal control tech in 2020, boomtown kinda figured some of it out in 2021/2022 and suddenly mentioned he will “soon” have it available to everyone while dropping a between-the-lines jab at yours truly.
Still kinda funny.
Just waiting on final patent approval on the third of five that cover the tech I came up with.
I noticed my oil was much more reactive to separate with everything you mentioned before realizing the cold crashing issue during recovery.
Less temperature swings (in this case cold) during recovery helps keep the oil far less reactive to sugaring in both dirty ovens and storing at room temp.
In the past I’ve had slabs sugar in overs, had pockets of sugar from prior spills in the ovens and the odd time they’d sugar on the food service racks we store the slabs on. After hammering down this recovery point all of that has done a complete 180. Oven spills have yet to sugar, and not a grain of sugar in any of the slabs stored over the past week. Prior to this I’d see the separation by now almost reliably.
Any crystal undeniably seeds, but what I think is happening here is any seeds carried through the system into the collection vessel, or any seeds in the collection vessel from previous runs will be dissolved with the warm solvent during recovery, almost self cleaning in a sense. If you don’t regulate steady temps and low recovery until your input solvent is done feeding, the cold will contribute to seeds that can’t dissolve in those temps, and the grotesque cycle continues. I think, and emphasis on think, the puck stops with proper recovery to solve the vast majority of separation related issues
I appreciate the insight pal! I’m glad you explained that well because in a run around way that’s what I’ve done, basically slowed recovery by half throttling recovery ports, increasing pressure and prevent the cold crash.
Another little tid-bit… lets say you are running a 291 with 100% butane with an inlet pressure of 20psi, a basin pressure of 20psi or more, and an outlet of 65psi at an inlet temperature of 50f and an RPM of 675, the compressor should move 4.6lbs per minute.
(Edit: If you were at 5psi at the compressor inlet with the basin valve fully open and 65psi at the compressor exhaust and all of the same other conditions, you would only be moving 2.5lbs of butane per minute with a 291.)
[Second Edit: at 0psi inlet & 65psi outlet that would bring you down to 1.28lbs/minute. (3.59x faster @ 20psi)]
Just because you throttled your recovery doesn’t mean its necessarily slower… So long as you maintain the inlet & outlet pressure to the compressor, it will consistently move the rated value for the conditions so long as the valves are not sticking.
No, it was definitely boomtown with the crossflow hx. Looks like it was 2021 he first started building with it a few months after I posted a video about recovering over 5lbs/minute with 0kw ancillary heat.
Precision never had anything cool either. They are one of the few with little to no innovation in the industry. All they ever did was follow bizzy by making a passive system that barely works.
Yellowstone was the closest to anything related as they took their hot ethanol vapor and bubbled it up through the condensed liquid before going to the condenser. Pretty much the same concept as how we recover vapor through the liquid dip tube of a refrigerant tank so the liquid can absorb the heat from the vapor thereby driving condensation to take place. Old HVAC trick.
Yeah, was more less just having a little laugh at the progression over the years. My apologies, I didn’t mean for it to feel directed at you.
Exploiting innovations for personal advantage corrodes the mutual esteem and creative synergy that binds our community together.
Thanks to all! Been recovering 5F warmer, and maintaining 10psi in the collection during recovery. All crashing in collection has ceased.
My new issue is after pouring budders or into jars the solution almost immediately turns solid. We pour with some extra solvent and the evaporative cooling seems to be causing this.
Attempted fixes includes pouring thicker, immediately placing pan in hot water, or caping a jar and trying to pour faster so the solution cannot crash while waiting to empty the collection. Going to try heating the glass in the oven ahead of time but have no other ideas.
Does anyone have any suggestions or fixes for this problem? It has been extremely discouraging.
