So quick rundown, I have had this super basic China wiped film sitting in the corner of our warehouse for over a year collecting dust. I have no hands on experience running a wiper but have read a lot of threads and understand the concept pretty well for the short path style wiped films so excuse my lack of knowledge on this style.
I would like to start acquiring the parts needed to get it to run and play around with it. I have looked high and low on here for other people that run the wipers that have no internal condenser but havent found much information.
We have one recirculating heater for the wiper jacket and a vacuum pump. But no other accessories.
I will get a small recirculating heater for the feed tank and then I assume I will need a chiller for the first condenser (or would this style wiped film need a heater for the condenser similar to hot condenser tek?) and then ill use dry ice for now for the cold trap.
What is the valve on top of the condenser for? I assume its to release vacuum?
Are there any cool tricks I can use this thing for or should I assume it will just be used for removing residual solvents and other volatiles?
I assume you would NOT want to put crude into this unit?
any help or links to some hidden threads I couldn’t find would be very much appreciated.
You can feed crude into this unit. winterized or not depends on your end product goals and downstream processes and their capacities.
Its not really for putting cannabinoids in the vapor phase tho, but useful for upstream steps one needs to perform prior to distilling cannabinoids. Can be used for that final bit of solvent not removed in your roto, or for deterping desolvated crude, some folks might even claim you can decarb in the unit as well (but I have limited experience decarbing in a wiper of both types)
For a good deterp/heads strip, run her hot and if you have a spare few feet of heat tape laying around wrap it around the unjacketed portion of the evaporator body and the vapor duct to prevent “lazy” vapors from condensing in the upper part of the still body and help push em over into the external condenser. (and if you can, wrap the feed arm with heat tape too to preheat your feed within a few degrees of your evap temp without having to heat your whole feed flask to that temp)
I was running a kd6 two phase with the first phase being a roller with an external condenser. I only used it for stripping of solvent or terpenes and it works great. One downfall is once it’s done stripping and the second phase is full I can’t convert it into a polishing still by switching settings.
