Wouldnt you want seperate cakes? Buchner, frit/lab paper, celite 545, alumn oxide? If mixed together, I wouldnt thing the AO would have enough properties to do a proper lipid/wax trap like if individually separated in cakes.
Maybe I’m over thinking it.
Last buchner filter I did my AO looked a bit pourus (Small pin holes)
I’ve had success stacking T-5 and alumina without any issue but in my case I was using them for different purposes. The T-5 for trapping solids like waxes, fats etc and the alumina for its amphoteric properties to smooth out the crude before going to distillate. I do put a small coffee filter cut to size on top of the stack just to prevent a divot from forming as I pour. I wouldn’t rely on alumina for grabbing the solids necessarily since there are more effective materials like the clay for that.
What’s t5?
Sorry, I should have explained that. It’s a type of bentonite clay offered by Carbon Chemistry. Talk to @Shadownaught if you want to try some. Good stuff.
Does T-5 catch fats and waxes? Any chance you’d want to share a SOP on that?
@tweedledew It’s up there in the parts list, man! Neutral bentonite clay! 
I’ve not had any luck with alumina, but I didn’t play with it a lot. For the last couple of weeks my partner and I were toying with the idea of pouring a thin bentonite clay cake and then topping it with a slurry of homogenized ac and bentonite. We were wondering if we would get the same adsorbant properties with a kick in the speed. It’s the AC on top that really kills it. The bentonite by itself isn’t all that bad considering how fine it is.
Anyway, it’s on the docket to try this week. I’ll let everyone know how it goes!
SOP for using bentonite to catch fats:
Truth be told I think using bentonite for fat removal is a bit on the overkill side (no judgement-- it’s certainly not possible to remove to many fats). I just use Watman 4s to filter out fats. As long as the solution stays cold the fats will be easily picked up by the paper.
Ah gotcha, I was wondering if the T-5 was more of a targetted product. Yup I see it now.
So I was looking up bentonite clays for purchase and noticed many mentioning they are heavily negatively charged. I imagine due to this fact there is a significant importance in acquiring neutral over the standard negative in regards to this process, correct?
Yes, you want to avoid making your crude any more acidic than it needs to be. That acidic state can lead to isomerization when you distill turning your D9 or CBD into D8 (possibly desirable) or D10 (not desirable).
D10 is the devil.
I’m planning on preparing a 250g batch over the weekend and was looking for some final bits of advice before I begin.
I don’t believe I can currently acquire 200 proof ethanol, but believe I can instead create it with the use of 3a molecular sieve. Can anyone think of any reason not to create my own 200 proof from 190 using something like this since I’m in a pinch?
Also, would it sound accurate to use something around 1l for the second pass and a half liter for the rinse instead of cutting that to 1/10th?
Finally, I’m thinking I should probably still keep maybe 20lbs of dry ice handy since there’s winterization to be done, though I theorize I should need considerably less, approx. 1/10th for making my ethanol syrup and will want to break my pieces up into something more around golf ball sizes?
Sorry if these questions are like beating a dead horse.
Yes I can think of one,moisture ! your 190 proof is more than sufficant to perform the extraction, 190 will precipate waxes better too.
Also that example is about twice the price you can get good sieves for. I got [These](HFS (R) Molecular Sieve Zeolite… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y2B4CPK?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf) and they worked great right out of the package (vacuum packed in aluminum). C-beads are also very competitively priced. Figure on them holding 20% of their weight in water. So to raise 1 liter of 95% etoh to 100%, you’ll need 250 grams of sieves.
Normal 3A mol sieve is useless, more or less, for dehydrating ethanol.
We are just launching our ProofUp Beads(PUBs) which are specifically designed to do just that. PUBs can hold 20% of their weight in water while allowing EtOH to bypass.
I’m definitely not trying to argue, but am trying to understand why they are advertising the following excerpt?
“Water Molecules, which have a Molecular Diameter of About 2.8 Angstroms in Diameter. While Water can Fit Inside of the Molecular Sieve Crystal, Hydrocarbon Chains such as Ethanol (approx. 3.6 Angstroms) Won’t be Adsorbed by the Molecular Sieve due to their Larger Molecular Diameters, which Prevents the Hydrocarbons from Being Able to Fit Through the Pore Opening of the 3A Zeolite Crystal.”
(from link titled, ‘this’ in earlier reply)
I have to admit they aren’t advertising the Equilibrium Ethylene Capacity as covered in the link provided by @coppertop, which I’m assuming is the value @Shadownaught is referring to concerning etoh bypassing the beads?
I was thinking the more expensive, nearly twice the cost by weight, 3A appeared to be specially designed for drying ethanol?
I might break down and do the whole thing using just 190, but would love to do it following the recipe to the T.
They worked great for getting my 180 proof to 195 proof when I was tuning my still and collected about 1.5 liters a bit too fast and didn’t feel like redistilling it. But to be fair I didn’t bother checking how much etoh the beads held on to. I just filtered out the sieves and dumped that into the rest of my 190 proof. They very well could have held on to a significant amount of ethanol as well. Though they would have had to hold on to more than 20% of their weight, because I hit the proof I was aiming for.
To be clear I understand, you intentionally rose the proof to only 195, or that was all you were able to achieve with your 3A?
It was intentional. I had no way of properly storing the sieves at the time after opening the package, so I just dumped the entire 500 grams into the ethanol for shits and giggles with the intent of getting it over 95% from 90%. I didn’t need to get it to 100%. After doing the math I figured I’d hit ~97%. Which is what my hydrometer read after checking at room temp (maybe a bit colder than room temp).
Even at a Equilibrium Ethylene Capacity of 3mg/g we’re talking about a loss of approximately 6g of ethanol being absorbed alongside the 5% water when drying 2L, right? Which, is approximately 6ml?
Then if I stored it with 3A inside of it I’d lose at most another 6ml?
I hope I’m understanding that right. If they’re suggesting per g of 3A and not ethanol then we’re looking at something more like 1.5ml lost, right?
If I’m understanding that all right those seem like pretty minor losses.