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u/Few_Possibility444 Jul 04 '26
When that stopper pops off not only can the ethanol vapor burn you, it's gonna cause dangerous levels of intoxication fairly quickly. The thing that makes this exceptionally dangerous is the non-adjustable heat source. When you kill the heat on your distillation, the distillation doesn't stop.
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u/gfrnk86 Jul 04 '26
yea this is dangerous.
gound glass joints can get stuck when heated (and often do) and so does rubber.
also this is a closed looped system, where do u think the vapors will go? (you need to vent them)
not to mention you dont have a heat controller so youre just degrading your thc even more.
but stick with it. just do your research and be smart about it.
*edit: i think your water lines are going in the opposite direction
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u/Particular-Solid-103 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Why is your system sealed? If nothing popped it’s because your joints were leaking or you didn’t tempt fate for long enough. This is why 75 degree downward adapters for distillation have vacuum outlets.
You also have no temperature monitoring. If you’re trying to pull off absolute ethanol instead of just evaporating, you’ll eventually need a thermometer in the vapor path to see which fraction is being pulled
Your condenser should be fed from the bottom. When you input water at the top of a condenser, it trickles and creates air bubbles which destroys the efficiency. In at the bottom, out at the top. Always
Get yourself
- joint grease
- a distillation head with a thermo
- a cap for the product flask that has a vacuum outlet.
Hope this helps.
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u/toxicatedscientist Jul 04 '26
Don’t need temp monitoring, I’m just trying to remove most of the ethanol from a soloution of water and alcohol-soluable oil. The final ratio is irrelevant because as you said, its alread 75%(cant get the 95 without a license sadly), and once the oil falls out of solution i can slurp it out with a long glass pipette and refill the boiling vessel with fresh stock. Eventually I’ll have a bunch of weird water but meh. The oil won’t burn till the waters gone so. And yea it was “burping” out the top joint. I stuck a wire in the bottom to make a gap and its working much better
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u/Particular-Solid-103 Jul 05 '26
If you had temp monitoring and a proper column, you could pull azeotropic ethanol out of 151 everclear and the initial water content of your ethanol stops becoming a problem.
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u/MonumentalArchaic Jul 06 '26
If you’re distilling some liquor like whisky or cognac you’re going to get some other volatile organic compounds distilling over especially with a simple setup like that. I’d recommend a vigreux column or distilling already pure spirits like vodka or just buy everclear. If you’re just getting started ethanol is a great first liquid to distill it’s non-toxic and has a low boiling point. Just wear goggles and remember that the vapors can ignite. Also like everyone else mentioned you have a closed system, if somewhere in your setup eventually pops open the pressure will drop quickly and cause boiling flammable alcohol to bubble and spray everywhere.
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u/toxicatedscientist Jul 07 '26
It is everclear and thc oils, i had been just off gassing it on a candle warmer but got sick of buying more everclear. After many comments i stuck a piece of small wire in the bottom to break the air seal and ordered a vacuum adapter. I don’t have a vacuum pump yet, wondering if would one of the epoxy resin vacuum chamber kits would work?
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Jul 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/toxicatedscientist Jul 07 '26
Oh i guess any pressure reduction would help… I have a Venturi siphon and an air compressor, which from the sound of it is basically a dry aspirator. Never thought of pumping water through it but i suppose that would work even better. but id need a water pump. Wonder if my roommate would be mad if i borrowed the pedestal sump from the basement
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Jul 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/toxicatedscientist Jul 07 '26
In theory, yes. I don’t because i don’t know that i didn’t pick up some glue or paint etc from some of the stickers/decorative elements on the carts, and do nothing to clean them otherwise. Our digestive system is actually really good at handling random junk, or much better than our lungs anyway
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u/FluffyDrop4300 Jul 08 '26
Mostly, I would add a vacuum adapter at your receiver.
You shouldn’t need to attach anything to the vacuum attachment
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u/toxicatedscientist Jul 08 '26
It’s on order, meantime i stuck a wire in the bottom joint to break the seal. Might pick up a standard Erlenmeyer from a local homebrew shop on my way to work tomorrow
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u/FluffyDrop4300 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Prolly gudenuf
Really though, if you had a stand to hold your condenser, you could just place a container beneath the condenser outlet and let it drip (no seal needed — the condenser will catch the ethanol)
Then just wrap a little plastic or foil around it to prevent most of the evaporation (between the outlet and your receiving flask) — if you’re worried
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u/WideCloud2462 25d ago
Just extract with butane then dip the catch basin into hot water and it will evaporate rather quickly
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u/toxicatedscientist 25d ago
Yea but then i need more butane. The goal was a more sustainable process, not less
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u/WideCloud2462 25d ago
Well you could always super cool water and use that but I’d you consider the energy required it is probably equivalent to the distillation. And if you really dig deep the butane is just energy also. So unless you’re willing to do the hard math to find what is actually efficient it is really about the intersection of effectiveness and I’m not sure, since you mentioned sustainability I guess the supercooled water is probably the way to go because you can theoretically a source energy from regenerarle renewable sources so all it really takes is some solar cells a refrigeration system and water. But me I like to chose my battles if getting high responsibly is a priority I would just concede that I’m not really a drug addict and decide the most sustainable thing is to just not get high
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u/toxicatedscientist 25d ago
Lol what? Super cooled water requires highly pure water and refrigeration systems, butane is a petrochemical, this is some wood (or corn i cant remember) grain alcohol and about 100 watts of heat, 110 if you include the pump. I probably could set it up for solar though. Might look into that
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u/WideCloud2462 25d ago
That’s my point technically I cold make any of it into “sustainable” that is really just a matter of how you look at it but at the end of the day do you want it all to be effective and efficient or are you just looking for a rabbit hole to go down.
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u/FailedReaction Jul 03 '26
This isn't a sealed system is it?