Hi there guys, been running into the issue of built up moisture in our solvent (sieve was not swapped out enough) so now the moisture builds up in our injection coils and slows down solvent flow if anyone has any good suggestions I’d be all ears!
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Pass the solvent to collection chamber. Distill a few times while passing it over fresh desiccant. Repeat as many times as needed.
Alternatively, dump the solvent, clean the system, and start fresh.
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Get a mol sieve and keepit up right so gas doesnt pool in it, i have mine wrapped in a heat oad from cvs so it stays in the vapor phase
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I use methanol in a spray bottle to remove ice from the inside of my freezer, should work really good for this too. Downside would be having to remove the methanol from your system.
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Alcohol and acetone are both good cleaners who will dissolves the water and clean any mess you should have. They are easy to dry and will leave the system dry after. Without a solvent that’s miscible with water the standard way would be to use heat which sounds like a pita.
Methanol is my favorite general use alcohol bc it can be recovered simply by distillation - no mean azeotropes with water. Acetone is also real easy to recover. Everyone here knows about ethanol distillation, so isopropyl is the other one, saturate with magnesium sulfate and add sodium hydroxide and distil, not too hard but a world of hurt compared to a simple acetone/methanol recovery. The low costs and environmental toxicity for all of these also means you may not choose to recover them.
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Er… you clearly know the answer, based on your description of the problem…
Use and regenerate those sieves.
Distill repeatedly as @precisionnick suggests.
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I was always under the impression that the water evaporated with the solvent
I think he meant distill through sieve beads.
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It does.
Then you get it lost wandering into those 3 angstrom holes in your freshly regenerated molecular sieves.
The hydrocarbon vapor doesn’t fit, so it flies right on by.
Dry.
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Isopropyl alcohol forms an azeotrope with water. This azeotrope can be broken by saturating the water with salt. It is a time tested technique known as salting out the alcohol. It only works on the iso/water azeotrope though and will not break the azeotrope of ethanol and water. Once the water is saturated with salt it will form a seperate layer on the bottom in a sep funnel. Drain off aqeous layer and the iso layer should have most of the water removed at that point.
I have done this several times but do not know the true efficiency. Google salting out the alcohol and they might have tips.
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Absolutely I wonder out of just Curiosity could you put sieve in a mesh bag and keep them in your recovery tank to just absorb any residual moisture that makes it through the vapor pass of sieve
The alcohol will have a little water and salt in it at this point; adding sodium hydroxide and distilling at this point will yield pure isopropanol
probably. have you tested yours for dryness?
put some in your hand and add water.
if you don’t have to throw them on the floor they need regenerating.
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Funny, I do a test with sieves where I add water and hold them, but we always said a positive was right when you are about to throw them they cool down… maybe you are doing “too large a test” 
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So the easiest way to solve this problem of moisture in your solvent … one if your just doing shatter make sure your material is bone dry …by drying your material in a dry room with a dehumidifier you can even go the extra mile by putting dessicant in a sock and throwing that in the bin of material… MAKE SURE MATERIAL IS BONE DRY!!! second Dessicant change every third run and when you place your Dessicant filter in a vertical position with the vapor side going up this will help the Dessicant do it’s job and trap all the moisture … Take it from a guy who told BHOGART to use Dessicant in the first place … because if your as old school as I am in the Extraction game, you once used grenedes off the front of your appion thinking those grey greneads actually caught any moisutrure was comedy at it’s best … Those things were designed to catch byproducts of refigereant ,not designed to keep moisture out of R600 …
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ummm…yeah, probably.
until I typed that I’d never had to throw them on the ground. I’d also not scooped up a handful and poured substantial water on there.
“some” + water in a gloved hand is informative rather than transformative.
having to throw them seemed like it might engender exploration and even cause education
I know I learned something…
Now if your doing live resin this is a whole nother ball game because obviously your material was frozen with moisutre . So easy peasy lemon squezzy what you do is keep everything frozen the whole time … yes even your solvent tank … So as y’all know once your R600 becomes frozen it also becomes docile … So, to get it to move push it along with a little help from nitrogen … Then just burp off the nitrogen on the reclaim … Second way if you don’t have nitrogen at your disposal is to pre freeze the gas before it hits the column … I personally have done with great success before all these fancy coils were out we had these things called MT69 which essentially we a coil condesed with a metal cover . Anyways I put a two way valve attached to the in and out port. For those of you who knows what up their was a guy in the middle . Well I used that guage to throw my pressure for the release of frozen gas frozen because my MT69/ coil because that is what it was essentially … i had a PTFE line coming from the out port because you’ll freeze a rubber hose to crack and have gas everywhere not good !!! Safety first lady’s and gents … So you might be wondering how did he get that gas cold … I sunk that coil in a ethenol dryice slurry because we all know that ethenol gets 8 to 10 degrees colder than isopropyl and that my friends kept my solvent moisture free because I never let anything dethaw at any point always frozen my friends
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We actually implemented a similar strategy we cool our liquid in line after tank to column, I am in no way a noob just posting to see if anyone had good tricks up their sleve. Nitrogen should be staple in many facilities everyone has been great and very informative.
What were you noticing in your extract. We had similar issue.
Distilled twice over fresh beads. No visible moisture in heat exchanger.
Product coming out more jelly looking. Then evaporated to be much less than expected. Does this sound like anything I’ve seen with moisture in system