Hello Gang,
Has anyone seen this before in their distillate? This was purchased from a local processor who is not providing much info on this. It is not a solid, behaves more like the distillate oil. My best guess is vacuum grease from the distillation process, or adhesive from a sticker on the inside somehow? Is there any tests I can run to confirm the mystery substance?
Thanks all,
Kind of hard to see, are the squiggly bits neon green?
When there’s an instance of unknown contaminated product from a supplier this is what I would do:
Label the shit out of the jar in bold letters “DO NOT USE, DO NOT DISCARD, ITEM QUARANTINED FOR QUALITY CONTROL ISSUES” (good to also let everyone working in the facility know what’s up)
Document the problem and describe the contamination to the best of your ability on paper and with lots of pictures
Contact the supplier letting them know you received contaminated product and supply them with all of the info you have collected on it. Always try and get them to figure out what in their process or facility caused the problem.
Request that you send the product back to them (or dispose it, if that’s what they want) and get a replacement.
Edit: and my dartboard guess if it is indeed neon green is maybe it’s one of the heat transfer fluids?
Looks like vacuum grease to me
Looks like whatever it is, it really doesn’t want to incorporate itself into the mixture so separation should be as easy as centrifuging.
I’ve seen this a few times. If it’s wispy/cloudy and white it’s probably Dow grease, of it’s chunky white it’s probably Apiezon grease.
My 2 cents aren’t actually worth that these days
I agree if it’s not the neon green it appears, I know how getting photos to represent our products as they actually appear can sometimes be difficult.
Have not seen any neon green Grease
I’ve seen grease attract chlorophyll to some extent. Rare, but it happens.
This being distillate makes it somewhat strange. I’m leaning towards dirty jar if it ain’t grease
It does look like a pickle jar, the kind with the painted on logo
Maybe?
Ding ding…got your disty
Pickle juice terps
Yum
looking sus whatever is going on there. Is that actually green or just a glare?
Never seen vac grease look like that. Usually cloudy like others stated.
My off the cuff guess something melted or was in your condenser.
Do you in-place clean or take apart and soak?
Did you change any plastic? How about the little piece inside your GL caps if you have them?
Did any raschig rings break?
Is the ethanol you use to winterize separate than the ethanol you use for reclaim? Jars the same?
Did you heat out your condenser prior to the swap?
It’s definitely not neon-green, the light refraction from the distillate in the glass is something I’ve seen a lot, where I’d bet my money anyway.
Do you do Hot Condenser Tek?
First Pass?
It looks like DOW Vacuum Grease as mentioned before. Get a refund or replacement. Unless you pay for testing or have it in house, is it safe? Would you bet your or others lives on it? If you don’t know what it is you should quarantine until the issue is resolved.
And some friendly advice. When taking a picture, take everything else out of the shot. Take a couple shots from different angles and/or use a screen to keep your light from affecting the picture you are wanting good advice on. Then submit just the best pictures.
If it comes from the same lab you can bet it will still have vacuum grease contamination even if you can’t see it.
The quick fix for this complaint is to just heat the distillate and melt it together. They’ll sell it to someone else. It’s a disgusting practice in my opinion but it’s borderline common practice due to the recommendations and practices of some of the distillation equipment suppliers.
Vacuum grease contamination is happening constantly during distillation if the system uses grease at any point in the vapor path. Anyone reading this who wants to avoid this issue check out my short path thread and the systems I sell to avoid this issue
Or just use dry ptfe sleeves on a good sealing system, Mines from China from @david it was dirt cheap, but it holds vac with ptfe sleeves 30 vac depth during mains, generally below 100 after the last of the volatiles go through sub 160c.
True. They don’t provide all of the benefits of the kf system shown but if it works for you for removing vacuum grease from the equation that is great.
Have you been able to use many ptfe sleeves per run successfully for many runs in a row? I’ve never personally seen that work without warping or other issues creating doubts after a few runs
So far so good on re using them, ill definitely post back if any issue arises, but I think good joints and minimal twisting during assembly seems to work.
That is a nice looking unit by the way, and not trying to step on your toes, just stating facts based off my personal experience.
Thank you!
No toes are stepped on here. I love simple and inexpensive solutions. Thank you for sharing your experience
