Transferring oils for long term storage

[aromatizer]

You're gonna make me try to rig up something to test vacuum on a syringe and/or vial at this rate. The more I think about it, the more I think you could pull more vacuum with a syringe than a vacuum sealer, but I might try to give it a whirl if I can find my shitty vacuum gauge. Honestly don't know if the difference even matters, but it might give me something to do after my next surgery BS.

Edit: A proper vac chamber may be a whole different animal though.

A good vacuum chamber/sealer will pull dissolved air out of liquids, According to the gauge mine gets close to -1 bar vacuum. ie around 99% of the air out. Could get even closer to 100% with a longer cycle.

Be curious to see how much you can get out with just a syringe, imagine it could require multiple attempts and work best with a low dead space syringe. Mind you I noticed some syringes leak air bubbles through the plunger when dealing with heavy oils.

 

[AllbrandNew]

A good vacuum chamber/sealer will pull dissolved air out of liquids, According to the gauge mine gets close to -1 bar vacuum. ie around 99% of the air out. Could get even closer to 100% with a longer cycle.

Be curious to see how much you can get out with just a syringe, imagine it could require multiple attempts and work best with a low dead space syringe. Mind you I noticed some syringes leak air bubbles through the plunger when dealing with heavy oils.

I'd wager you can prob get close to 1 bar of vac from a syringe, at least momentarily. Will maybe piece something together when the time is there and see what we learn.

The biggest drawback to the approach you suggested is storage, which if you're not storing a ton long term is maybe not too bad. Getting into 50-100 vials or more would start to get tricky keeping the oils off all the stoppers. You'd almost need a rack of some kind and that's more space in a freezer vs vial cases.

Appreciate the discussion in any case, and thanks for posting your findings.

 

[Ateam2023]

I'd wager you can prob get close to 1 bar of vac from a syringe, at least momentarily. Will maybe piece something together when the time is there and see what we learn.

The biggest drawback to the approach you suggested is storage, which if you're not storing a ton long term is maybe not too bad. Getting into 50-100 vials or more would start to get tricky keeping the oils off all the stoppers. You'd almost need a rack of some kind and that's more space in a freezer vs vial cases.

Appreciate the discussion in any case, and thanks for posting your findings.

I mean how much air do you really need to suck out of the vial? there's not a lot of headspace left once you fill the vial up , I usually suck up about 40-60 cc of air out of a 30 ml vial ,

 

[AlexDavis43]

I mean how much air do you really need to suck out of the vial? there's not a lot of headspace left once you fill the vial up , I usually suck up about 40-60 cc of air out of a 30 ml vial ,

you ain't sucking 60 cc of air out of a 30 mL vial unless you're creating a black hole

 

[Ateam2023]

you ain't sucking 60 cc of air out of a 30 mL vial unless you're creating a black hole

Absolutely correct it was 30 cc my mistake,Xd

 

[AllGoodThings]

Absolutely correct it was 30 cc my mistake,Xd

To be fair, you can suck out more air than the volume of a container, in fact, that's exactly what negative air pressure/vaccum is. Too much vacuum can cause the container to collapse in on itself or implode, and requires more vacuum than one could create with a syringe in this situation as glass vials are surprisingly robust.

 

[level3]

I want to start freezing and storing my vials, but does anyone know exactly why pharma test says not to freeze? I didn't check a bunch of instruction pamphlets, but I did check a few, and they all had it.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2025/209863s020lbl.pdf

My guesses: stopper shrinkage (though I see it for ampoules too). The need to melt it by reheating it (the damage from the heat likely being much worse than any damage from freezing).

I'm worried about blind spots. Are there others?

-----

Anybody got a 3d printer model for freezer storage that they like (an actual model - I have my own 3d printer)?

 

[level3]

The thing I'd worry about with a vacuum is the inward pressure into the vial on the stopper plus the cold temperature making the barrier more brittle, multiplying the stress from the vacuum. Argon gas seems completely superior then to vacuum. And vacuum is not obviously better than ordinary air for this reason. But it could be that the stress from the vacuum is so small it doesn't matter - this is a simple enough problem that it seems like it could be a homework question in an intro materials science textbook.

 

[Alvinq]

I want to start freezing and storing my vials, but does anyone know exactly why pharma test says not to freeze? I didn't check a bunch of instruction pamphlets, but I did check a few, and they all had it.

My assumption is that it's due to the fact that these medications and delivery methods are designed for the average person and not people like us. If I remember right, pamphlets I've gotten with my previous pharma test said to toss the vial out if there was crystalization. That's definitely easier for a patient to do than to learn how to reheat the oil and make sure its fully dissolved again.
Think about the possible liabilities of a shattering vial when someone puts it in a frying pan, an infection when they literally submerse it in a pot of boiling water, or even just the panicked phone calls when they inject half crystalized test and their injection site is painful.
Making a product for the masses involves a lot of effort to idiot proof every step of administration or else the headaches involved will eat into the profits.

Again this is all my assumption and in fact I don't know shit about fuck. So take that for what it is

 

[DeafJam]

I can pull a strong enough vacuum with three to four pulls of a 10cc syringe to draw dissolved air out of GSO if it is warmed with minimal headspace. The oil will start to gas from the bottom of the vial up to the headspace. Not sure how this would work for other oils or larger vials, but it doesn’t require any fancy equipment and works for me. I then vacuum seal and freeze upright.

 

[aromatizer]

Anybody got a 3d printer model for freezer storage that they like (an actual model - I have my own 3d printer)?

do you mean inside a thermos or just a container?

I am doing an experiment on temp variation inside a freezer with and without a thermos atm.

 

[level3]

do you mean inside a thermos or just a container?

I am doing an experiment on temp variation inside a freezer with and without a thermos atm.

Either. I hadn't given it thought yet what form I'd like. I have all my peps in thermoses though, and the only reason I can think of not to use them is the cylindrical form factor not being the most efficient for space packing. But my freezer (-40 chest freezer) only contains peps right now, space is not an issue.

Speaking of -40 degree freezers. The robots told me that the glass transition temperature for the relevant materials here is typically much colder than -40. Anybody done real research on that? Is that well-supported by any data (or at least theory)? I don't want to buy another freezer, lol. My wife would laugh at me (I already have two fridges in my office...)

 

[AllbrandNew]

A good vacuum chamber/sealer will pull dissolved air out of liquids, According to the gauge mine gets close to -1 bar vacuum. ie around 99% of the air out. Could get even closer to 100% with a longer cycle.

Be curious to see how much you can get out with just a syringe, imagine it could require multiple attempts and work best with a low dead space syringe. Mind you I noticed some syringes leak air bubbles through the plunger when dealing with heavy oils.

Wanted to give a quick update on this. I found my shitty vac gauge and connected it straight to a 10ml syringe with a short section of hose. ! pull gives about .8 bar or ~23inHg of vacuum including the short hose. I connected the gauge to a 27ga needle and inserted it into a 10ml full vial and used the 10ml syringe to pull vac from the vial directly. This vial had a silicone stopper, so less than ideal it seems, as I'd get leakage around the needles but it was minimal while drawing, but you lose about 1/2 the vac pulling the needle out due to the silicone being a bit slow to seal.

In the end I could pull .85bar or ~26inHg after 4-5 pull on the 10ml syringe before the silicone stopped sealing well enough to hold with multiple simultaneous punctures and the vac needle pulling it laterally. you do lose a bit when withdrawing the needle, but it seems the more vac you have the less you lose each time.

Going to repeat the test on a better vial with the fluro coated stoppers and see if I can get 1bar, which I think is very likely.

Part of me wants to track down a gauge or sensor that can do more than 1bar vac, but everything I have found so far is more than I want to spend on a curiosity.

 

[AllbrandNew]

If anyone finds a cheap 2-3bar vac gauge or even a sensor that would run via a rasPie or something, let me know!