xylene evap indoors.. how do you do it without being so stinky?

[lorax]

hey folks.. SWIM was wondering how all the other SWIMs here evap their xylene without making the whole house stink like crap?

its pretty cold and rainy here.. so evap outside isn't very easy.. plus evap outside always gets suicide insects attracted who are taking their last bath in SWIMs xylene.

are there any macgyver type guys here who could invent a indoor-xylene-evaporation-machine for SWIM? that would be awesome!

 

[extrememetal43]

good luck...that is the stinkiest shit ever. that stuff gives u almost instant headaches id think its pretty unsafe to do so. What SWIM did was put it outside in an old car with the windows cracked and a new aor freshener to lessen the smell. In plain air that stuff takes 4ever to evaporate. not sure how much a heated fan would help but its gona take a while and in the house just i would never do it especially if u had neighbors that may b suspicious.

 

[Infundibulum]

The best and possibly odourless way is to use a fume hood. All chemistry and biology labs have them and surprise surprise many houses also have one! What a fume wood does is to suck up any fumes (usually filter them and/or release them to the atmosphere).

The most powerful fume hood in one's house is just above the kitchen, the kitchen hood. It's the one that one turns on when cooking smelly food (e.g. frying fish) and does not want the house to smell like crap.

SWIM has never tried it with xylene or any other solvent but should work fine. One just needs to devise a simple way to keep the evaporation dish close to the hoods filter and MAKE SURE THAT XYLENE DOES NOT DISSOLVE THE FILTER (just dip some of the filter in xylene, if it dissolves then get rid of the filter)

The only reason SWIM has not try that is because his kitchen hood pumps the fumes straight in the kitchen (which is pretty damn stupid by the way), so it is useless! So, make sure that your hood pumps the gases OUTSIDE!

 

[extrememetal43]

ya regular kitchen one definately blows it back into the kitchen...i guess some may blow it outside tho ive never seen one. All restaurants have em tho.

 

[acolon_5]

This is why I prefer Toulene to Xylene!

Xylene is the stinkiest stuff I have ever encountered! If one is in an apartment I would highly suggest not using xylene at all. It sinks and anyone below you will smell it and become concerned (wouldn't you?).

 

[Psychologic]

I suppose you could construct some form of distiller where all evaporated xylene vapors would be captured in another container. Of course, I've never tried to do this so I have no idea how long it would take or how successful it would be. I've also never tried to evap xylene... that just sounds awful.

 

[Infundibulum]

A kitchen hood is supposed to blow the fumes out of the house, otherwise it makes no sense to have it!Where SWIM's coming from this is the case and SWIM was very surprised that his current flat blows the fumes inside; Why?!?!

As for distilling xylene, well, it has a boiling point much higher than the alkaloids, so it wouldn't be easy to make it work the way most people would want it.



(EDIT: But it would make sense to distill the alkaloids out of xylene, but that's something fairly impractical to do!)

 

[lorax]

ok.. fuck this stuff then! my friend will evap what he has left of it with wetted towels to bar the doors from the odor. from then on.. tolulene!

 

[lorax]

SWIM has got himself one of those food warmkeeping things. they heat up to 60C. SWIM will lay out a cable to his balcony and just let it evaporate out there with closed doors. he will probably have to drill a hole for the cable but that way no fumes will be able to enter SWIMs apartment.

SWIM will post if this works good.

 

[shoe]

Why don't you do it for less time - Use an electric fan heater and a small amount of xylene (all u need really) will be gone within 2 - 3 hours. Keep windows open for that time

 

[lorax]

SWIM has like 2 liters of jungle spice saturated xylene which he needs to evap before switching to toluene. He saved all of it because he didn't wanna evap at home again. It just stinks too much. SWIM has pets and he doesn't wanna fuck them up. Last time SWIM had to put wet towels around each door in his flat and lock his cats up in the back room so they won't have to suffer. Last time SWIM had about 250ml to evap - he did so in a warm water bath. It took like almost 5 hours even with fan blowing and all. And SWIMs fan is the biggest Honeywell one there is. Its like a hurricane on level 1.. and it has 3 levels!

I've also heard of people blowing their kitchen to pieces because of the electric heating fan producing sparks when turning it on or off. SWIM will NEVER do it inside again!