I don’t take any offense Bc I’m on the same boat as y’all. When these type of units are installed it requires almost every type of engineer( process, chemical, safety, mechanical) to prevent the problems that are occurring. My frustration is due to part that new comers are coming in and think it’s adding some powders and let it work. In the end it’s safety. That’s the only thing i care about. From operator to consumer.
@Dred_pirate I’ve been knowning all this info since the vape epidemic. I’ve done over 300+ hours of research into this. I’ve met up with Clancy to fabricate a fool proof CRC. When I’m releasing this journal i have it involves over 50 links, PID, PFD, CAD, and vendor list to buy parts to build a fool proof column. I no longer can invest my time into this as i spent months of researching and traveling to create this. It’s costed me a lot but I’ve done it to save any potetional dangers that can happen. Reality i work on an engineers thinking not chemistry. I visualize how it works and i understand it completely. I feel engineers are concentrated more on how things work and chemist know why they work.
Filter/adsorbent beds are sized on the basis of areal mass or volume flow rate.
What kind of flow rate in terms of liters/minute/square centimeter can you run at with what solvent?
Once you set that, the length of the bed sets the residence time and the depth of each layer in the bed breaks that up into the amount of time a molecule spends in each adsorbent layer.
Scaling up on that basis works until the column gets big enough to have flow distribution problems.
the tricky thing we don’t know how much crude is in a extraction to come up with these numbers. The only easy solution i can think of is knowning how much solvent is lost per a run on there system. New run- Weigh there recovery tank. Record that data. Extract to a separate pressure vessel on a scale. Re-weigh there recovery tank. Weight the pressure vessel. This should give you a better estimate and make your beds off your recorded data. I
know residency time is usually with absorbers such as carbon. adsorbtion I would think of as surface area contact scrubbing.
It’s good to see many others concerned about filtration media contamination.
I’ve read the majority of the OG CRC thread but can’t recall if glass media was considered as an option. In wastewater filtration, pool filtration, sand can be used. Glass media is another option. Can filter down to around 50-5 micron depending on type. Might not work well for this application for a variety of reasons but I was curious if it’d been discussed as a Celite alternative. As a crc noob I’m almost certain that this would have been brought up and potentially dismissed for good reason, I just haven’t been able to find it via searching & browsing yet.
Edit, of course it’s been mentioned months ago.
What’s the chance of glass beads or ‘frit’ being crushed and pulverized/powderized inside a pressurized CRC @ say 100psi to smaller than 5 micron? Not the same situation but ever since D-nail posted the pieces of glass particulate generated by banger beads / ‘terp peals’ I’ve had thoughts of microscopic glass particles in various odd situations… https://www.instagram.com/p/B6JScswnS_a/
If you break the particles of sand up even more then you will essentially have a product that is like celite. Very small particle size and abysmal flow rates.
To really get a good use of sand for filtrstion you want a structures packing. What i mean is you want to layer the different particle sizes, you want biggest particles on the bottom and smallest on top. The idea is when you set your media with solvent the smaller particles will wash down and fit inside the spaces between the big particles, and by doing so the size of the gap between each particle are significantly reduced. This means better filtration because the actual filtration of particles from solution happens in the spaces between the particles.
Typical glass frit will take you to 10 micron filtration if you structure your packing, i use corase grit sand blasting media and fine construction sand to structure my CRC Prefilter. Both warshed well of course.
To increase your speeds even more there are companies that sell engineered glass filtration beads that are perfectly spherical and exhibit less drag than crushed sand or “frit” due to the smooth spherical surface of the glass beads. Their spherical shape also changes and standardizes the spaces between the particles, further supporting increased flow rates.
I think most folks overlook sand as a filtration media because they’ve already got good filtration equipment and dont see any reason to fix what aint broke. However some of us folks have to get innovative.
that’s true if you’re only running crc for old material and pawning that crc stuff off as high potency shit. Honestly to me it’s all about potency. If you’re not starting off with 18%-29% THCA (tested) cannabis then what’s the point of even extracting . Again though that’s my pov.
I suppose any consumer who buys off the black market and comes to this site and learns how well the crc cleans up older material then it does fresh material… you an see a clearer view of distrust.
I’m honestly all about those beautiful yellow and gold concentrates. I find the yellow and gold slabs to be prettier.
Crc’s great but not everyone’s going through the steps to make a better product. Be redundant with your filter if your only using papers… This was me b4 my sisntered.
You can see the spherical adsorbent covered in pigment. That’s definitely silica that made its way past a nice thick cake of t5 and pass filters going down to 2 micron . The sample on the slide is of some fire looking white sauce. Hot nail or not. Water in the pipe or not. You don’t want to be vaping these powders.
I think for compounds that are judged by purity (isolate and distillate), CRC is great. Makes a cleaner and more pure product.
I think for craft concentrates, like live resins, rosins, etc. it should be avoided altogether.
Strips terpenes and offers no real benefit to these products, other than making it look nice. And maybe bumping the potency a bit.
Thus, the hate from the BHO/Rosin heads lol.
The clear colorless stuff is cool but I find the taste just sucks. I will happily take some color in the dabs if there is a lot of flavor. I said it before there’s nothing new about passing oleoresin through adsorbing medias - look to the vegetable oil industry. D. Gold’s Cannabis Alchemy makes specific reference to using Florisil. It is all consumer preference, which is subject to change every 6 months or so. What is the fad of today may fall out next month.
We put absorbents in a BF while making distillate and vape and smoke that shit out of that and everyones ok with that . We are directly distilling cannabinoids in the presence of absorbents. So thats what i think of even if your smoking a CRC dab with powders . I just don’t use silica in general just b80 , T5 , occasionally magsil if needed
So let’s talk about ur filter paper setup for sec. Are u using solid rings that fit extra tight. Leaving the papers bigger than the hole so it seals w the ring all the way down?
I’m really hoping your doing something wrong loading these
my metal rings holding it down WILL NOT come out after loaded ,unless soaked in alcohol to weaken the paper. Then beat out w wood mallet
They are wedge in tight w the papers as a seal. I might be rough w it but at $40 for the whole set I’ll buy another if damage it
Is urs like this. If you say yes I’m def not CRC till I get proper equipment
I would stack papers up until it it was so thick I had to beat the ring down against the filter bed to make it nice and snug . It’s what I had available at the time. A full circle retention ring not the ones from Bogart that aren’t a complete circle
My 2¢ is new and old people alike that don’t understand “mesh.”
Unless you get a range, you have no idea how small your smallest particles are. Even pre-wetting/washing is no guarantee to clean out the smallest of particles. When buying media make sure the mesh number is a range and not a single number.
I’d be down on CRC too if I’d vaporized filter media once or twice.
Good call