First of all, thanks for even clicking on this thread. I’ll explain in full detail what my process was and include pictures to describe what’s happening. In a nutshell I blasted with a closed loop butane setup, purged in a vacuum oven, dissolved in everclear, froze for 2 days, filtered through an unbleached coffee filter, let evaporate, and here I am with a mystery solution. Bear with me as I dive into full detail.
To begin, I have a 5lb apollo closed loop system, using X-Tane as my solvent. I pushed less than desireable material through it but wasn’t expecting much out of it. After I blasted and recovered, I vacuum purged in my 3.2cf “best value vacs” oven at -27.2hg and 90°F. I’m at 5500 feet of elevation so that’s the lowest I could get it. After purging for about 24hr I took it out of the oven and dissolved in everclear at about a 10 to 1 ratio. Put back into the everclear bottle and froze for 48hr. After that I took the bottles out of the freezer and filtered them through unbleached coffee filters into Pyrex pans. Recovered lots of nasty material. Solution was very dark but I expected that due to the age and quality of material I ran through. So I started evaporating. This is where it gets interesting. I put the Pyrex pans in front of a heater and a fan, never exceeding even 80°F. As it evaporated more and more I started to notice what looked like little black dots in the middle of the mixture. It almost looked like when you pour olive oil into water, except instead of a golden color they were extremely dark. Eventually I decided I’d try to filter them out thinking they were some undesirable material. I ran it through coffee filters multiple times and eventually got about 99% of the dark globs out. After about 20 more minutes I went back to check on them and holy shit did I get a surprise. The mixture was mostly the black dots that I was filtering out before, and the rest is a milky-yellow substance that repels the dark oil. I’m now thinking that what I was filtering out before was actually good oil and I just wasted about a half ounce of gold lol. No big deal, just a bummer. My question is, are those black dots actually extract? And what in the hell is that milky yellow substance?! My first instinct is to say water, but there was no water introduced any time in the process and I just can’t figure out how it got that way in a matter of minutes!! Anyone else seen this before? Thanks in advance and I look forward to your replies!
To begin, I have a 5lb apollo closed loop system, using X-Tane as my solvent. I pushed less than desireable material through it but wasn’t expecting much out of it. After I blasted and recovered, I vacuum purged in my 3.2cf “best value vacs” oven at -27.2hg and 90°F. I’m at 5500 feet of elevation so that’s the lowest I could get it. After purging for about 24hr I took it out of the oven and dissolved in everclear at about a 10 to 1 ratio. Put back into the everclear bottle and froze for 48hr. After that I took the bottles out of the freezer and filtered them through unbleached coffee filters into Pyrex pans. Recovered lots of nasty material. Solution was very dark but I expected that due to the age and quality of material I ran through. So I started evaporating. This is where it gets interesting. I put the Pyrex pans in front of a heater and a fan, never exceeding even 80°F. As it evaporated more and more I started to notice what looked like little black dots in the middle of the mixture. It almost looked like when you pour olive oil into water, except instead of a golden color they were extremely dark. Eventually I decided I’d try to filter them out thinking they were some undesirable material. I ran it through coffee filters multiple times and eventually got about 99% of the dark globs out. After about 20 more minutes I went back to check on them and holy shit did I get a surprise. The mixture was mostly the black dots that I was filtering out before, and the rest is a milky-yellow substance that repels the dark oil. I’m now thinking that what I was filtering out before was actually good oil and I just wasted about a half ounce of gold lol. No big deal, just a bummer. My question is, are those black dots actually extract? And what in the hell is that milky yellow substance?! My first instinct is to say water, but there was no water introduced any time in the process and I just can’t figure out how it got that way in a matter of minutes!! Anyone else seen this before? Thanks in advance and I look forward to your replies!
