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Filter porosity?

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Psilosopher
I'm looking to get a cheap, small vacuum filtration setup, primarily for quickly removing residual solvent from freshly freeze-precipitated DMT and recrystallized DMT/mescaline.

I read you can use a fritted glass buchner funnel instead of buying single-use filter paper. I love reusability and it also saves the hassle of correctly folding filters, worrying about them ripping, etc. These fritted funnels do not seem to be expensive either, but I wonder if I should be mindful of the filter's porosity (in microns).
Is it possible for such a filter to be too porous as to suck through any product given the vacuum is powerful enough, or is this not a concern? The one I am currently looking into is a 150ml Pyrex glass fritted sintered funnel with a 60mm filter disc at 40-60µm porosity. Will this do the job just fine? I will be using it in tandem with a small vacuum flask and a cheap manual hand pump.

Thanks for any insight! :thumb_up:
 
It's not a concern. We use them in the lab every day for exactly what you propose with excellent results, of course. Good luck :thumb_up:
 
Psybin said:
It's not a concern. We use them in the lab every day for exactly what you propose with excellent results, of course. Good luck :thumb_up:
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Great! I was pretty sure it would work, but wanted to confirm first. Thanks :)
 
downwardsfromzero said:
Sometimes the frits clog and are a pain to clean. This can be avoided by using a layer of clean, white silica sand.
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Actually, you want to avoid using silica sand as it may contaminate your product. Simply pass acetone through the fritted glass filter under vacuum to clean it back to its original state. You can also use ethanol or non-polar solvents to do this if the clog is non-polar.

Also, for what you're doing a Hirsch funnel would be a better choice as it's designed to make it easier to scrape up product, especially in small quantities like a gram of spice.
 
Hmm, yes you're right for the original stated purpose. I was thinking of use of frits for some more general purposes, of which many moons ago I suffered some nasty clogging (filtering a meat product homogenate, don't ask!)
 
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