Thanks for posting your experiments. Whats the pros and cons with kogelrohr vs short path that most people use? Is it possible to scale it up to make it profitable?
My own observations using both my short path head and the bulb style method is that the short path rig is more involved to set up, there is more holdup to deal with, and the cross contamination is a bigger problem to deal with.
With the bulbs as soon as the decision is made to switch to the next fraction then the entire distillate path is removed (the bulb). I choose to slide the rig to the next bulb but could just as easily just replace it with a fresh bulb. I like the bulbs in place because I know nothing residual will be present in the next pulldown to vacuum after change over. Any contamination from the preceeding fractions in the system is completely removed from the system when a bulb is changed.
With my short path head this is not so. The distillate path becomes contaminated from the moment the most volitile fractions begin to condense as the first fraction along the distilate path. With the short path rig the entire distillate path remains in place between fractions with only the receiver flask being replaced. With the bulbs both the distillate path and the receiver are removed between fractions. I have caught pale yellow jelly like purity in between two contaminated fractions using the bulbs. With short path this is not possible when the first fraction contaminates the path. I work with gram sized quantities.
However the short path rig gives much more precise distillation data and without a doubt is much higher throughput. I have no need of throughput because of the gram size samples I use to experiment with and since I have no experience in processing ounces and pounds of this compound as a commercial operation does I honestly can't offer any evaluation about commercial possibilities. I can only assert from personal experience that I would always choose the purified form of this medicine as a purchase consideration above expense.
