Good afternoon,
First off I’d like to thank everyone who posts on here and contributes to the common knowledge, your help is priceless!
I will be attempting my first SPD once I get the rest of my needed equipment. Long story short a friend of mine handed me a distillation setup (pictures to follow) and asked me to make it work. Here I am. I’ve been researching for the past couple months and am very close to starting a run but I need a few more things and a bit more of your knowledge. Sorry if some of these questions seem like the are repeated or trivial but I’ve tried and can’t find a great clear cut answer.
Questions
- What hose would you recommend to run from cow to cold trap and cold trap to kf adapter? My cold trap has GL fittings if I’m not mistaken. Also is it necessary to have a hose clamp or something to tighten the hose down onto the GL adapter or just right onto the threaded glass?
- What connectors would you recommend for between the cold trap and my vacuum? Right now I imagine a hose running to a kf 4-way with a bleed valve and an adapter for my yellow jacket 69075 pressure gauge.
- With this cheap mantle I believe I’m stuck using the provided thermometer probe attached to the mantle but is there a way to use a thermowell with the supplied probe or am I just relegated to using some teflon tape to seal the adapter for the probe?
- I have read that you run with the BF ~50% full, what’s the minimum I could run with? This is a 2L setup but I’m estimating roughly 500mL of crude to start with. I’ve also contemplated getting a smaller (perhaps 1L) BF but I’m not sure if I could still use the 2L mantle with it.
- What kind of thermometer would you suggest using to read vapor temp? I think I read a plain glass lab thermometer is fine ( like a -10 to 250 c one). Do you just use one of the cheapish thermometer adapters that come with the kits or do you swap them for something else?
- How do I tell if my head is packable or not and would you recommend adding packing if I can? From what I gather I have a cheaper old head so I’m not sure how well it works.
(Only a couple more questions I promise) - What ratio of dry ice:IPA do you guys use in your cold trap? Fill it with dry ice and add IPA to the top?
- What are your preferred methods of cleaning or solvents for cleaning.
These are the questions I have for the time being and I’m sure there will be more but any knowledge or advice you can share is greatly appreciated. If one of my questions has been definitively answered already let me know and I can search the threads more for answers.
Also any advice/ modifications to my setup that you might suggest feel free to chime in as I’m not afraid of some constructive criticism.
Thanks again!
