Ran a run of cured trim in 6x48 jacketed columns in iron fist ex40 at -20c, the socks had lots of liquid butane left in them when i pulled them out, it poured butane out the bottom of the socks when removed. I pushed with nitrogen up to 85psi to try and get most out and it was just nitrogen and no liquid coming into collection pot so i figured most of liquid tane was out but nope. Don’t really have a way to heat columns at the moment. Any ideas how to resolve this without heating material spools?
Thank you,
Do you have a valve between your material column and the Recovery vessel? If so you can try a burp. Close the valve to your material column, vent your nitrogen (SAFELY!Do not vent all the way down to zero psi) and then allow pressure to build in the material column from the butane evaporating. If you can even poor hot water on the material column at this stage will help immensely, I used to wrap towels around the column and poor a pitcher of hot water down the towel. Keep recovering as normal to your solvent vessel and after 5-10 minutes open that valve you had closed on the matrerial column into your collection vessel again and you should see a gush of solvent being pushed from the vapor head space that built in the material column. Hope that makes sense dude. Also the colder you can get that Recovery/collection vessel the harder you’ll pull, assuming you’re running passively.
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Without heating you will consistently lose around 1lb of solvent per 1 lb of biomass even after pushing with nitrogen several times, and the soup that’s gathering in your material column base will be very dark so its not always recommended to push it forward before a change. We used to actually push that last bit into a separate vessel and once enough built up we’d remediate for edibles.
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I burped the valve from the material to collection about 10 times and did get lots more tane, at the end it was just nitrogen entering the collection so i figured the liquid was mostly out. The jacket on the material has cold transfer fluid and insulation around it so heating it with hot water is not really a option for us. Butane in material never builds pressure because material spool is always cold. Thank you for your response!
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Yeah that’s about what its holding (1 lb per lb of material) the soup that came out even after letting it sit overnight was not dark after going through crc with zeoclear y . thank you for your response!
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I believe flash point for butane is like -60c so if your jacket is warmer than that, you will still be building a small amount of vapor pressure. Only tip I can think of given your system would be to try burping much later into recovery. Has worked well for me for the bigger passive systems I’ve used, Though like @GCFFiltration stated this could be much darker oil, we haven’t seen issues when running a CRC stack, but certainly have without. You could also try turning off your compressor on the chiller feeding the jackets, so its only recirculating during the recovery portion, would have to warm them at least a little more. Then chill back down while prepping next run. I’ve seen numbers almost identical to those stated by GCFF. We lose about 8lbs of tane per 10 lb run That’s all i got though, hope some o fit helps, best of luck!
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I closed off the material collum and turned off chiller so i could vent butane to exhaust fan, so there is pressure in the material column now from the butane, i put a vacuum on it while it was cold to make sure there was no oxygen in there.
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Route the top of your material column to your gas pump or heat exchanger and use your active pump or passive heat exchanger to capture the gas coming off the material column
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Was thinking of doing that, running it to the mol then pump, since its not heated do you think just running it to condenser coil would be fine and not carry over any water?
Thank you
Be very careful ever vac’ing a filled column with anything other than a venturi pump my man. Like I said flash point for butane is around -60c so if you’re above that there’s almost certainly going to be enough vapor for a boom boom.
Vapor + oxygen + spark(vac pump) = no bueno
I think butane’s LEL is only like 1.8% of atmosphere
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Im running a piab venturi pump. Thank you i really appreciate the info and response!
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Good on ya! Most welcome!
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Use a gas recovery pump such as a TRS21 or a GC5000 or Corken or CMEPOL, do not use a regular scroll vac pump or the like
About the water, I would suggest that there is very little chance that water will evaporate the cold material column and go into your gas recovery pump but if your worried route it thru your sieve 1st
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Thank you! We are running a corken t91 for recovery
To what temp should a material colum be heated for best recovery? Loosing 1lb of solvent per 1lb of biomass sounds a lot.
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I was always between 105F and 135F
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1lb per lb of bio definitely seems excessive, but if that’s the norm for not heating spools i guess we will just chock it up to more consumables than originally thought for speed of production.
Would it make since to open top of spool and push down on sock to try and squeeze extra tane out then burping one more time before removing?
That would almost certainly help get more solvent back.
Though you’re likely still going to need a pressure assist to actually move it along.
How much is that solvent worth tho?
6 x 48 im guessing your running between 7-9 lbs per sock on average. So is the ($6/LB) $42-$63 in butane loss per run worth the effort ?
I suppose at even 5 runs a day, those figures can stack up quite quickly. If the system is properly grounded and in a proper booth the risk sounds minimal for sure. Give it a shot 
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You’re not going to be able to push it out by hand at those temperatures. The fact that your columns stay so cold is what’s causing issues. How are you able to vacuum back down your column when you’ve got a new sock in if you have a pool of butane in the bottom of it?
It really just puts more load on your filtration stack running the spent through alongside your good solution and the compounds present in that long soak solution are not the same as the impurities present in the unsoaked version. I think you’ll be amazed what difference you’ll see by excluding that portion for a separate process stream.
Zeoclear Y is a good product. I’d say it compares to our CheapFast in use and efficacy. Only difference being CheapFast is available for $110 for 20 lbs where Zeoclear Y costs $150 for 9kg(19.8 lbs).
That’s without it being on sale right now. About a week ago CheapFast was available for $77 for 20 lbs. Or buy it in big chunks and get it for $900 for 200lbs without a sale!
Call (619) 913-2770 9a-9p PT 7 days a week to get your free sample!