[HenryHill2016]

Thinking of renting a 120 cu ft cylinder of nitrogen for a week from a local place, its only 40 bucks to rent the whole thing for the week ( you pay the price of the gas only).


I'm running a bhogart LFE, and am thinking this would be a good implementation into my material preparation (dry column material before loading onto collection base), moisture from both my system and vacuum chamber/dry out the system before pulling vac, to use as pressure testing, and also (most importantly in my mind) to use as an 'assist' - after flooding twice from the bottom, I'd like to induce nitrogen to the top of the column to quickly clear the column of any solvent and recover the column quickly.



1) Anything wrong with these ideas?
2) Would the fact that it's INDUSTRIAL GRADE gas make a difference? Should I shell out the money for Refined Hydrocarbon SOlutions?
3) Does the Nitrogen need to be dried first?
4) Would CO2 from my hydro shop work the same?
5) Any point in paying more for argon gas over nitrogen?
6) For our purpose, no regulator is needed, correct? Anyone know how to hook these things up to a CLS ( 3/8" JIC)?
7) How much of an effect do you think the rooms RH would have on your product? Should I put my dehumidifier inside the extraction lab? Possibly near the ovens?

Thank you for any input!

[frazierk]

1) I'm not sure how much nitrogen it would take to completely dry your material in your column before you put in on your collection base. However I do know that placing your column on your collection base and pulling a vac on the full system then backfilling with nitrogen and vacuuming your system down again helps remove some moisture from your material and also any moisture that might be inside your system.

It works great for pressure testing!

It also works great as an assist to help push the gas (especially if running subzero temp gas) however I always have some gas left left in the column which needs to be recovered by heating the jacket around the column with hot water.

2) I use, and have always used, UN 1066 which is defined by Prax Air as industrial grade gas and have never had any issues with it. It "has a purity level of 99.998% (nitrogen), less than 8 PPM O2, and less than 5 PPM moisture". Source: https://www.praxairdirect.com/PXItem...2&itemID=66814

3) The nitrogen does not need to be dried. There is plenty of capacity in the nitrogen to pick up moisture!

4) I'm not 100% sure if CO2 would work the same but my guess is it would not. Something make me think that it would be dangerous because of the O2 in CO2. O2 mixed with butane can be explosive! No amount of N2 (nitrogen) is explosive with butane. However I could be wrong.

5) I have no experience with Argon so I cannot say either way.

6) We do indeed need a regulator! You can use any "inert gas" regulator. The one I use is normally used for brewing and has a two PSI gauges. One tells you the PSI of the N2 tank which lets you know how full/empty it is. The other gauge lets you determine what PSI you want the N2 to come out at. Most regulators for beer go up to 60 PSI which works well unless you want to pressure test your system. I found one that goes up to 150 PSI which works great for my needs becuase my system is rated to 150 PSI. Some regulators go up to 400 PSI but I find those difficult to dial in the exact PSI. Sometimes 5 PSI makes a huge difference depending on what you are doing. You can find decent regulators on amazon or at your local brewery supply store.

7) The effect of the humidity of the room depends on what you are doing in it. If a room is always humid than your product (trim, flower, fresh frozen) will attract moisture to a certain level. If you have open fresh frozen material in a humid room than moisture can freeze on the outside of the trichome which makes it harder for the gas to extract the goodies inside. If you have super dry trim in a humid room it will attract moisture and your solvent might dissolve some of that moisture and whatever it wants to bring with it (chlorophyll, etc). In my opinion it is always best to be in as dry of a room as possible. If you can bring in your dehumidifier without it being an explosive danger, I'd say do it! The less moisture, the better.

I also like to use nitrogen to unpack my columns. It works best if the column is still hot from the water in the jacket that is used to recover the gas. Make sure your column is secure (!), make sure you have somewhere the weed can go (I use a large garbage can), set your regulator to ~100 PSI and let it blast! As long as you are safe it is fun and efficient. Sometimes you have to poke the last little bit out but it works great for the most part.

[gardenlover]

deff use a regulator bc you want to use as little pressure as possible to achieve your goal and franzierk said a few psi can make a huge difference! as far as the other stuff goes it all looks good to me and you can use co2 to dry as well but I am not sure about using it to push bc of the o2 as Franzierk mentioned but unless there is a change in the molecular structure of each I would think that it should be safe bc many people use CO2 as a fire retardant so I would assume that you would need to separate the O2 from the carbon but I know NOTHING about that kind of stuff for sure.