Opaline Silica Thread

[Curious_Roberto]

Thanks, I should have been more clear with the solvent that would be used.

N-butane is what I’m using currently.

[CollectiveObjective]

Mass transfer is the keyword here. Contact time is important. I’ve never found running packed columns of media for color adsorption to be near as fool proof or quick as soaking and agitating. (Agitation can come from small amount of warm gas injection thru diffuser or even a tube with bunch of 1/8" holes. (Manage pressure however works best for ur system. Dont make a bomb)
I havent ran opaline silica yet but Photons recirculation method is def a way to get more contact time.

[J12]

I used it the same as i do the B80. From all the talk about it it seemed that it would have remedied some color but did nothing. what results did you see from it?

[cyclopath]

is that a yes or no on

@cyclopath

Did you bake it under vacuum for 24hrs first?

@Photon_noir posted pictures up-thread. Opaline Silica Thread - #158 by Photon_noir

what I saw was material that would normally produce concentrate darker than picture one ==> something that generally ranged between pic two and three. occasionally hitting the color of picture 4 on the first batch through the oversized CRC…especially if it was recirculated.

at that time, anything looking like pic six would have been rejected as “fake” by most of the target consumers.

[J12]

Well if it needs to be cycled that many times it’s not worthy of use in my opinion. I never bake or vac any clays and have never had any issues. i fill and pack my columns and then they go into a freezer. If there is any moisture in the clays there frozen before the run and won’t end up in the concentrate. Time is money i don’t have time to recycle each run i do that many times.

[cyclopath]

@Photon_noir

I always dried the 8/16 granules in thick aluminum foil lasagna pans, as it was, in layers no more than 3" thick, under dry scroll vacuum, in a big dedicated vacuum oven, at about 300°F (the highest it would go without destroying the door seal… much). The dust eventually destroyed the pump, which is why I recommend covering the pans with 100% cotton pillowcases, like I always did with activated charcoal dust. I would allow it to dry at least 12 hours, keeping a pan under the pump exhaust for all the water flowing out of it. Then I would turn the temperature down to 100°F and allow it to cool to that temperature, still under active vacuum.

if you’re trying to catch the water soluble colors, and you don’t remove the water first, one might posit that the binding sites for your colors are occupied…

@cyclopath

I’m a molecular biologist by training, and one of the few things I learned in 20years in the lab was that following “grandma’s recipe” (published protocol or lab SOP) exactly at least once before making changes makes a huge difference in your overall success rate.

[J12]

Just B80 never vacuumed down, never baked, and run through only once.

[cyclopath]

awesome work.

doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t follow grandma’s recipe and are stating that it didn’t function the way grandma said it would…

[cyclopath]

@J12

Time is money i don’t have time to recycle each run i do that many times.

re-circulation was done concurrently with recovery (takes a while to recover 100lb of solvent…)

no time was lost (I’d actually wager that the re-circulation shortened recovery by a hair).

product got lighter. money was made.

glad your cat skinning op is working for you (and it clearly is!!)

[J12]

I guess i’m confused on what you mean by cycling during recovery? i thought you were saying you cycled the run over the media a few times?

[cyclopath]

@J12

If there is any moisture in the clays there frozen before the run and won’t end up in the concentrate.

frozen or not, if it’s binding to the sites your unwanteds need to bind to, it is affecting the carrying capacity/effectiveness of your media.

[J12]

respectfully disagree

[cyclopath]

yep. with a pump that pulled from the receiver, sent through the CRC, and back to the receiver. during recovery.

pretty sure there is a sketch here somewhere with that shown.

[tweedledew]

X-tane isn’t perfectly immiscible with water. You’d absolutely have water in your solvent, and water impregnating your (who knows how old) kitty litter. Might just be too much water and too little surface area for it to work. But then again, you make clear extracts and I don’t so I’m certainly a far cry from an expert round these parts

[J12]

forgive me but still not understanding what you mean? so you were cycling the run over the media and recovering?

[cyclopath]

100lbs of solvent in a big vat.

takes 90+ min to recover.

during that 90min, solvent is pumped out and over CRC and back into recovery pot. at the same time, the solvent is being recovered.

recovery takes ~90min. re-circulation performed for 30-60min of that 90. no time wasted.

maybe someone who was at the Vegas meetup can post a picture of the whiteboard for you. (@Dred_pirate?)

or at least point us at the sketch that I’m reasonably sure is posted here somewhere.

[cyclopath]

@J12

respectfully disagree

wish we could get more of that attitude around here

[J12]

Ok i gotcha sorry i just wasn’t connecting it in my head

[cyclopath]

one could alternatively increase the contact time with the media by using a long skinny bed rather than a short fat one.

[J12]

my runs are 30lbs and it takes me 45 to recover. it’s passive and i don’t have a pump so out of luck on that one for me. i’ll try vacuuming the silica with some heat and see if it makes a difference?