Canned Butane "Mystery Oil"

[Graywolf]

Solly that local storms took out the power, so my third party analytical lab is running behind on the samples I dropped off, but they do have the ppm results from the first can of Lucienne.

300ml Lucienne left 1.38 mg of contaminant. Butane weighs about .579 g/ml, so 300 ml weighs about 173,700 mg.

1.38 mg/173,700mg, equals .0000079, or 7.9 ppm.

They still have a third different lot of Lucienne to run, to pick up a third point of reference, but thus far, the Skunk Pham Research lab results on the first lot and Specialized Analytical's results on the second, are within sample error, besides being below 25% of the manufacturers stated maximum contaminant level of 50 ppm.

The third reference sample has yet to be run, but unless it is out, there is no evidence supporting at least Lucienne running out of control.

The lab also have some stove butane to test, and I've picked up cans of Vector, Powers, and Newport for testing, which I will drop by when I pick up the rest of the results on the others.

I am trolling for Colibri and have located some Ronson, but haven't picked it up yet.

When I pick up the test results, we will also discuss which tests and standards are called for, to put the issue to bed once and for all.

 

[Graywolf]

10-7-13

The moment some of ya'll have been waiting for has arrived, with the actual ppm residual contaminants in butane, by some of the common brands, as well as a couple not commonly used for butane extraction for comparison.

No hoopla or fanfaronade, just the actual ppm residuals by brand, as measured by a certified third party analytical lab.

Note that the ppm in the Gasone and Iwatani include Thiol mercaptans for leak detection. Thiols are alcohol analogs, where the oxygen atom is replaced by a sulfur atom and adds a garlic odor.

Note that the highest ppm found in any brand was 7% of their certified maximum of 50 ppm.

Also note that except for Lucienne, these were single can grab samples, and Lucienne is only two different lots, so the differences between brands, especially by the same refiner, may even out. IE: Lucienne and Newport.

They may not too, as the same refiner doesn't necessarily mean the same refinery, which could also account for the differences.

So now that we have two bits of empirical scientific data, derived by a certified third party lab, instead of the anecdotal information on Facebook and the web that we started with, lets do the math to put this in perspective.

The previous part per billionth analysis showed 1,4 Dichlorobenzene at a combined total level of 55 parts per billionth, or .000,000,055. We all agree that we want no part of 1,4 Dichlorozenzene, because it has been declared a carcinogen, and given a low TWA CEIL of 110ppm by NIOSH.


55 parts per billionth in the concentrated residual itself, is 2000 times smaller than 110 parts per millionth TWA Ceiling imposed by NIOSH.

It will in addition be further diluted in an extract, considering that at the worse case total residual contaminant found was 3.5 ppm, besides being dilute in the extracted oil itself. Lets look at that math.

.000,000, 055 X .000, 0035 = .000,000,000,000,192 or 200 parts per quadrillion in the butane used for extraction.

Assuming a 40 gram trim extraction, using 300 ml of butane, and yielding only 10%, 300 ml butane would deposit .000,000,000,058 ml of 1,4 Dichlorbenzene in 4 grams of concentrate.

.000, 000, 000, 058 ml X 1.2475 gms per ml = .000,000,000,072 grams of 1,4 Dichlorobenzene in 4 grams of concentrate.

.000,000.000,072 grams divided by 4 grams =.000,000,000,018 or 18 parts per trillion.

110 ppm TWA Ceiling (.000, 110) divided by residual 1,4 Dichlorobenzene level of 18 parts per trillion (.000,000,000,018) = 6,111,111 or about one six millionth (1/6,000,000th) of maximum allowable exposure level.

4 grams of oil will produce about 20 200 mg hits, so each hit would be about 1/20th of 1/6,000, 000, so exposure per hit would be about 1/1,200,000,000 of the 110 ppm maximum.

Soooo, now that we have put things in perspective, where do we go from here?

We are planning some more testing of different brands and sources and further refined testing of all the evil spirits, but we have come far enough to know that while we would prefer to not have the unwanted contaminants in our butane, its presence is thousands, or even billions of times below published levels of concerns by health professionals.

We've also learned that it is easy to remove, using a cold trap and a refrigerant recovery pump, so those of you with the required equipment can take it out, making the point moot.

That is what we now do, because we can, but continue to use the oil we produced before we started fractionally distilling the butane.

 

[DesiretheFire]

Good info. I find it very funny power has less residuals than vector and newport. Expensive butane is such a ripoff! Glad i used power 5 when i was can blasting!

 

[connoisseurde420]

they are all the same basically, and if u run closed it don't matter lol awesome work gw. looks like I need to go closed...

 

[Graywolf]

I picked up some Colibri and Ronson yesterday, to drop off for PPM testing Monday.

One thing to keep in mind comparing brands, is how low they all are and how little the difference is, even if it is twice as much. While they vary, it is still statistically a relatively small standard deviation from the mean and about what you would expect in the ISO 9000 certification age.

For ya'll unfamiliar with ISO 9000, it is a third certification that you are saying what you are doing and doing what you are saying and have controls in place that insure the quality of your product.

That they are all controlling their process to the sixth decimal place, as opposed to a percent quality standard, at least suggests that they are using Six Sigma controls, but their fish trap design seems to work, what ever it is.

Six Sigma manufacturing was the de rigueur long before I retired almost a decade ago, and is based on controlling our process to the sixth decimal place, instead of shooting for a percentage in the second decimal place.


Another thang is that except for two different lots of Lucienne, I've only tested one sample of the others and even two lots leaves a wide margin for sample error, given how many lots they sell a year, and how many different refineries are involved, and influenced by where they get their raw crude.

For instance, Lucienne is canned both in the UK and South Korea. Both lots that I tested were from the UK, so I will continue to troll for a can of Korean Lucienne for testing.

More will be revealed............

 

[sixstring]

It appears the cheap shit is better from the chart, nice.thanks for all this info gw and keep up the much needed great work and testing.peace

 

[Jalisco Kid]

Come on the mirror does not lie... Good work. Having the price you had to pay per can would help us with out stores to shop at.