Socks holding alot of liquid butane

pressurize your columns to 100psi and lock it in for like 10-15 mins

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Totally spaced the olā€™ tongue tek! Good call! :rofl: :call_me_hand:

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have you tried doing a solvent dump into collection, closing and waiting 2 minutes to let gravity work the rest of the solvent to the bottom of the column and then doing a second dump ?

Tell me where you get your circulators and you got yourself a deal! :ok_hand:

(I kid I kid, if only my work gave me a budget :frowning: )

Iā€™m not sincerely suggesting that heat mats are a good idea, even ones allegedly rated for the environment. Donā€™t do that, folks, thereā€™s no point to takinā€™ the risk. Literally just wrap a grounded line around your material columns hooked up to your hot water lines, or a barrel, pond pump, and point-of-use heater a room or two away. All these options are cheaper, easier, and zero risk, relative to an electrified heat mat.

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A sous vide and pond pump are comparable price wise to a few heating mats

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I use a 40 gallon standard water heater with the top cut off as a heating source. It has 2 elements and I only use the bottom one to heat. The factory drain is where water flows out through PVC and into a cheap water pump purchased from Amazon. From there it pumps into the jacketed columns and reducer. It will maintain any temperature after heating up. I understand this may not be an option for smaller systems that are rack mounted and need to be movable. Itā€™s a very cheap and functional option for me having a dedicated area.
I would not argue that the things I do are perfect or perfectly safe. What I can say is these things work and they are cost effective if a person has and can use a torch or grinder and a saw and knows how to do basic residential wiring.
As for the seed heating mats used as a material column heater, I understand not doing that and waiting 8 to 12 hours for passive recovery. Many people need to do more than one or two runs a day. For me, I care more about lost solvent than I do speed of production. If I get one 8 or 10lb run done per day I am fine with that so these things work perfectly for me.
I take the columns down to pack them and put them back after they are packed. I have considered buying jacketed columns and permanent mounting them and running water lines to them from the water heater. At that point I would have to use the micron socks to load material unless there is another option for loading material that I am unaware of.
What is the standard practice of loading a column when it is permanently mounted? Do people put the sock in the column and stand on a stool to load material and then pull the sock out to unload or do you load the sock outside the columns and then insert the sock after it is filled? I am curious if the same amount of material can be loaded in either method of filling. When filling I add roughly a lb at a time and pack it down. Iā€™m wondering the method for packing and or compaction when the columns are permanently mounted.
Thanks in advance for any descriptions.
If Iā€™m causing this thread to go sideways and if this is not an acceptable topic for this thread let me know and Iā€™ll post the question somewhere else.
Thanks again for all the help in here.

Either way works. You can load right on the machine, but itā€™s a bit messy and can slow production. Itā€™s better to have another column at a convenient height dedicated for packing socks.

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That makes far more sense and I feel like a retard having not thought of that! Lol.
Thank you.
The only thing I am curious about that is after the sock is hard packed in the dummy column does it expand much when taken out and is it a pain to put in the functional column or is there very little elasticity and it slips right in?
I have use micron bags for centrifuge purposes but never as socks or sleeves for processing.

If your socks and columns are the correct size, they go in easy. You may need to massage them a bit if not.

You can fit more, and get a more consistent packing density by doing smaller scoops and packing more often. 2000mL Griffin beaker works well for 6 inch socks.

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Much appreciated.

The easiest way to stop dealing with liquid left over in the extraction column, as long as your system is rated for it; is to use propane at a higher ratio like the 70/30 that we use which is propane heavy.

This makes it extremely easy to recover the solvent stuck in the bio as propane boils -44C at atmospheric pressure vs -5c for butane.

Whenever you recover the column the liquid that boils gets cold and based on its pressure will determine its temperature and if itā€™s temperature is below the boiling point of your solvent at itā€™s current pressure then youā€™re solvent wonā€™t boil.

Our patented process consists of doing a high pressure cycle through the bio which warms the bio up and pushes the remaining liquid out (typically clear solvent) and then when we do our final recovery purge down the warm bio actually drives liquid out of itself.

Resulting in a nice dry sock pulls.

Not the ones certified for hazardous locations :melting_face:

Could you elaborate about doing a warm cycle that pushes solvent out. A warm cycle of what exactly is what I am curious about. All the rest I completely understand, I am wondering if you do a normal run and then inject warm solvent at the end?

Our tech is mostly focused on cycling solvent preferably in the liquid state but also it can be done and the vapor state.

So weā€™re basically taking our vaporized solvent not condensing it and sending it back through the bio. Some call it ā€œhot loopingā€ but thatā€™s not really much of a scientific of a term.

Our extraction process - cycling solvent through the bio - gives us unlimited solvent as both liquid and vapor and we utilize that to both heat the bio as well as push out solvent liquid that has not been extracted from the bio instead of using nitrogen.

But you have to be able to cycle your solvent for it to really work if you just put vapor pressure on the bio it wonā€™t do anything.

I appreciate the explanation.
I typically do the same thing but possibly in a different method. When the butane is out of the solvent tank I remove the nitrogen out if the system and place the suction side of my pump on the collection tank and the pressure side on the material column and pump it for a while until most of the way down the tank is at least warm. This gives the column heater a head start. It really pulls a lot of color doing that but it definitely speeds recovery.

Interesting
How a bout placing a small tank inbetween biomass and collection to catch the colored residual oil but keep the cycle gooing ?

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That would work.
Another thought is to have a second crc stuffed with bentonite for the purpose of filtering the heavily colored solvent, perform 6000 type of bentonite for maximum remediation. A cheap built one that you donā€™t change regularly that has a bypass through the top so itā€™s always there and only used when needed.
I frequently run the heavily colored solvent through my regular crc after I have collected the run from the collection tank. Most of the time it is filtered well enough to use the small amount of extract that it yields. Once in a while it is on that bad side of a medium color. At that point itā€™s used for edibles or to give away tj someone in need that canā€™t pay but has pain needs.
Thanks for all the help and ideas.