Throwing a bump to @Tech1145
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Youâre missing on out some major surface area by leaving that void. Fill it with zeolite beads
If youâre that worried bout dust, acetone wash them and then oven dry.
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I needed that, thank you
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Or 200 proof ethanol!!
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Ok so really though, if there was dust and you always had filter plates and welded disk , then technically any dust from the beads would be caught there just like the media we use?
So why wash them just use proper filteration with your rig every time. Itâs good practice to keep the crap out anyways
I think I read the dust will go through a 5 micron filter or sintered disc. And a 1 micron restricts flow.
I may totally off base hereâŚ
Could swear I read this somewhere on this forum, canât recall the thread
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The real idea is to capture as many fine particles (less than the size of your smallest mesh) by means of a washâthe hope is that the fines will fall to the bottom of the solvent and you can scoop out the beads.
Itâs not the most critical thing to do, since your adsorbents and sieves should pass a certain quality spec by the time they get to you, but if youâre a perfectionist, itâs part of the process.
Plus, if youâre going to dry them anyways before use, might as well.
You can realistically go down to 0.2 micron, but you have to pre filter the solution to do so.
For instance, 50um material bag, put a 20um disc on the bottom of your material column, powders then a de cake on top of a 5um filter (use something like a 6um paper below de), then a 2um filter paper on top of a 1um disc on top of a 0.2um disc.
The idea is to reduce the total filtration burden by spreading it to several filters.
No matter your method youâll have to clean them out, but if you step them down sequentially then you can reduce the time period between cleans.
In a sense, they all restrict flow, but not to an impossible degree.
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The void is intentionally part of the Cycloneâs design.
Any incoming liquid/oil is flung against the sidewall and kept away from the cores. Thatâs the âcycloneâ action. This helped save a guyâs pump back a few years on ICMag when a new worker overfilled the collection pot.
The solid cores are made from zeolite and are sufficient. A longer housing with more cores can be used if more drying action is needed (itâs not for most systems).
The beads are just too much of a pain in the ass IMO for several reasons. After theyâve been dried out a couple times theyâre too brittle and I just donât like working with them in general. Adding a chore like rinsing/drying beads is not something I want to add to my workload. The solid cores are far superior IME.
Also I have an expensive compressor and prefer to not have beads in the intake line anywhere for its safety.
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I have been running with the same propane in my system (slowly replaced as I lose/add more) without a dedicated mol sieve for over a year without issue. I run my system several times per week.
It is my opinion that water pickup from material (even fresh frozen) is not really that big of an issue and gas only needs to be dried periodically on a maintenance schedule and even that is not really necessary as long as you avoid water pickup from other sources (see last paragraph).
Butane/propane are highly nonpolar and donât mix with water at all.
Water from material would need to get washed into the collection pot then manage to co-distill with the hydrocarbons to get into the system. This is not very likely because the temp/pressure conditions in the pot are well below the boiling conditions of water so it would tend to stay in the pot, just like the oil.
Also, if there was significant water co-distilling (even though conditions are not right for that to happen) in such quantity that it required a drier on every run that would mean A LOT of water is getting into the collection pot. This would leave you with oil that sizzles violently on the nail due to the residual moisture content.
Have you ever experienced the sizzling Iâm talking about? Itâs unmistakable and oil shoots everywhere when it hits the nail. The fact that we donât have major issues of people reporting sizzling oil tells me we donât have major problems with moisture pickup from material.
I also run lots of fresh frozen and have never experienced moisture problems.
A final point is that if water was co-distilling a lot of it would end up frozen and accumulated in the post compressor heat exchanger after it managed to make it out of the collection pot. This would result in significant liquid water build up in the heat exchanger that would need to be drained every so often. I have never noticed this type of water pickup in my coil and I usually blow it out with compressed air every so often to check.
It is also my opinion that water removal works much better when performed at room temp on the liquid hydrocarbon as opposed to the vapor. This can be an intermittent maintenance item performed every so often. I havenât dried my gas in about a year and might not ever again.
In HVAC it is generally accepted that moisture pickup with filter/driers is most effective in the liquid line. This is due to the fact that the velocity in the vapor line is typically very high, sometimes up to six times higher or more than the liquid velocity.
A filter drier is usually only used on the suction line of an HVAC system when heavy contamination or compressor burnout has happened. In this instance the filter/drier is functioning more like a plain old particulate filter to protect the compressor.
I think a lot of people run filter driers every run to act as a sort of vapor/oil separator to protect their pump, but they can get clogged easily and act as a restriction. There are better designs for vapor/oil separators that are more free flowing and easier to maintain.
When you get into larger extraction systems with high rates of evaporation and recovery you would also need to start worrying about the pressure drop or restriction from the filter drier. This is another reason why it is best to just not have a drier in the suction line at all.
I have also seen what a mess it is when spits of oil traveling with the vapor stream get into the sieve beads. This can also create a restriction and I would like to avoid dealing with that at all costs.
On a separate note, I think some people have issues with water pickup from other sources such as allowing atmosphere to enter cold system components.
I have seen people who chill their heat exchangers before vaccing them down. This is a huge source for water contamination. Youâve all seen the frost buildup on the outside of cold components, well it happens on the inside too if thereâs atmosphere present.
I have also seen people open their filter driers to atmosphere when a run is complete and theyâre breaking down their system for the day. The filter housing and sieve beads are usually very cold at this time due to being located in the suction line. As soon as this is exposed to atmosphere water will start condensing on the inside of the housing which will be adsorbed by the beads and lead people to think theyâre picking up water from the hydrocarbon stream.
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Thatâs a cool idea, although the geometry is going to make it difficult to operate as a cyclone separator. Typically for liquid/gas or liquid/liquid cyclone separators the chamber is conical, so that the angular velocity increases as the fluid travels from point A to point B.
I guess it would help to know, whatâs the application for this thing?
I always liked drying my gas as i injected into the distilling pot, with a mix of beads. I like those solid cores though
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This is a filter/drier (the cores are zeolite) designed by Graywolf 4-5 years ago to go with the VaporHawg pump he developed with SkunkPharm.
Iâm sure itâs nowhere near as efficient as something thatâs specifically designed as a cyclonic separator.
I believe the main idea was to try and keep spits of liquid off the cores as much as possible. I didnât keep it for very long so I canât speak to how well it actually works in practice.
I think the âcycloneâ part of the name is simply derived from the tangential angle the inlet is placed at which seems to be a feature on most types of cyclonic separators.
Yea I think the liquid side is way more efficient for drying if you need to.
Like I said, I donât think water pickup from material is really that big of an issue and IMO a dedicated mol sieve on the vapor side is not necessary for every run and in some cases it acts as a major restriction.
A free flowing liquid/vapor separator is all thatâs needed IMO.
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Iâve understanded the mol sieve is to pull any moisture from returning vapors after blast. Is moisture post material column not a concern?
Ya its just as important, you can dry your gas before running. If you start with fresh solvent and maintain your mol sieve then it shouldnât be a problem but you gotta make sure you keep up on the mol sieve.
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Correct me if Iâm misunderstanding. Youâre saying you run two mol sieve? or itâs fine to just run it prior to injection?
Run one before your pump to keep moisture out of your solvent it might have picked up during extraction. You can run one before, i did it for 2 reason, it removed the dust and it made sure it was dry, i was also running into a dedicated distillation pot that only was used for distilling gas prior to use.
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I didnt read correctly before. No recovery pump here. Thought you were using siev into injection on a cls.
bite the bullet and build one. I had rust in my tank and didnt know what was going on because I hadnt heard of molecular sieve. I also got some darker oil that wasnt as hard as my usual shatter. The darkness may have been water or rust. So you need a spool and sommit says you need hemispherical ends and a pump> Im not sure about all that.
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the sieve is on the ass end and summit says you need a pump to flow the butane over the sieve, makes no sense to me. The way to test would be run the same tane 1/2 tank of tane that had done a fresh frozen run through sieve passive, and 1/2 tank with new sieve and a pump and then weigh the sieves and see if it worked better. This shit is a rabbit hole that never ends.
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