Media Prep! Baking adsorbents/absorbents + dealing with that crusty layer after baking

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Media Prep - Bake
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Media Prep - Bake.pdf (164.7 KB)

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about media prep lately. This infographic is from my lpg chromatography (advanced crc) SOP and is a critical step before using any clays or adsorbents. The recommendations in this SOP are tied to the rest of the SOP, which does include blending your media perfectly (no layers in my columns) but that’s a separate topic for another thread.

What I did want to address is the ‘layer’ of crud that people are noticing on top of their silica and clay when they start baking it. This is totally normal - and totally preventable.

When you bake your media in a closed space (especially clay because it holds a LOT of water) that water will reflux inside the closed space. Your oven might be 200c, but the water vapor will still recondense inside the oven when it has nowhere to go, and as a result any solids in that water will precipitate out. It will rest on top of the media and usually look dark because, well, it’s dirty. Common contaminants are: loose media (carbon & clay) salts in the air, misc dust, and especially weed particulate. If you use your oven for both media and hash (I dont recommend this) then you could easily end up with residual hash getting sweated off the walls and onto your media too.

Your media will not ‘burn’ until you reach temps of almost 2000c so you cannot damage the media by baking it - but of course you dont want to pour that layer of salty weed dust into your chromatography column either! Your media is still totally fine to use - just scrape that ugly layer off the top and throw it away. If scraping it off is not possible, you can also wash it off, but that’s a lot more effort than I would probably invest.

To prevent this crusty layer from happening in the future all you will need to do is clean your oven completely after each use and stay on top of wiping it down/venting steam during the baking process.

Wear a mask, gloves, protective clothing etc and wipe your oven down, then vac it dry, for at least 2 or 3 repetitions. A clean oven cant sweat dirt all over your media! The next step is to make sure you are regularly venting your accumulating water vapor during the baking process. Open that oven and wipe down the water all over the doors/sides etc at least once while baking your media. Leave your vent port all the way open so the water vapor can escape out of the back. (*adding a check valve here will help prevent moisture outside the oven from getting inside! Check valves are cheap and if you live in a humid area you will want these on all your ovens anyway) It’s also very helpful to mix your media regularly during the baking process to encourage moisture to evacuate faster.

Hope you guys find this helpful! I’m not great at responding quickly on the forum (I tend to end up here in the middle of the night after my toddler is in bed) but I will try to stay on top of your questions on this thread!

Shameless plug: my next online webinar for lpg chromatography will be held on August 8th. I miss teaching in the lab SO MUCH but for now zoom webinars are holding us over. Anyone who takes my zoom webinars will get a discount matching the webinar price for any live lab classes in the future. And if you’re a GLG member you only pay service fees! (check the glg website for your discount code)

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I’d do anything to not have to deal with the custy layer.

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I never encountered it until I started baking in labs with high ambient humidity and/or vacuum ovens that weren’t dedicated to media prep. (Aka hella dirty)

Its also very likely that the repacking process performed by distributors is exposing media to more moisture and other contamination- and this is something I really don’t like because it invalidates the batch COA. Whenever possible, try to order bulk packaging that has not been opened or relabled. Those little paper kilo bags just aren’t good enough imo.

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I think 6-8 hours baking time is really excessive. Did you test this?

I tested between 1 and 5 hours baking time at 375F with several different medias and never noticed a significant difference in bleaching power.

Also, I understand that vac ovens and reactors are what a lot of people have on hand in the lab but I think they’re the wrong tool for this job.

Both vacuum ovens and reactors are sealed vessels by design which makes venting off large amounts of moisture hard to do unless you’re pulling a vacuum. The typical vent on a vac oven is usually insufficiently sized and improperly located to act as a functional vent for large amounts of moisture even if it’s left open to atmosphere.

When I used to bake media I would do it in a regular kitchen oven which offers dual benefits. First it’s large enough to fit several pans of clay at a time so you can dry a significant amount at a time. Secondly, it’s properly vented so you never have to open and wipe down the oven (what a pain in the ass that must be for a busy lab) or deal with any dripping water onto the clay.

I also mixed the media once or twice while baking and never ever got a crusty layer on top that I had to throw away. It doesn’t sound right to me to recommend people just throw out their media to deal with this issue.

This is a nice graphic you’ve made and I’m sure people who are beginners and running small systems appreciate it but for higher production environments both the time and attention required by this method make it somewhat infeasible and/or inefficient. Much simpler to just bake in a regular oven for an hour or two, mix it up once and be done without any wiping, dripping or throwing away perfectly good media.

I’m also curious why you recommend storing media in a container no more than 1/3 full. What is the reason for this 1/3 volume recommendation? I just toss mine in 5 gallon buckets full to the top with a sealed lid and everything has been fine.

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On a separate note, you should start another thread to talk about how you erroneously called out BVV for selling wood stabilizer. What a bone-headed move that was.

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You can easily monitor this by weighing your material before and after baking (using a tared container). The mass loss indicates you the amount of water that is gone (should be in the range of 10%). As soon as mass doesn’t decrease anymore, you have reached the maximum loss for your temperature. With clays, at 105c, removing 98% of water takes at least 24 hours. You can gain few extra % by waiting another day, or rising to 150c. But I don t know if this is necessary.

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But they do sell wood stabilizer…

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Recording weights is an inherent part of the process - and imo extremely important when we’re buying these supplies by weight. When you stop losing mass that’s a good indication that your current conditions will no longer change the moisture content, but does not always mean all moisture content is gone. My recommendation is to reference your batch COA moisture content and anticipate losing at least that much mass with each baking. I always recommend 6-8 hours for clays because they solidify into chunks easily and when you stir it to break up those chunks it can introduce moisture to already dried clay. The fastest option will be to bake in reactor that can mix it nonstop to maximize the heated surface area.

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I recommend keeping your containers only 1/3 full so you have enough room in the container to mix the powder around thoroughly each time you remove media from it. Clays will clump up very easily when they absorb moisture, and you’ll want to thoroughly inspect your media for chunks forming in the corners/bottom etc before using it - just in case it was not sealed or stored properly the last time it was opened.

I also dont recommend a kitchen oven because of the fans and the mess that it will create. But if you’ve got a kitchen oven that you’ll never need to cook food in and an isolated location to plug it in, then by all means, bake away :slight_smile:

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BVV responded to claims of people using stabilizers in their oil by literally MAKING FAKE OIL with instructions for how to mix it on their IG. I’m not sorry for warning people that shatter is being diluted just like distillate was. I’m not sorry for letting people know where it comes from and why it is harmful. I’m not sorry if it affects BVVs legitimate hobbyist woodworking business. BVV has never given a single fuck about the safety of their customers or their impact on this industry. I dont care if you boycott them, but I do care if people think traditional market shatter is safer than distillate when it isn’t.

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Agregation occurs if you oven dry a mud, a slurry a suspension…flaking is even more annoying. In that case freeze drying is a better option. In general people here play with industrially prepared bentonites, which are ground and sieved. One can expect such to be at equilibrium with standard ambiant air, and so have 6-14% of water (less if sodic, more if calcic). In that case agregation should not occur upon drying. But in case of pellets, one must better freeze dry them.

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Great thread I keep this info graphic posted on the wall next to the vac ovens, and thank you for sharing with everyone!

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So how would I get this layer after the fact? I dried a bit of powder in the microwave, and I had some extras left over. Powders were almost completely dry by weight, no dark layer whatsoever.

I then jarred the leftovers up into a clean ball jar, and after a week there was no discernable layer, but a couple of weeks after that, the dark layer appeared.

Has any body else had this happen to dried powders, b80 in particular? I’m assuming some kind of oxidation? I’m not ruling out contaminants, but wouldn’t those make the dark layer appear quicker?

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Here’s a pic of the layer, you can see it’s darker than the b80 underneath.

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Yea they have for a long time. I believe it was from way back when they mostly sold vac chambers and other stuff. I’m not sure but I think the wood glue was supposed to be used in conjunction with a vac chamber for certain wood projects, not BHO.

What I meant to say is she erroneously called out BVV for not only selling the stabilizer but she also implied they had shady intent by somehow subliminally recommending that their customers should use it to make fake slabs, which they didn’t do IMO. I think the product was/is legitimately for wood projects and/or to have something non-BHO related on their site for appearance sake.

But hey wood stabilizer sounds just like pine resin/amber, which is actually used for fake slabs, so they must be the same thing right?

Ms. Bonehead here made a post on her IG “calling out” BVV for offering the wood stabilizer on their website without offering a shred of proof or evidence that either the stabilizer is actually being used to make fake slabs or that BVV is somehow silently implying that that’s what people should do with it. I think she dislikes BVV for other reasons and those feelings are bleeding over into this wood stabilizer nonsense which is itself easily combined into the real fake shatter/distillate issue. See her comment below saying “BVV has never given a single fuck about the safety of their customers or their impact on this industry.”

This also gives her a good reason to “warn” the community and look like a hero to people who will believe what she says and perhaps pay her for a class later on down the road.

Umm ok. I have baked many 10’s of kg of clay from all the different manufacturers and have never had any major clumping issues while in the oven or otherwise. Sometimes it packs down from jostling/transport sure, but never any hard chunks that cause me to stop what I’m doing and say “I better break up all these clay chunks.”

I’m telling you an hour or two at 375-400F is all I’ve ever needed. Going longer doesn’t effect the bleaching power of the clay. You can tell when most moisture is removed when the major condensation stops appearing. Then I leave it in for a little longer and it’s done. 6-8 hours sounds really excessive. We don’t need it to be absolutely bone dry down to 0%, just remove the bulk moisture. Hell since I switched to W1 it works so well I don’t even bake it anymore.

Mixing clay in a reactor sounds like a good way to burn out the mixer. It also sounds like a pain to have to unload and clean the reactor every single time unless you have an expensive reactor setup just for baking clay.

I guess you’re free to recommend whatever you want but the 1/3 full thing seems strange to me and sort of like you’re grasping at straws to come up with “recommendations” for your nice graphic. Do any of the clay manufacturers recommend this 1/3 full nonsense?

Only certain ovens have internal convection fans, and they can be easily turned off. I have baked many kg’s of clay in my kitchen oven and you can’t tell because it’s not dirty. Use proper pans, fill/empty them outside and be careful putting them in/out of the oven and it’s not a problem. I made a delicious frozen pizza in there just last night, no clay!

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What “claims” are you talking about? Claims without evidence really aren’t worth much.

They only did the experiment with it AFTER you called them out, to show the wood stabilizer doesn’t work like pine resin.

You twisting that around to say they gave out instructions on how to do it is complete horseshit.

When you say things like this it sounds like textbook virtue signaling. In other words you’re expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate your good character or the moral correctness of your position on this particular issue.

The problem is that your position is incorrect. You are calling out the wrong product and company. But that isn’t stopping you from virtue signaling by bringing up these other points about how you’re not sorry for saving everyone.

That type of shit works great on IG where ignorant followers usually just blindly agree with whatever gets posted. It also leads to a false sense of self-righteousness.

What I see on IG is you making this post on July 3 clearly trying to call out and shame BVV for selling wood stabilizer with no evidence or proof whatsoever that people are using the product to make fake slabs.

There’s even a fair amount of people calling out your BS in the comments.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCM5qdwBWf6/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Then BVV responds three days later on July 6 showing what happened when they actually tried to mix the stabilizer with BHO.

Their experiment shows you need a LOT of the wood stabilizer to create the stable, brittle slabs like the fake pine resin/xylem/amber slabs people have shown on this very forum. Also they say the smell of the stabilizer is so overpoweringly bad that it’s obvious which I tend to believe.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCTycSbBRTW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCTywCRhEnx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It really just sounds like you have an ax to grind with BVV because “BVV has never given a single fuck about the safety of their customers or their impact on this industry.”

How would you like it if someone called you out for some BS without any evidence?

Also, I can’t find the quote on IG, but I have seen the much respected @smokemeoutbruh post that he received some of the fake slabs and had it tested with NMR and it came back as pine resin. I don’t know him personally but he is highly respected and I don’t think he would make that up.

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Clay holds onto water very effectively, and if there was still some moisture left in the jar it would eventually sweat out, especially since it likely got hotter over those few weeks since it’s summer now. Ambient storage temps are important even for sealed product.

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This was months ago in a cool basement. Sorry, I should have been mentioned that. This thread popped up and I thought I’d ask everyone while the topic was active. But even in a jar, it’s not a dry place, and I can’t say I got all the moisture out, so would the dark be oxidation though? Or moisture coming up? I’m just a layman, so anytime I can get some knowledge from you guys I ask all I can.

The temps have increased there for sure now, but at most the basement at the time was around 70ish.

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The pine resin is an existing, and separate issue. All of the oil I posted about with regards to the stabilizers was sticky, with a “chemical smell” and was being sold under the guise of being “crc” The dispensary that was advertising their product made with it was subsequently bullied off the internet and hopefully also off the shelves of Oklahoma dispensaries. I don’t care about BVV. I do care about bad actors in the extraction community causing harm. And BVV is one of them. I explained the absolute hell out of this in my post, in the posts by the blacklist, the posts by BVV, the posts by breaking dabs… You can hate the specificity in MY sops that I post for the benefit of others (I would tell you which glove to put on first if I thought it made a difference) and you can criticize me for raising concerns about the extent to which unethical behavior hurts our industry. But I still stand behind both my highly repeatable SOP and my serious disapproval of opportunistic online retailers & scam artist shippers. I’ll accept your anger, Mr tech1145, and I will carry that burden for you if it helps. :muscle:

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Haven’t read most of the shot show here just the initial post and mention of pine resin

If memory serves years ago best value vacs sold more cheap containers and they sold hobbyist products for use with bonding and gluing and things like that. Small batch stuff that fit in their vac pots.

Separately

Someone here maybe photon had shared A tip of putting Pyrex pan inside a pillowcase or other thin membrane to keep powders in but allow some air exchange

Theoretically you could pull very light vacuum and by cracking open filtered inlet valve of nitrogen from n2 genny for your gc (doesn’t take much) get some movement thru oven drawing out moisture before gravity reflexes water vapors back down into powders slowing down the process we are trying to achieve

Cliff notes

Just sweep it out

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I dont see how BVV can make a profit on a $15 dollar bottle of pine resin…anyways i wouldnt recommended baking the clays so much unless you are expecting a lot of moistute like a live resin run. The water they hold makes them swell a bit and increases their surface area and functionality. Too much water could lead to some desorbtion. Too little and they wont be as effective due to them being more smaller and solid reducing surface area. It really is more dependent on your starting material to determine which clay to use and wether to bake or not. Also proper storage of the medias will help like an air tight bucket to prevent them from absorbing too much water. They can hold up to 20 times their weight in water.

Also i got my hands on some fake shatter from friends who got finnessed. Its very rock hard and not much at all like the pine stuff BVV made in their video. I think theyre using a different type of resin to make fake shatter that stable. It wont badder up when whipped and goes back to shatter with the same clarity it had.

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