Hey everyone, recently at my lab we’ve started to lose a lot of solvent during our refill process. We run an ETS MEP and use a 70/30 propane/nbutane mix. It would be normal for us to lose about 1lb during the process but these past couple weeks have been up to 9lbs just disappearing what seems like into thin air. Nothing has changed in our process or lab, we’ve done our routine maintenance, sieves are clean, lines are clean, everything is working as it should but just a lot of gas is MIA. Our recovery times have increased by about 30-40% as well. Our Haskel is fine, we even had a local tech come and check it out.
Im honestly completely stumped at this point. Anyone have any ideas?
Has the material changed? Fresh frozen and now its dry trim, or vice versa? Maybe there’s more getting sucked into the biomass than b4 from the material change. Other than that idk what it could be if theres no leaks anywhere
yeah we did go back and forth but we do it all the time and always do a clean run between. we also completely emptied and cleaned our solvent tank to make sure there was no ice. im so stumped
Yes i recently had similar of mysterious loss and finally found it was 1 of my trs21 going out. I run 4 of them. A sniffer should find it if its a leak. Check all lines as well i had a hose once that had a pin hole in the line away from the connection point?
And no major room temp difference from extractions that could leave more gas in material? At same negative pressure.
And if there is a adjustment for sniffer increase sensitivity. No fans going
A nitro test at 100 psi should find a leak. But when system frozen can create leaks not other wise found at room temp.
Valves are another place to leak. Especially the 2piece ones. And the glands on the handle of valve as well
The media absorbs solvent and is usually not dried like we dry our biomass columns. Has the media type or input amount changed? Granule size will absorb more than adsorb
we have the same issue if we bypass our media column.
the only thing thats changed is we had our local compressor company come do maintenance on our dryer and it was off for a week while we were in full production mode, but i dont see why that would lead to such a big solvent loss.
we also are using a piab so its not possible to be a vacuum pump issue.
we even replaced our haskel yesterday and i personally redid the connections and made sure they were good.
our return coil is running at like 40-50f and our solvent tank is only a 50lb non jacketed tank, temps have been in the 70’s at the most. ive been pushing for a bigger jacked/coiled tank but have been getting nothing but resistance.
If so how are you refilling gas? Walk us through the process.
Are you losing 9lbs while running material? And you require about 9 more lbs to an normal on a refill?
You say nothing in your lab has changed but then shortly after say your recovery time has increased 30-40%. That seems like a major change to me and should be looked into if you are losing gas during regular processing. But if you are losing gas during refill only this could be ignored.
Hope this helps you rule something out and gets us closer to the issue.
Please help us understand more when you are losing the gas exactly.
We are losing it during the recovery process. We put our refill tank on our scale, zero it out, and dump 12lbs per column(3 columns). We then send the each column through the crc sleeve then into our final collection chamber and recover.
Our overall extraction times have gotten longer but we aren’t losing much more solvent than normal which is odd. The biggest loss is when we are doing a refill.
My initially instinct is that there has to be a leak but im pretty good at catching even the tiniest leak and there is absolutely nothing even when under full pressure/capacity and the machine is off (pressure about 75psi at this point)
If it’s not leaking you can leave the entire system at 150psi N2 everywhere on Friday evening, with all the valves shut, and the sharpie marks on the gauges will still match with the needles on Monday morning.
Still don’t understand your “lose 9lb on refill”.
Walk us through that please.
Two scales?
Distillation? Or liquid fill?
What temp is your solvent tank? can you get it empty and pressure test it?!?
I’m guessing the 6” gasket on the lid doesn’t like to cold…
“Refill” is pushing or pulling solvent from suppliers tank into your system…
if you are pumping this into your collection then distilling (recovering) that solvent back into your tank, and you get 9lb less in your solvent tank than you removed from your supply tank, you have a serious leak. if you’re doing this actively, it’s at or after your pump.
I will try to get a hold of some nitrogen next week but its not something we keep on hand.
I explained it pretty clearly right above your post. We fill our chamber with solvent, turn on the pump and recover and during the recovery we lose a substantial amount of solvent. We use a scale to measure out the amount of solvent going out of the supply tank and a scale to see how much has been recovered into our solvent tank. The pump has been changed, the connects around the pump were all given fresh teflon tape, all connections around the machine have been sprayed with soapy water under about 75psi of pressure and no leaks were found.
The only thing that has changed was not having our compressor dryer on for a week, but I dont see why that would cause the issue since its a pretty optional part to begin with.
Only other thing I can think of is the other extractor here did something but wont own up to it, but even so I have gone over the whole system and have never been this stumped.
Our system is honestly pretty badly setup. We use the ETS 50lb NON jacketed tank, our material columns are only -15, and our return coil sits around 40-50f degrees while in use. Our coldest component is our inline coil which sits at -30. Typically during extractions/refills our solvent tank sits around 75psi while our final collection chamber is around 50 when full dropping down to ~5psi when we usually collect. Its terribly inefficient but were a small company and our owner is trying to do everything except drop the cash on proper upgrades.
Thanks for trying again. Is my paraphrase correct?!?
CLEAR, might be:
We transfer a known weight of solvent into our collection/evaporator.
Then distil that solvent into our non-jacketed ETS tank actively (Haskel?). We have scales on the input and receiving tanks, and are (suddenly) missing xxxlbs during the act of distillation
Then actually give some example weights.
One possibility is that your solvent tank is on a scale that is now reading kg rather than lb.
I’ve had one come it the door READING lbs, but CALLIBARATED in kg (any clown can manage this…just put it in calibrate mode, then lie to it about the calibration weight…)
Noticed at 100 full. Which was terrifying.
dryer on the air compressor for the haskel?
Molsieves?!?
You either have a leak, probably post pump (including discharge side of pump) or your scale is lying.
How many data points do you have pre/post pump swap. You’re certain that didn’t initiate or solve the problem?
9lbs out of how many?
Put 17lb in and weigh the results in kg and you’re 9.2 units short…
Were you even present during this refill where you lost 9lbs? Are you continually losing 9lbs every time you fill? How often do you fill?
I think the best thing to do is do another fill and take extensive notes on everything and share again with the class.
We definitely need to know a lot more about the specifics if you want us to solve this remotely.
If you truly have checked all connections for leaks and have found nothing then you either have a leaking flex hose or the internals of your pump is leaking.
As said above doing a passive recovery could help rule out the pump as the culprit.