Will it settle to get a better view if the jar sits undisturbed for a few hours?
Why use the felt then?? Why not just use a 20u paper prefilter above the sintered discs so you don’t have to clean the plates as often. Or even 2 prefilters with a 20u paper and 10u paper.
I assume the felt is there so he doesn’t have to clean his sintered discs every run or every other run. This is easily done with paper filters which can be thrown away every run. By staging your filters down to 1 micron you will probably increase your flow rate and eliminate this felt problem.
I’ve seen b80 sneak pass these filter plates being sub micron but never heard or seen this felt problem. Which I might have chalked up to waxes if not told this was distillate
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The stuff floating well above the interface doesn’t read as felt to me. Although I can see “fibrous” being a reasonable description for what I can make of the interface. it’s soooo hard to tell from these images.
If it IS felt, you should be able to achieve that with just water, heptane, and felt…
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This is a great point!: If you run the system with no feedstock, do you get the fuzzies in the recovered solvent still?
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Hi @SidViscous,
yep, same thing with plain solvent.
@Killa12345 ,
It seems the felt flows better than the papers due to how it is structured.
Lets wait for @han to get a sample for the microscope, I find it odd that the fibres could make their way through 3-4 screens and disks, which are all new and do hold back the clays/magsil.
This has me thinking the diameter of the fibers is >1 um , they might be flowing through the filter on end?
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@Han
How tight is the roll of felt that you’ve been using? I had an idea, where you cut the strip of felt, then fold it in half hotdog style, then roll that up. When you place it in the column orient it with the cut side up and the fold side down. In my mind the cutting of the felt may be what is causing loose fibers, orienting the cut side up would allow any fibers to be retained in the wad of felt.
This is my theory
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So I would recommend going to a disc style over the roll. These filters are meant for a perpendicular flow right?
I still dunno if that’s felt, but I could see running the flow horizontal to the felt may effect the filtering ability and maybe things are getting through that way?
I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but they use these filters in fuel applications, wouldn’t this be an issue for them if fibers were getting through?
Sounds like you used solvent, felt, and a whole bunch of other stuff…I was suggesting just some felt + solvent & water in a jar to start…
If it’s the cut edge, then singeing it might solve that (cut with a hot knife rather than waving a bic, because: “known to the state of CA to cause cancer”).
I can’t see any of the other bits actually causing the phenomenon, but waving the felt around in the jar and watching it disintegrate seems so much more immediate.
then one works on HTF are the shed fibers (having proved them independent of the apparatus) getting from point a to point B.
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Where a sock filter shines is providing a large filtration area, which can be used in front of face filters to protect them from rapid blinding. Like a high efficiency filter in front of a hepa filter.
Any shedding should be picked up by the final filter and blinding should be minimal. As they are much larger than the final filter pore, they also add to the filtration efficiency in the form of filtration cake.
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@cyclopath,
He mentioned he ran just the solvent on one test and got the fibers as well.
@han,
do you have some pics of the solvent run through the filter minus the distillate?
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Right, but we are NOT currently talking about using the felt for socks…
I’m pretty sure @Soxhlet has it right and it’s the cut edge that is shedding in this application.
I certainly keep this stuff in my toolbox, but have not used it to build the poor mans depth filter.
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“flocculant” probably is the most appropriate way to describe what is happening here
when collected, there were no visible particles - instead murkiness and after leaving they settled over time and became visible
@Griffin.Labs These are actual welded sintered filter plates. @Soxhlet is making me a .1um ultifilter. I’ll let you know how that works out.
@Waxplug1 This happens in CLEAN/FRESH solvent as well. The video is clean fresh solvent. If you like I can post more videos/heat it on a hot plate. The particles settle absolutely if undisturbed.
@Killa12345 Was using felt to act as a depth filter, wanted to remove DE out of the equation.
@cyclopath That is achieveable with clean solvent. So that picture with a diluted oil/water wash is a interesting one…
At first I thought the tiny amount cloudiness coming out of the column during initial flush was just trace water being picked up from the media - since it managed to make it through all the filtration. Anyway kept flushing till there was nothing visible to the naked eye.
That oil was sent through the column at this point, came out looking clear - no cloudiness.
In this crystal clear collection, at least to me, where there was no visible contamination. Anyway washed for pH balance at this point. Because there were ‘strands’ which sort of looked like bubbles in the reactor sitting between the layers, I tried salting out - no go. Let it sit for a few hours incase it was some sort of emulsion - absolutely no change. So I just collected that end portion into the jar.
I then took the crystal clear pH adjusted portion, roto’d down oil was cloudy. So I thought - ok if there is pulverized salt or water in here lets pass it through another filtration. So I sent an employee to pick up a couple parts from from xtractor depot so I can put together a last resort filter cartridge should these issues occur.
Parts boiled with alconox, rinsed with tons of distilled water, and dried overnight.
The cartridge went exactly like this > brand new 5u > molecular sieve beads > brand new 5u > new rolled up felt > brand new 5u > brand new 5u
No removal of contamination. Instead more contamination. Both in clean solvent, and the oil that I ran through. I concluded at this point it is felt that is making it through all these filters.
Keep in mind, this cloudiness came after switching to felt, and made it through the 1u sintered in the column before the cartridge.
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@Curious_Roberto I do think disc style would prevent a lot of this contamination as it allows for the singed side to be down.
However, this makes me wonder if users who are doing depth style have been having some amount of contamination that was going unnoticed. There may even be small amounts of contamination disc style if this is truly felt passing through.
@Soxhlet @cyclopath The felt was rolled really tight. I’ll make a video where I set up a new filter, with staged filtration. Flush clean solvent through to show clean. Then add felt, flush clean solvent through and show if there is contamination.
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Keep us updated, Please let me know how you like the ultifilter, my next purchase is going towards submicron filtration I hate only filtering down to 1 um.
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Just got some goodies in the mail @Soxhlet
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NICE!!! I’m so jelly of the shirt!
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Boy there is a lot here. I was not completely clear on the size of filter being used, is this a disc? IE 4" or something like that?
Using polyester depth media is a good idea for pre-filtration, but not for final filtration. Felt media is a lose set of fibers that are melt-blown out onto a subtract (flat media) and the sold in bots (rolls). Manufactures will take this media and cut into disc’s or sew them into bags of various sizes. There are standard sized bags as a part of this. When we sell bags into this industry, we only sell glazed bags unless someone has specifically asked for UN-glazed (typically to get a cheaper price). The glazing process sinters the lose fibers on the downstream side of the media to mitigate the particles from going downstream.
Someone mentioned PTFE media, which you can get in a felt or membrane and is an excellent material. Its expensive, but if its for a small disc, shouldn’t be an issue. But I also see 0.2um cartridges being looked at or purchased (picture of on this chain). This would tell me that the volume being filtered is higher or would be typically higher than the volume going though a small disc. But we recommend to our customers the use of a 0.2um filter downstream of various other up-stream filtration steps to protect equipment. Sometimes people are using felt as in this case, or DE, or carbon, all of which have fines that can make there way downstream which is not good for the downstream equipment. We sell both 0.45um and 0.2um for this application depending on the customer.
All that being said, the size of particles in the video are quite large and so I go back to my original view that you must be using an un-glazed or poorly made product or seal for that size particulate to get downstream. OR, the last possible explanation, and i have seen this happen in various applications is, a re-participation of materiel downstream of the filter. The filter catches the particles, but they change there shape and or agglomerate on the other side of the filter and you see it in the product. Thanks Greg
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Just for clarification, that picture is a picture of the Indofab filter cartridge holder. It has a sintered disc at the bottom, and you just swap out the cartridges. @Soxhlet should be able to answer any specific questions that you might have about either cartridge holder, or the cartridges themselves…