removing vacuum grease from your distillate?

what are your methods of getting bits of joint grease out of your distillate???

You clearly think this has happened before.

Turns out you’re right

http://future4200.com/search?&q=Vacuum+grease+distillate

One of those 40 hits is what you need

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my fav method is no grease! Damn, imagine all the vac grease all these people who smoke crappy carts have injested…makes me feel bad for the unsuspecting population.

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haha thx. should have searched i supposed first

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I use ptfe sleeves on joints that actually contact oil.

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Yeah, i see alot of ppl use those and distillate as grease. Its actually pretty smart I guess. Does the distillate go under the sleeve???

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I didn’t use distillate, just a sleeve.

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and it just slides on and off every time?? fml what have I been doing to myself all this time :thinking::face_with_raised_eyebrow:

@Soxhlet

I’ve been using his disty on the joint trick, and LOVE IT!

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I never found any that didnt leak, youre having success?

Yeah. I used ones from scimac. When I tried switching every single joint for sleeves I lost a little vacuum quality (not much – something like 0.1 vs 0.5 micron). With just one or two sleeves it was pretty much imperceptible.

I still use grease on joints that aren’t touching oil.

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Distillate is heavier than grease, so if you heat it up in an over the particles will slowly rise to the surface with time & heat so you can dab them out . . . 140f or so

no need to worry about the customer dabbing grease…dab it yourself :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Recently did my first few spd runs. I got a little heavy handed with the Apiezon. Two runs got contaminated. I’d like to note that most of the contamination wasn’t visible for the first few days. The distillate became cloudy after a few days of sitting and completely opaque after a few more. There are definitely microscopic particles that are not immediately visible to the naked eye. The second contaminated run had visible vacuum grease during distillation coming from a leak at the condenser/cow.

I stopped when I noticed it cleaned everything and switched to distillate on all my cold joints and distillate/Teflon tape on all my hot joints. Wish I would have done this from the beginning.

If you’re just getting started (esp if you got leaky Chinese glass like me) try to avoid grease as much as possible, its not worth it. Distillate seems to work just as well even on the hot joints.

I am currently doing a second pass on the contaminated stuff. It is holding back the larger particles, but it appears that smaller particles are making it over. Seeing clouds in the receiver similar to to material that wasn’t fully winterized. Anyone seen this?

I’m running at 190c in the bf, about 230c (220-240) between the bf and mantel, 170c-180c head temp, and between 30-50 micron through the run.

According to their chart Apiezons VP is 10^-4 at ~230c Does it make sense that any would carry over at the pressure/temps I am at? Does it make sense that evaping distillate could carry over small particles?

I also see that they say to avoid temperatures over 250c. When ramping temp up I hit as high as 280c between the bf and the mantel.

I tried dissolving in etoh and filtering over a whatman 6 (3um), this didn’t seem to capture it. I’ll try smaller. Any recommendation on pore size?

I see why the most frequent recommendation is to keep it out in the first place. Not fucking with grease again, right now this is just a 4l lesson. Hopefully it can save some of you too.

Any other ideas for remediation are greatly appreciated.

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A little dab will do ya!

Yeah I was meaning to say using a dabber to pull them out!

Lower and slower fixed the issue. 180c bf 27 to 30 micron and ~145 head temp.

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Update:

After sitting for 2 weeks what appeared to be clean immediately after distillation, now has small specks sporadically through it. It’s a million times better than it was, but it’s not free of vacuum grease. So, an expensive lesson. If your reading this thread you probably already fucked yourself. But I am hoping someone will see this before they do their first distillation. If you are about to do your first distillation, read this guide to apply grease correctly https://labsociety.com/vacuum-grease/
Hopefully I used “first distillation” enough times someone will find it using the search function, before they do their first distillation.

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