# Simple professional system



## Refiner232121 (Nov 22, 2011)

I know someone who does profesional refining and has a business and his filtering set up looks like this.
Sorry for the bad grapic work

He has 8 glass bottles the height is about 2 fet high and the diameter is about 1 and a half feet.
on top he has rubber stopers like the picture and has tubes like that.

I saw this in his place but I am not a close friend of his so I couldnt ask him the detials.
I dont know exactly how his system works but it does.

What I am not sure about is this 
1. a tube and I attached it to the sink with that contraption
that thing that is attached to the sink and I dont know the proper name for it.
Is that correct and if I did it like that would the system suck out the fumes from the other end.
In the vesel for refining I would like to refine 1 kilo at a time.
2.Would the refining vessel have to be very close to that first scruber vessel or can it be a bit 3 feet away

He says that in the system all the fumes are sucked out

http://imageshack.us/f/16/57769992.jpg/


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## 4metals (Nov 22, 2011)

The device is called an eductor, and they can be had from scientific suppliers for about $15. They hook up to a sink and use a flow of water, which goes down the drain, to pull a vacuum. Small sink units like that usually pull between a half and one cubic foot of air per minute.

Using the number of jugs in a line that he is using is a bit of overkill, 2 or 3 should do and they need to be filled with water and caustic at a pH of around 10. The trick is keeping the pH up. 

The key is using a sealed reaction vessel where the fumes have no choice but to go through the jugs. If the end had a small hood instead of being connected to the reaction vessel, the flow from the small eductor wouldn't be enough to pull all of the red NOx generated through the jugs.


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## Refiner232121 (Nov 23, 2011)

Hi 4metals
Thanks for your reply.
I never saw that system in operation and a I showed him the picture a scrubber I build and it is from your post and he said he does not use this kind of scrubber.
He just pointed at his system and said it works very well.
The tubes seemed like the way I have it in this picture.
These guys are from the middle east and do you think they have a technique where they are doing something different


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## 4metals (Nov 23, 2011)

All the system is doing is bubbling the gas through a caustic liquor, each jug assures a certain time of gas to liquid contact. It is not unlike a deep bed of tower packing which guarantees gas to caustic contact by a constant flow rate of gas through a packed tower of a constant volume. The chemistry is the same.


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## smj (Nov 24, 2011)

Sorry to chime in but I'm having some trouble with my system. basically the same set up, I'm using 4 containers in series. my problem is when 
I run AR the (silcone) tubing sweats and the noxx gasses stinks up the place. I'm not using any type of suction, can this be the problem ? Nitric seems to work well.


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## 4metals (Nov 24, 2011)

Without suction how does the NOx get into the jugs? The eductor is necessary to pull the fume from the reaction vessel into the jugs for scrubbing.


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## smj (Nov 24, 2011)

I thougt the preassure of the reaction was good enough. I'll have to make plan cos I'm at a standstill. is there any other type of method to achieve suction ? What about compression ?


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## Harold_V (Nov 24, 2011)

smj said:


> I thougt the preassure of the reaction was good enough.


Yes..it's good enough to allow gasses to escape from every possible place there's an opening to atmosphere. Work under pressure *is the wrong approach*. If you make the system work under vacuum (that's what an eductor will do for you), nothing escapes. It's the same reason you don't use a fan _in_ a fume hood---where you desire a negative pressure, not a positive pressure. 

Harold


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## 4metals (Nov 24, 2011)

Go to I Shor website and look up a aspirator vacuum pump, 20 bucks and your problem is solved.http://www.ishor.com/refining.php#%20Simplicity


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## Refiner232121 (Nov 24, 2011)

4metals
do you think that Shor Aspirator Vacuum Pump
will be able to work on that system with 8 bottles


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## 4metals (Nov 24, 2011)

If the individual bottles are tightly sealed I would say yes. One thing you could do is fill the jugs with marbles to effectively make the contact time in each jug greater, that will allow you to use less jugs.

Filling one or two with limestone chips will provide a self buffering scrubber. Just add more limestone as it dissolves.


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## Refiner232121 (Nov 25, 2011)

4metals
When I looked at that system it had only water in it and no scrubbing balls and I don't know if it had lye.


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## 4metals (Nov 25, 2011)

It's all about how long the fume stays in contact with the solution being used to neutralize it. Balls make the bubbles remain in contact longer without them it probably explains why he ended up with 8 jugs. You wouldn't notice caustic in the water by just looking at it, but I'm sure it's in there.


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## qfinej (Apr 17, 2012)

Hi Metals,

I read a lot of your posts you have such a huge knowledge on chemistry do you have a background in chemistry? I'm reading hokes book so sadly I don't understand everything you saying  but I will some day. I'm new to all this I've been a jeweller for 16years and this website and given me a new passion at a different angle of my industry. I can't wait till I'm ready to refine my first lot, I want to build a scrubber like in one of your other posts but on a smaller scale.

Massive thanks to everyone on this forum, everyone is so hopeful. This is my new home page!!

Regards,
Aaron


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## butcher (Apr 26, 2012)

If your heated reaction vessel (boiling vessel), is connected to a receiving vessel (fume scrubbing liquid) like being described in this thread, you must be careful to remove tubing, before cooling or turning off heat source to your reaction vessel, the heated reaction vessel will build pressure when heated (as liquid changes to gas it expands), but when cooled (or heat source is removed the reaction vessel will create a vacuum), and can suck back the cooler liquid from your receiver into the hot reaction vessel and break the boiling vessel from thermal shock, remembering to break the connection (disconnect the tubing) before lowering heat allows the boiling vessel to suck in air as it cools down and not the cooler solution.


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## NoIdea (Apr 27, 2012)

Hi Refiner232121 – This type of system works best, I have used it in the past to dissolve HCl gas into water to produce HCl acid.




A: System is static, at rest, no vacuum, no reaction.
B: Reaction vessel is cooling, causing suck-back, though this won’t happen here.
C: Reaction is progressing with vacuum.

Hope this helps somehow.

Cheers

Deano


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