Doesn’t explain why it was still in the tube, but does atleast confirm it was…
To me that says you still have liquid solvent in your tubes when you switch to recovery, you’re getting the solvent back, but the goods it contained are being dropped again when you do.
Except…you’re now clearing your columns with N2, so how could there be enough liquid solvent left in there to lower your yield…
You’ve also pushed over a metric shit ton of solvent.
Baffled.
Yeah I don’t think there’s much for liquid solvent left hanging around, I’ve been putting n2 through till it barely drips. Am also baffled. Only possible resolutions I could think of are some sort of agitation bearings in the column, 1hr+ soaks, pulverizing the material before packing it…idk, shooting from the hip here
Might be late to this but some things i might recomend that I didn’t see.
Pull a vaccuum on every column and collection before a run.
If the humidity is above 15% you could start to see moisture forming around the trichomes.
I suppose if your molecular sieve wasnt vertical it could cause your butane to be getting wet overtime.
I’ve seen ice chunks floating in ppls solvent before years ago and watched dumby fire product produce 5% or lower.
Also for whatever its worth u said u inject at 50 psi from a non jacketed solvent tank.
If butane isnt cold it likes to channel.
I typically start No2 push at an even lower psi and gradually work my way up.
All i can say is any time i ever had major yeild loss in good product it always came down to the same issue. … Moisture.
Ambient lab humidity needs to be taken into account. Make sure your keeping your product dry and evacuating any atmosphere out before a run. Pull vac on the sieve material and collection and all lines.
Make sure your FF is actually being stored and sealed properly.
It would suck to think your doing something wrong when many people don’t in fact really know all the paramaters to fresh frozen.
Also for the size of your machine. Too high of a psi can cause channeling which can majoly affect yeilds as it won’t retain anything from the biomass it doesn’t make contact with.
Many ppl run crazy high pressures but i usually only go as high as 75 psi at the very end to help remove any remaining solvent in liquid phase.
In fact im pretty sure @Soxhlet has all of his PRVs set at 75psi
So try to slow it down. Maybe let the natural pressure of the butane flow over first then add No2 to compesate for the pressure loss.
Sometimes you just gotta slowwww down
If anyone knows a good consult in the northeast feel free to lmk
Forget about stalling. My guess is your heat exchangers arent keeping your gas as cold as you might want allowing for evaporation.
Pack not too right. You’ll find a nice even medium pack will be able to retain more of the goods.
I do vac everthing before each run. For the column I vac it down down, cool it, sweep it with n2, then pack. I do need to mount the sieve vertically, though it is packed full of beads and over sized for my application. Also, I had shit yields after completely fresh (distilled) butane. Moisture may be an issue, tho the shit yields also occured with dry material. I like your idea of slowly ramping n2, gonna try that next time
The tank sits in slurry until boiling stops and it becomes gelatinous, then injects through a coil in a different dry ice slurry
Oh hellll naaa
Yeah so dry ice and etoh will hit -110 but that will not be the case throughout the process.
I used to think my injection coil was injecting at -80 bcuz my slurry was -80
Then i got thermocouples and started to realise how drastic the temp drop is once it leaves the slurry
Def want to set up a thermal coupling at some point. I’m guessing around -40-50 injection temp, the lines are insulated. But how is it that not cold enough solvent would cause poor yield? Thought just poor quality, as it’d carry fats
Regardless im sure your gas is plenty cold for dry cure.
I mean channeling does happen.
I never No2 sweep but have nothing against it. Just find its a step thats not completely necessary
Assuming your system has no leaks and isnt Pulling atmosphere into your system during vac down.
Then inject with out any No2. Open lines all the way to collection.
Once the pressures in your solvent and material columns get close to hitting an equilibrium. Then slowly start ramping up No2.
If u cant hear the No2 injecting then you may need to up it a little more.
Your flush will take slightly longer but you won’t need to stall and make sure your using a high ratio of gas.
In the event your biomass does have too much moisture. One of the only things i know will help is bumping up to a 10:1 gas to biomass ratio
The temp isnt your issue.
At least not how your thinking.
Picture this.
If u have a high amount of moisture or maybe a leak when your Pulling vac moisture is inside your system…
Water freezes at 32f so If u inject at -40 all that moisture will freeze over your trichomes head and lock up your yeild in ice
So sorry read that wrong.
Warmer solvent will begin to pull things (which i cant name all of em) but fats are a good example.
The folder your gas the less fats lipids tannins etc. you’ll pull out.
In addition the warmer the solvent the faster its going to hit its boiling point and start to evap.
So If you stall for an hour without cooling the pressure will build as your liquid phase begins to flash into a vapor. You will not extract anything with the vapor.
Lastly watm butane likes to channel at -40 your probably not getting channeling from your gas. But if your injecting it in as fast as u can and u can hear your valve flowing like crazy, you may be causing channeling.
The way u pack your column could effwvt channeling too
Soooo…that’s data with repacking.
A second run without repacking that did NOT yield might point to channeling…
Flailing wildly…
Im flailing wildly?
Just tryna cover any possibilities. I’ve been there before and it sucks to lose sleep over yeilds.
Theres a million possibilities im just tryna lay out a few opinions
Nope. Me
One step further than
@cyclopath makes a great point. If yield is lower than it should be. Rerun again. no repack if it fails to pull any more u can almost gurantee u have channeling. Esp if breaking up your spent biomass and repacking got you 14 gs
My guess is you repacked it and it channeled again. But since u packed it again it had a chance to make contact with biomass it previously passed by
Lawlll
I always wondered if anyone had success using an iron fist pnematic column packer?? It just seems so compressed