Building an IC69 Heat Exchanger

[A6 Grower]

Haha yup! Learned that one the hard way. We knew to throttle the valves, but we didn't give it enough credence. That on top of running too many columns and having too much liquid in the bottom got us. The evap coil would've saved our pump I think.

I'm planning to put a standard filter drier before the pump to start and then work on building one of those once it's been R&D'd a little more and I have a little more time.

Thanks again for all the input guys. I love this forum!

GH

You dont have a filter drier before your pump?!?! Huge mistake, that little $16 filter will block mist just fine, it wont block oil laden butane but it will block mist. Ive cut one in half to find the bottom half covered in oil from before when i ran my machine to hot(hotter water bath makes more mist from rapid butane evaporation) and like you was trying to run to many tubes into that little pot. Common first timer mistakes, dont take em to hard. just remember the lesson learned. There will be more mistake to come, believe me lol. The molecular sieve water trap is basically just a better bigger filter drier

 

[gholladay]

You dont have a filter drier before your pump?!?! Huge mistake, that little $16 filter will block mist just fine, it wont block oil laden butane but it will block mist. Ive cut one in half to find the bottom half covered in oil from before when i ran my machine to hot(hotter water bath makes more mist from rapid butane evaporation) and like you was trying to run to many tubes into that little pot. Common first timer mistakes, dont take em to hard. just remember the lesson learned. There will be more mistake to come, believe me lol. The molecular sieve water trap is basically just a better bigger filter drier

A6,

Let me rephrase. We most certainly had a filter drier before our pump when we were running the MKiii. My team is currently building out a lab and larger machine, so I'm not currently running anything. Only purchasing right now. So when I say I'm "planning to", I mean that we will have one once we're operational, which is about a month away. Hence my fury of technical questions over the last week. I'm in purchasing mode.

 

[cerkilr]

i have a question, if you guys don't mind.
again this is all new to me and i just want to make sure i have it all correct.

so vapor comes out of the collection pot to the tr21 and out to the storage tank, the IC69 is placed between the tr21 and the storage tank, to chill the tane from heat picked up by the recovery pump?

others are talking about adding a second from collection tank to tr21 in warm water just to make sure no liquid is pulled into pump?

again i am just trying to make sure i have this down. please correct me if i am wrong.

??

 

[gholladay]

??

Cerkilr,

You're on the right track. A coil between the collection basin and pump in a warm water bath could be used to make sure no hash oil splatter makes it to the pump. It's a protective measure to increase pump life. Not many people do this though.

The typical set up is a coil before injection and a coil after the pump, to cool down the liquid tane after it gets heated up during compression. This is especially important if you have a tr-21, which generates a lot of heat. The heat adds pressure to the tank, which makes the recovery time longer.

 

[cerkilr]

Cerkilr,

You're on the right track. A coil between the collection basin and pump in a warm water bath could be used to make sure no hash oil splatter makes it to the pump. It's a protective measure to increase pump life. Not many people do this though.

The typical set up is a coil before injection and a coil after the pump, to cool down the liquid tane after it gets heated up during compression. This is especially important if you have a tr-21, which generates a lot of heat. The heat adds pressure to the tank, which makes the recovery time longer.

thank you for taking your time just wanted to make sure, i am thinking about this correct. i ordered tr21 and one 3/8" coil. but i have not read anything about a coil before injection are you referring to cold bath for 50#storage before/while injecting?

 

[gholladay]

thank you for taking your time just wanted to make sure, i am thinking about this correct. i ordered tr21 and one 3/8" coil. but i have not read anything about a coil before injection are you referring to cold bath for 50#storage before/while injecting?

Cerk,

Either method will work. You can chill the tank to keep it cool or you can keep the tank at room temp and pass the tane through a chiller coil before it gets to the column. Some of our more experienced brethren have found that when you chill your tank on DI and alcohol, it can actually lower the pressure in the tank so much that the tane won't flood all the way up the column. They found out that the best way to solve this was to leave the tank at room temp so it maintains a good pressure, and pass the butane through a pre-chiller coil.

If you're just cooling your tank on ice this won't be an issue. This is more of a problem when you have super cold temps and large column diameters (4")

GH

 

[Sunfire]

Putting tanks in freezers is extremely dangerous as well, don't do it. I have been fine just using ice bath for tank and after chiller. Gotta make lots of ice in the freezer though. The pre chiller won't help you if it's just on an ice and water bath. The pre chiller is mainly for subzero.

What folk have been playing with is a coil wrapped around their collection pot after the pump to warm the water and chill the tane vapor more, I've never heard of a coil before the pump in warm water. Cool water will help with condensing your aspirated product. Warm water will just ass more pressure and heat and may not help with aspiration any more than just a coil sitting out at room temp. It sound like a cool idea though, I nice 25' coil to catch any aspirated product. Maybe not necessary and might slow down recovery times. I'm currently battling aspiration issues myself but I'm starting to think it's directly related to a high moisture content in my tane as I discovered I has used drier filter cores that were shipped to me fully saturated, bastatds!

 

[cerkilr]

Cerk,

Either method will work. You can chill the tank to keep it cool or you can keep the tank at room temp and pass the tane through a chiller coil before it gets to the column. Some of our more experienced brethren have found that when you chill your tank on DI and alcohol, it can actually lower the pressure in the tank so much that the tane won't flood all the way up the column. They found out that the best way to solve this was to leave the tank at room temp so it maintains a good pressure, and pass the butane through a pre-chiller coil.

If you're just cooling your tank on ice this won't be an issue. This is more of a problem when you have super cold temps and large column diameters (4")

GH

ok got it thank you..

one other question does anyone have a source for a 10" base glacier has had me back ordered for 7 weeks i cant take it. I want to get to work.

 

[Sunfire]

Hmmm the website says both the welded base and the 10x12 spools have 12 in stock each. Did you call them?

 

[A6 Grower]

glacier is notorious for incorrect stock on the website, I hate ordering from them.

 

[Sunfire]

Yeah that's why I asked if he called them. I always call any company to check stock before ordering.

 

[NorPene Solutions]

Putting tanks in freezers is extremely dangerous as well, don't do it. I have been fine just using ice bath for tank and after chiller. Gotta make lots of ice in the freezer though. The pre chiller won't help you if it's just on an ice and water bath. The pre chiller is mainly for subzero.

What folk have been playing with is a coil wrapped around their collection pot after the pump to warm the water and chill the tane vapor more, I've never heard of a coil before the pump in warm water. Cool water will help with condensing your aspirated product. Warm water will just ass more pressure and heat and may not help with aspiration any more than just a coil sitting out at room temp. It sound like a cool idea though, I nice 25' coil to catch any aspirated product. Maybe not necessary and might slow down recovery times. I'm currently battling aspiration issues myself but I'm starting to think it's directly related to a high moisture content in my tane as I discovered I has used drier filter cores that were shipped to me fully saturated, bastatds!

I believe people are using a coil in or around their collection pot bath to initially warm the exiting vapor even further after exiting the collection pot , trying to ensure liquid is turned to vapour prior to the pump in the hopes of stopping any further aspiration of liquid into the pump. Followed by a chiller coil after the pump.

 

[A6 Grower]

I hate that you have to do this.... God dammit, i keep great track of my businesses inventory why cant you?!?!!

 

[Sunfire]

From what I've read, people are using that technique to warm their water bath and cool the vapor, that would be post pump. As I said I've never heard of it being done pre pump so idk about that all, first for me. Just thinking about It though, it's going to add more heat to your system, plus have more length to push and suck through. Idk if it's good to further vaporize aspirated product, that's going to make it easier to travel to your pumps. I would be much more in favor of a cold trap or water trap.

 

[Sunfire]

I hate that you have to do this.... God dammit, i keep great track of my businesses inventory why cant you?!?!!

More time and money, more overhead. I think they are having issues too with the long shoreman strike being over they got flooded with 9 containers of products! Then had to fill all the back ordered items. I bet shuts moving quick for them atm but even during the strike when they had little inventory they didn't keep it current.

 

[GratefulOne]

Confirming- people do use a coil before the pump. Some even put the coil in a slow cooker or something else heating water. They do it to force all solvent to vapor before reaching the pump. It seems to me a trap would do the same and be a better way to trap any oil mist.

 

[Sunfire]

I'm just not getting it, the solvent should be in vapor form when leaving the pot yes? It's hard to grasp a lot of things, people's setups are all so different and require different things to operate properly. So much variety of design out there makes it really hard for us to try to help eachother.

I'm still under the impression that a lower water bath temp, and trap would be best. If you using quality disposable drier filters, like the emerson ones, they have a 40 micron pre filter and a 20 micron post filter. Those plus a 100% molecular sieve core, with its super tight matrix, should help catch aspiration greatly.

 

[NorPene Solutions]

In a perfect world, with a properly running, and properly operated CLS system, we would not need to worry about aspiration of liquids carrying oil residues, into the recovery pump, but unfortunately many circumstances tend to pop up, Murphy's Law if you will.

Many factors are at play under certain circumstances, velocity of spatter from the falling liquid stream in the collection chamber, an overly aggressive boil off from too high temps all will also cause oil laden liquid to be lifted in the collection chamber making it easily picked up by the exitting manifold. By placing a coil in line after the collection chamber that utilizes the low heat of the recovery pot to further vaporize any oil ladened liquid, that made it past the collection pot. Your 80-90 degree water bath will heat up the exiting stream sufficiently to vaporize any remaining liquid prior to entering the pump. The heat picked up from the warm water bath is only minimal but still sufficient for vaporization to occur prior to entering the expensive recovery pumps.

Water traps are another way to skin the cat.

 

[Sunfire]

I have a sightglass on top of my lid, then a 24x1.5 spool, with a 20 mesh screen on bottom and a 120 mesh screen ontop, then my pump manifold, and I'm still having aspiration issues with 80F. Elevating my pot with little jar lids helped alot, recovery was faster at 80F with elevated pot as opposed to 90F without it elevated. Guess I'm going to clean everything out and try 70F. With a strong focused beam flashlight and the proper angle I can see the vapor rising! Soooo frustrating. Maybe I'll order a bunch of shorter spools and put more screens in.

 

[Sunfire]

I just ordered parts for a "fuck you aspiration" idea. Consisting of 2 - 45 degree elbows, and 2 - 6" spools with 5 screen gaskets starting with 20 mesh, then 40 mesh, 60 mesh, 80 mesh, then 120 mesh. Take that dirty aspirated product! Plus I'm dropping the water bath to 70F! Shit getting crā crā up in he-ah!!!