SWIM uses a glass 3,2 liters container with stainless steel top. He bought it in one of those house/kitchen utensil stores.

Hey about the pump...

I have a Gast DOL-134-AA damn neet that i got for like 20 bux on ebay some times ago... (seem exactly like the 101-aa)
But i always was afraid of the sign on the side that say do not use with or in presence of flamable anastesics...

So i never used it in the lab...
But man i wanted to...

So what you guys do with that pump??
Use it only for watery extracts??
or with solvent and send the exaust far away from the motor?? (the problem is from the motor sparks??)

I planed to make a series of vapour cleaning jar in wich the, by example acetone or naphta vapour, would flow accros before the pump inlet...
What i think of is a water jar, an oil jar and in final a jar full of activated dessicant... (lets say silica or drierite...)
Is this seam prety safe or in opposite damn paranoiac??
I know i would loose lot of pressure... but well ...my question is... are those pumps safe for the matters where concerned with??
Ive saw one in the environnemetal analisis lab where i worked connected to the metals-from-soils assay... and i know they used flamable solvent in it but i just dont know if their was any security system on it...

Thank for any help!!

*:hey by the way just to make it clear, when i say solvent vapour please note that i dont plan to distill anythning straith in a vacumm pump but im concerned by any residual vapour comming out of, by example, a filtration assembly...

Hey and for those seeking for gears... ....GO TO EBAY!!! untellable deal you get get there when no one look!!!
to start a work place be shure to browse anything with «lot», «set» or «kit» in the title...
You can get a bunch of basic labwares for almost nothing!!

DOL series are medical/dental pumps, hence the sticker you refer to.
still suitable for what you're trying to accomplish

what you want is a 'vacuum trap', aka liquid trap/inlet trap... a sort of pre-inlet device that would catch any vapor coming out of the system.
there are different ways of doing this, you can get one that looks like this (ebay pic..these traps are 50-60 bucks)


or you can make one out of a filtration flask with a stopper, glass tube, and two pieces of tygon

like so



for the first one, the connection is the same. connect a hose to one of the connections on the trap, and the other end to the vacuum take-off adapter connected to your receiving flask; and connect a hose from the free end of the trap, to the vacuum inlet.
the setup in the bottom picture is a bit backwards with respect to the tubing connections (improvised for convenience), but it still works on the same principle.


if dealing with particularly volatile flammables, you may want to submerge the trap in an ice water bath before distilling.

by the way, these pumps have many uses including the basic organic lab techniques: distillation, filtration, desiccation, sublimation, and chromatography, just to name a few

Could you please eloborate on this one? SWIM is curious for what purposes it could be used.

rotavap is diminutive for rotary evaporator. it's basically a rotary vacuum distillation apparatus

So the main advantage compared to a normal distillation setup would be the reduced distillation time due to the vacuum, right?

Well SWIM tried this device last week. It is indeed a lot of hassle to empty the setup when finished. SWIM used denatured alcohol as a solvent but it really stinks like hell Perhaps IPA will do better.

Anyway SWIM is wondering if this device really made his life easier. He can load circa 400 grams of mimosa mixed with 100 grams of DE. He then had to boil down the alcohol (a lot of bad fumes), basify it and pull with naptha. SWIM thinks in his situation it is actually easier to use the good old glass jars. With four 1,5L jars and a simple kitchen sink for heating he can extract the same amount of spice, it only takes a couple of hours longer but that's okay for SWIM.

ive seen links for every other peice of lab equimpent you can think of, but where could one find that liquid liquid extractor 69ron was talking about?

How do you get the spice out of the 'evaporation flask'?

And hence I thought of using it for making changa. Does that make sense?

You use a special rotavap flask, that has a conical top half that makes it easier to scrape out.


Just use an erlenmeyer flask that you can fit a destillation setup onto. Add a stirbar and put it in a water bath on top of a laboratory hotplate with magnetic stirring.

First put methanol and freebase harmalas in the flask and let it heat and spin until all harmalas have dissolved. This may not happen until the methanol boils. Then add freebase spice, which will dissolve rapidly, and then the herbs. Distill off the methanol while magnetically spinning the stirbar. When the methanol has disappeared from the flask, take out the still hot and slightly methanol-wet changa and spread it out on a plate to let the last bits of methanol evaporate outdoors or in a fume hood. Preheat an oven to 100 degrees celcius and let the plate with changa dry in it for 30 minutes.

If the methanol has not been used previously in this procedure, it is advisable to distill it once and thoroughly clean the flask of residues before using it to prepare changa in.

The amount of methanol needed is about the volume that the neutral herb uses in the flask.

Equipment I use frequenty, and their uses.

-Round bottom and florence flasks
Excellent for sirring/dissolving solids into liquids, generally used for boiling/distilling.

-graduated beaker
Used as a beaker, also used for measuring things. Works good for non-boiling liquids heated or not.

-Sep funnel
Excellent for extractions and washes.

-Soxhlet aparatus
Allows you to reboil a solvent for a continuous extraction of a solid. Works like a boss for some materials, or to conserve solvent use. Makes some damn good moonshine.

-rotary evaporator
Was already just discussed.

-Centrifuge
Excells at breaking emulsions, and settling out solid impurities from liquids. I use mine very frequently.

-Fritted filter
Basically like a buchner funnel, with a ground glass joint.

-schlenk manifold
This is a glass mantle with some knobs and stuff. I hook mine up to inert gas/vacume. Attatched are some hoses for either purpose.

-N2 generator
Generates inert N2 gas for me. Gas helps protect compounds from moisture/oxygen.

-vacuum dessicator
Acts to remove moisture.

I also make heft use of deep fryers for oil baths, hotplate stirrers and mantles. I use an ice maker with a pump dropped inside the ice cube/water chamber to feed my condensers.I favor syringes over pipettes. Graduated glass cylinders are god for precise measurement of liquids.

I am studying on a dimroth condensor. On the top there is 1cm diameter, 5cm glass high tube wich is open on the top. Is that a ventilation hole? Is it meant for a thermometer? It has to be open when used for liquid-liquid/soxhlet extraction?

Secondly, seemingly you can use a soxhlet setup also for distillation?

Covering the hole would allow the apperatus to pressurize. Also see: "drying tube".

add a pressure-equalizing dropping funnel between the soxhlet body and condenser, to reclaim your solvent (stopcock opened during cycling, closed for collecting solvent)

I've heard of using one to replace the soxhlet, wouldn't the condenser be too large?

Wow! A setup with a 'pressure-equalizing dropping funnel' is really cool.

Funny how perspectives differ. Actually I was worrying about the solvent gasses escaping at the top of the condensor. As a fumehood is not within reach at the moment.

using one to replace the soxhlet body, then it becomes a distillation app. this configuration is also suitable for steam-distillation, and bumping becomes less of a hassle, because the solution just falls back into the rbf.
but you're correct...i forgot to mention a 45/50 to 24/40 reducing adapter is needed. then you can use a friedrich condenser on top
with 24/40 connections (i've always favored friedrich for adaptability, and it doubles as a coldfinger for sublimation).
if you want to use the allihn that came with the soxhlet, you'll also need a 24/40 to 45/50 enlarging adapter, to connect to the top
of the PEDF.

dakkapel, solvent vapors escaping is more of an issue when dealing with highly volatile solvents like chloroform, dcm, ether, and acetone. alcohols readily condense.

You'd need to adapters to go between the sox/allihn

Off topic:

Could you run ethanol through a soxhlet with zeolites (a3?) to dehydrate it beyond 95.53:4.43% ?

soxhlets typically come with allihns.
and yea, i don't see why it wouldn't work, cycling ethanol through molecular sieves