Im into the body of distillation of CBD and my cylinder of carbon dioxide ran out. Cold trap is still at -50c (or colder based on the temp gun im using) with acetone as the solvent. Should I call it quits till i get more dry ice or can I finish the distillation as there are no volatiles left in the extract? (after i pulled the volatiles off and hit the heads I stopped the run and cleaned the glassware then started distillation again)
Thanks in advance guys!
No one can really answer this question for you. You have to gauge if the trap will be up to above some temp. Above 0C I’d definitely stop.
ok great, thanks for the quick reply. Have another cylinder arriving in the morning so will keep an eye on the acetone temp and call it a day when it hits close to 0c.
If you’re not too worried about going down to dry ice temperatures, then mix some regular ice with salt and throw it into your cold trap. Salty ice can go down to as low as negative 21°c.
A make shift solution I sometimes use
Defenatly once I am in mains
Is using a chiller and a piece of stainlesssteel hose ( the once used for
Solar panel heating wrap it in a coil and place in the acetone
Almost all chillers can hit -25C on the coldtrap
I have also done runs without anything in the coldtrap I then runslow 5C increments at a time and keeping an eye on vacuüm levels whatever makes it treu to the pump has little effect and
In all cases I was able to distill to the end at least 12 liters mains on a 20 L rig
I have run complete heads to tails runs
On the chiller hack
When mains arrives stop the heat for 15 min the shut the pump drain the vacuum oil fill in fresh and continue
Then after collect all used vacuum pump oil and put hard vacuum on it at 120C for the night so it can be reused
So only pull heads not distilling the vacuümpomp oil itself
Good tip, calcium chloride would work too but not a fan of using that stuff due to irritation.
I like the idea of a stainless tube to put in the cold trap and run it with the acetone. Ghetto tek is where its at, Cheers Roguelab. I think II may be able to get a coil out of an immersion heater and rig that up to run the chiller coolant through.
33kg of carbon dioxide runs me $230 AUD for the cylinder. Surprisingly from start to finish ill use almost half a tank making dry ice for the cold trap. The ice maker is an ebay special so might have to fork out for a decent one. Just seems a waste to be using on the mains and tails considering how there arent a large amount of volatiles to contend with.