So I ran my first pass ever and what a mess. M y cooler froze the valve so no water movement, my BF got a little too aggressive I reckon and I somehow extracted a pure, clear, solvent that smells like after vape…no idea what that is (etoh maybe?).
Should my water run at -10 or is that excessive and how intense should the vacuum be? Thanks friends
Did you decarb your material before you tried to run it? It is completely possible there was residual solvents that are distilling over. However, if you are doing an adequate job in solvent recovery your decarb should pull off majority of that residual solvent.
Your condenser would be better run dry. Even at 60C you can risk clogging the mains fraction in your condenser.
I would recommend running dry in the early portion of the run then 100-140C during mains. Even that hot it’s still sometimes “chilling” the condenser.
Can you provide more details about your vacuum setup? Sensors, vacuums, system size etc. Your system put together dry and clean should be able to match your pump.
as it froze I’m betting you don’t actually need an answer to this one.
You know why working in oC is so nice?
water boils at 100oC and freezes at 0oC 
it’s been said before, but I’ll say it again you don’t need a chiller for short path. really no need for anything below room temp in your condenser. especially iff you stripped your terps off by decarbing at 150oC . it’s actually kind of handy to run that condenser above 100oC… so some folks will run silicone based heat transfer fluid. others will just run a high smoke point edible oil like avocado oil.
60c keeps my main body flowing just fine
I was thinking it was some of the solvent as well because I didn’t exactly decarb. Figured I’d do that in the short path; that’s probably where the aggressive volatile boiling came from. 54°c it was popping off.
Isn’t the point of the condenser to induce the vapor to rebond and condense. Like high temperatures would just allow for more vapor, no?
So I’m working with a 250 ml on a 5L setup, the vacuum is the shz D3.
I also noticed a huge surplus of vapor collect in my cow. I assume that’s all good stuff to which I missed out on. There’s still a fair bit of crude left so I’m thinking of trying to tackle it again tonight after work.
Thoughts on stopping mid way through a process?
There are plenty of SPD write ups on this site. Seems like your missing a lot of steps in your process and probably leading to your lackluster success.
You need to have your crude void of impurities.
I think you should start with the crude…How your extracting it? What steps have you done pre-distillation to clean up your crude for the inevitable distillation??
Let get some background on vac levels and other parameters that are vital for correctly running a SPD.
The fact you ran your condeser at -10 tells me you have a lot more reading to get to before restarting.
Good luck man…lots of great information here for you to build on!
This is aggressive! Lol
Ignore the self proclaimed king, He is bridge troll looking to waste your time.
Sorry he isnt here to help, others on this site will gladly help guide you towards something other than a meme.
Most have a lamp to heat the head or a heat gun to unblock the disty blockage.
I run my recirculating heater at 85c.
I run spd in my lab, and formerly at “home”. Probably 25 runs under my belt now.
start with: I make terrible distillate....why?
spend several hrs reading up. then come back and ask for clarification on anything you still need.