Lono
Member
I was interested in the diablo at first, but I had a few people tell me to steer clear. Glad to hear it's working out for you. How is the speed compared to the appion?
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The search for a proper recovery pump..
- Thread starter HighStateToke
- Start date
I was interested in the diablo at first, but I had a few people tell me to steer clear. Glad to hear it's working out for you. How is the speed compared to the appion?
Lono
Member
shiftypickle
Member
been lurking for like 5 years, never had a reason to post anything
shiftypickle
Member
shiftypickle
Member
just for refference, a suggestion to run cold liquid tane through the pump rather than warm vapor
sorry im making such an issue out of this its just that i have seen not one person mention a pre-evap coil or the longetivity of a pump when doing so.
check the bottom right of the image for the coil in the hot bath, try not to jizz on yourself when you see the res of the pic
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The warm coil is to insure that no liquid butane reaches the pump.
I haven't personally tried it, but I'll see if I can get Eloquentsolution to come on line and comment on how it's worked for her.
As points to consider, to turn it back to a liquid, you need to remove the heat that you just added. ES is using dry ice, so plan to do something similar.
It isn't liquid butane that is hard on pumps, it is the resin in the butane that glazes the cylinders and fries the seal. Not sure where that resin goes with the coil.
The core issue is of course, how did liquid make it all the way to the top of the lid and get ingested, and besides over filling, one answer is technique. Look at the underside of your lid after an extraction and see how messy it is.
With the pot under more than 14 pounds of vacuum and a soaking column warmed up to 30/45 psi, when you open a vent valve or the dump valve, it is best done gingerly until the pressure equalizes. Envision the two down tubes aimed at the puddle in the bottom and about the equivalent of up to 60 psi differential is suddenly released.
Because there is lots of vapor to pump at that point, the vapor velocity through the intake port is high, so liquid is also more likely to be captured. Under vacuum, there isn't much flying around to have velocity and capture droplets.
Since it has proven to be a sensitive area, we are adding an inlet deflector to the automated Mk V beta prototype.
We supply Haskel pumps on our turnkey systems, but for shits and giggles on alternatives anyone can choose to add instead, we moved to a two stage system on the manual Mk V beta prototype, starting with a diaphragm pump, which doesn't care if there is liquid present, and as it puts the vapors into a secondary tank first, the oil less recovery pump is less likely to see it.
I haven't personally tried it, but I'll see if I can get Eloquentsolution to come on line and comment on how it's worked for her.
As points to consider, to turn it back to a liquid, you need to remove the heat that you just added. ES is using dry ice, so plan to do something similar.
It isn't liquid butane that is hard on pumps, it is the resin in the butane that glazes the cylinders and fries the seal. Not sure where that resin goes with the coil.
The core issue is of course, how did liquid make it all the way to the top of the lid and get ingested, and besides over filling, one answer is technique. Look at the underside of your lid after an extraction and see how messy it is.
With the pot under more than 14 pounds of vacuum and a soaking column warmed up to 30/45 psi, when you open a vent valve or the dump valve, it is best done gingerly until the pressure equalizes. Envision the two down tubes aimed at the puddle in the bottom and about the equivalent of up to 60 psi differential is suddenly released.
Because there is lots of vapor to pump at that point, the vapor velocity through the intake port is high, so liquid is also more likely to be captured. Under vacuum, there isn't much flying around to have velocity and capture droplets.
Since it has proven to be a sensitive area, we are adding an inlet deflector to the automated Mk V beta prototype.
We supply Haskel pumps on our turnkey systems, but for shits and giggles on alternatives anyone can choose to add instead, we moved to a two stage system on the manual Mk V beta prototype, starting with a diaphragm pump, which doesn't care if there is liquid present, and as it puts the vapors into a secondary tank first, the oil less recovery pump is less likely to see it.
I thought about doing this exact same thing, but my thought was it would still be adding pressure back to the system and i didn't know how that would effect things like pushing oil back up into the vapor line or something.
Seems that it shouldn't matter that the vapor is hot or cold with the appion, i think it just doesn't like running under a vacuum. so if your heating your vapor after the collection pot and adding some pressure for the appion i think this could have a good effect on longevity. I have my storage tank in a deep freeze with dry ice around it so there's little pressure on the out side of the appion to make it easier for the little guy. I run my MKIII with no heat or dipping the collection pot the entire time until the final recovery. This keeps my butane very calm and allows me to run more butane in the system to keep some pressure, with my tech and soak times and 3 passes my gauge never drops bellow zero while i run and only goes to -10 on my final recovery.
Is this working well for you? Did it have any effect on recovery time? how hot is the water?
Ive ran an appion for 8 months 40+ hours a week, by never letting it drop too far in negative(never go past -10 with it) and clearing it out of butane every night. Lots of tane stays in the machine, i unhook my inlet and let air in to push all the tane into the tank. I burp my tank once a week, or till i start to see more pressure in the tank when running. Stock seals and everything, Going to switch to PTFE seals when it starts leaking.
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shiftypickle
Member
I Dont think this is as much of an issue because I'm pretty sure I'm going to wire up the gast system. It doesnt look too difficult and seems to be the way to go with electric pumps. Thank you for the input gray and A6
Ive only seen appions in action, never ran one. But the the person who I watched run with an appion thought my diablo was much quicker and quieter, but at the cost of running hot because it doesn't have those massive fans the appion does that make it so loud.
That looks an awful lot like eloquent's back yard.....is that at the pharm?
All the oil less pumps share some common limitations, and some have different ones.
The Appion is very loud with the geared fan, but performed well when not run dry. I know of a couple of geared fans that went out, so it appears to be both an attribute and an Achilles heel.
The CPS TR-21 is fast, but puts out really hot butane, which runs up tank pressure and slows things down. Even with an MT-69 in ice water, it produces higher tank pressure than an Appion.
The Promax 6000 that we are running with the Gast has run flawlessly so far, but started out really loud, and then quietened down. I don't know how it would stand up without the Gast pump in front of it, but by its design, its clear it doesn't like dry running anymore than the others.
No trials on a Diablo, but we did try a Caresaver International, which was very quiet, slower than any of the others tested, and not oil less, so we did no further tests.
The Appion is very loud with the geared fan, but performed well when not run dry. I know of a couple of geared fans that went out, so it appears to be both an attribute and an Achilles heel.
The CPS TR-21 is fast, but puts out really hot butane, which runs up tank pressure and slows things down. Even with an MT-69 in ice water, it produces higher tank pressure than an Appion.
The Promax 6000 that we are running with the Gast has run flawlessly so far, but started out really loud, and then quietened down. I don't know how it would stand up without the Gast pump in front of it, but by its design, its clear it doesn't like dry running anymore than the others.
No trials on a Diablo, but we did try a Caresaver International, which was very quiet, slower than any of the others tested, and not oil less, so we did no further tests.
shiftypickle
Member
Yeah Carla was kind enough to have me at her home and she really showed me some cool stuff and shifted my perspective on extractions just a little bit. She's great
Plus that bi-directional 3lb mk3 is ridiculous right
I either pour or pull a full vac for a while and pop out a chunk of cotton candy. When im done recovering(around -10 to -15) i close the recovery on the machine and take the recovery hose off while leaving the machine running. YES this does introduce air in to the appion and tank, so be aware of that. This pushs all the last butane out into the tank i then shut the tank valve and the out valve on the appion and turn it off, take the hoses off to release the pressure that built up when you shut the tank. so the appion is left every night cleared out. Then i throw the #50 tank in a deep freeze over night and burp out the air in the morning
I believe it was Redbeard whom tested and reported on the Diablo and other Reftec recovery machines. I haven't tried one but know that by design it has the same Achilles Heel that all of the oil less refrigerant recovery pumps suffer from, when run under vacuum, which means its piston seals are essentially running dry.
What I did find, is that by using a Gast DAA-501P-GB 1/2 hp dual diaphragm pump as a primary pump and an oil less recovery pump as a secondary pump, that I could keep from running the oil less pump dry and increased recovery speed significantly.
Attached is a diagram of how I am doing that:
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