Plastic contaminated crude?

Hello all, I’ll come here today with a question for you. I’m in the process of running a few kilos of crude oil through the short path for a client and as I was loading up the short path I realized that there were pieces of plastic in the oil. My partner seems to think that it’s crystallization, but I think that it’s plastic. There’s a layer across the whole bottom of the bucket of pieces of something that are abnormally shaped. We have it in ethanol washing it right now To try and see if it dissolves, or what. My question is if it were in fact plastic Would it be terrible to run it with the batch? I think so, but we are in a disagreement here. Thanks.

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EEEW, thats why i smoke all my own shit.after washing it will be obv right? What kinds of plastic? like pieces for injection molding? Affter heating id say the batch is dead.

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Pthalates have high boiling points around 300-400C. I’ve seen some methods that removed them using adsorbents but that may have been from aqueous solutions so for oil I think distillation is probably the way to go

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if its not dishwasher safe plastic then its dirty as fuck imo. I hate the direction the industry has taken that plastic bho is ok if a chemical chart says so. IMO- the weed thing is about the plant and not how to process it further and further and ruin it. But yeah the lowers make nice bho.

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Is that 300-400C under vac or does it matter? I’m not sure what kind of plastic it is, or if it’s even plastic. It won’t dissolve in etoh and there’s a bunch of. Thanks for the replies.

gross, Some people may refer to my product as crude? I make bho in a closed column, Lots of filters. How could plastic make it into a filtered crude? Is this ethanol and less filters???

I’m really wondering that myself. He said whoever processed it took months to get it done and it’s been sitting In his closet for 6 months. There’s only 3 kilos lol.

Post some pics of the possible contamination

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sorry, i feel like an idiot. turns out after leaving it on a stir plate in some etoh for a very long while it ended up dissolving so we’ve concluded it’s just crystallized oil. there were some really strange shapes, like sharp corners and pattern grooves in the crystals so i was certain it was some kind of plastic. lots to learn, i guess. thanks for the replies.

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I got a batch of diamonds shaped like sharks teeth. Mine was found in the back of a fridge after a long time. It may be something that happens longterm?

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Turns out it was. We eventually got some melted down. They felt like GI Joe’s to me? And some were really large solid pieces. I’ve got a kilo of it loaded on the short path and I’m gonna run it tomorrow. Thanks for the replies.

Something like this?

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that’s what it looked like after sitting in etoh, heated for a long time. when i started pulling the distillate out it was so thick and nasty i just threw a glove on and stuck my hand down in there and was shoveling it out, and at the bottom of the bucket about 1" - 2" from the bottom were extremely solid pieces. the first one I grabbed felt and looked like a keck clamp clip. i guess that’s why i thought it was plastic. there were also many other pieces, like hundreds. I guess i’ve got a lot to learn.

You’re not crystallizing distillate unless it’s CBD, can you confirm? Just because it dissolves in hot ethanol doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not plastic. Did the crystals stay hard as the dissolved or soften up?

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it’s crude oil, and there were hunks of it about an inch or two off the bottom of the container. it has apparently sat for months. it’s the first time i’ve run something that wasn’t fairly fresh so i didn’t know. it stayed fairly hard as it dissolved and the longer it sat the more gooey the outside layer was.

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Yeah that sounds like plastic unfortunately. Polymers get gooey as you say, crystals generally don’t. If you evaporate the solvent with the dissolved “stuff” it should be pretty damn easy to tell the difference. If it is plastic, it sounds like @kcalabs may now be equipped to screen for phthalates/plasticizers after you distill it to see if you excluded them adequately.

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Convert it to methyl anthranilate lol

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is there a grape dutch shortage? I’m not sure what methyl anthranilate is other than the grape flavoring that Google fed me

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i just set it aside to deal with later, it was the only bucket that had it. we got 98 kilos to run and i don’t even want to deal with it at this point, im too damn busy. was going to source it out to a lab in NC but they bailed on us.

yeah, same. it says it’s used in grape, orange, neroli like scents and flavors. lol

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