Good Morning,
I have recently been having problems with our Edwards RV8 and was wondering if anyone on here can help me or has run into similar problems. We first were not doing decarb long enough and no terp strips on our Pope 2inch but got the vacuum down to 200-400mTorr consistently throughout runs. Now we have started to decarb harder and do a terp strip but now vacuum is pulling 300-500mTorr at the lowest when introduced to the feed flask. Any ideas? Thought it was because of volatiles but the vacuum itself even not introduced to the feed flask is jumping from 150mTorr to 1 Torr . We tried to change the oil as well as to change the side setting to high throughput and the gas ballast to 2 but nothing will hold. Im out of ideas.
When you say that you are decarbing harder, I assume you are running the decarb process for a longer period of time. If so, you are probably pulling more volatiles into your pump. Rotary vane pumps are very susceptible to out gassing when the oil becomes mixed with high vapor pressure volalitels. Changing the oil once and running gas ballast at level 2 is good but may not be sufficient to clean up your pump.
We have had cases where the pumps are contaminated to the point where it takes 4-5+ oil changes and a healthy dose of gas ballast before the RV pump pressure can recover. Here is an example of how we saw the pressure go down more and more with each oil change. https://www.instagram.com/p/CLZ_ucEhjPo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The best way to mitigate this issue (as others have mentioned) is through frequent oil changes with high quality distilled vacuum pump oil. Check out HIGHVAC for oil. Use “Broxtek” in the discount code for 5% off
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Yes a good oil flush could prob help… if u need the thing rebuilt. Contact us for competitive rates…
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I use a pope 2" (not for cannabis) and a welch 1402 pump. Best practice is having a cold trap before the pump (there should a chiller loop or cold finger trap) to condense the light volatiles and knock them out of the vapor stream. I use a cold finger trap with a mixture of dry ice and acetone, this should get you to -80 or -40C ( i forget which). You should not be having to change your oil multiple times with a proper cold trap.
Next, the feed product needs to be dry and as free of light volatiles, short chain acids, alcohols etc. Pope makes a band heater for the feed flasks so you can heat and vent prior to opening up to the column. If the product burps upon opening to the column you will lose vacuum. You could do a loss on drying of the feed at a certain temp (weigh product before and after drying period, or analyze a sample by karl fischer titration for %h20).
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What is the blank off value of your pump?
Has it changed?
Sure, process vac level is what really matters here, but stating the problem is your pump without actually investigating THE PUMP isn’t the right way to solve this.
Check pump blanked off.
Don’t like that value, change oil/flush.
Repeat with gas ballast open vs closed. What did you learn?
Once you’ve got your pump pulling down to 1um or 3um or wherever, THEN hook it to your system and see how it works.
If your pump pulls down on it’s own, but not when running your system, you’ve got leaks or more volatiles than “before”.
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