Fluorescent Dye Mod

[planters]

A medium pressure lamp would be nice. I have a germicidal and also a compact fluorescent "black light", but as you said, these are both line sources. Many UV dyes and filters respond completely differently at these two wavelengths not to mention to bands between 254nm and 365nm. The problem with the HQI (unfiltered) HID lamps is that they flicker or vary in output over short time scales and without a differential measurement my readings are very imprecise. The auto headlamp was suprisingly stable, but it does not dip down very low (driver safety I suppose).

Thanks for the link. I'll look at this.

[Draco]

yeah the EU has some stick laws on HID, hence the headlight wipers on some models. other countries are less laxed laws, the glare kits i mentioned are drop ins for normal lamps and a lot of times thy dont live up with the cutoff optics and sent glare to other drivers, they are illegal for on road use but off road they are fine, I totally converted my Buick for Bi Xenon , a shutter drops down to provide a high beam pattern and pops up for normal lights, i used a hella made bi xenon projectors that came from a BMW , I cut my lights open and stuffed the legal housing in, i did the mod in 2004 it works so great, a collision in 2009 destroyed the right side light that i have yet to rebuild. but the Buick from then has crappy lights and i did early shit work so i needed the extra light, i also made a harness that powered both the high and low beam lights, a shutter and the high beam lamp, i light up a coworker and he made joke about retina damaged, he was not happy by my joke.
the 12,000k lights you have are easy noticeable as less bright as stock lights, i think you lose at lest 1,000 lumens, the general tolerance to hid lamps is i think 15-20% -+ the center power rating, halogen i think is about the same as well

[planters]

Well, disappointing news. The dye modification does not enhance laser output. Unlike most of my experiments however, it didn't hurt the output either. The problem likely lies in the distribution of lamp output. The additional absorption by the PM dye reduces the light available to the R590 by enough that the net florescence gain is zero. I'll reserve the PM dyes for CW experiments where the very low triplet absorption will be worth a lot.

[kecked]

Just evaporate the ethanol. That will leave the dye behind. Or pump the dye through a drum full of carbon. Don't boil solvents at home. Your asking for a fire. Stay below 24% ethanol and it is not flammable. You might be able to use a water ro system to recover the ethanol.

Stills are not safe at home.

[kecked]

Have you been able to make any of these dyes into a solid CW laser like a fiber laser? My dream is a three fiber rgb laser under 1 k. Doing a watt on each line. Or maybe even r g y b I can't see why you can't put a dye into a plastic to solvate it in the matrix. Power handling I guess would be an issue plus clearing the state to ready it for the next pulsequick enough to be usable. Might need two or more dyes that hand off energy like in a gas laser to make it work.

[planters]

Just evaporate the ethanol. That will leave the dye behind. Or pump the dye through a drum full of carbon. Don't boil solvents at home.

I can't avoid the boiling because it is the ethanol itself that I want to recover/purify. For what it is worth, the location of the still is in a concrete floored, well ventilated area and the boiling is done by heating a large quantity of water into which the closed flask of used dye solution is placed (double boiler). The entire operation is in an airtight, sealed glass containment system and the heat source is an un-switched electrical resistance coil. I've tried the carbon. It reduces, but does not eliminate the dye and who knows about degradation products. RO might work, I haven't thought about that.

Have you been able to make any of these dyes into a solid CW laser like a fiber laser?

I haven't tried, but it is the work done by others to do just this that lead to the development of these exciting boron fluoride dyes. The oxygen sensitivity of these dyes is mitigated by placing them in a PMMA
Poly Methyl Methacrylate host and when laser pumped they produce twice as much power as the next best dye, rhodamine 590 chloride. This is probably due to their low, but not zero triplet state absorption. There are problems, however. Without flow cooling the power is limited. The absorption bands of these dyes are narrow (probably why I failed) and located where they need 480nm to 532nm pump light, so another laser or a flash lamp.

Wavelength conversion dyes that you mention are valuable. Despite my disappointment with this particular experiment, I am currently using a blend of two conversion dyes to convert the hard UV from my ablating wall flash lamps into the absorption band of the lasing dye. They nearly double the output and protect the rhodamine from UV degradation. As a result they are sacrificial, inexpensive and are continuously renewed; hence the still.

I had brought up a possible solution to your question to femtoman who is a chemical engineer. He has not pursued this but I have. Quantum dots may be the answer. These are inorganic, available in a rainbow of colors, have broadband UV absorption, have zero triplet state absorption and have lased in both the dry and fluid states. Placing these in a clear host that cures in a quartz cuvette takes care of the optical quality problem. They have demonstrated uJ thresholds and so may lase with a UV diode pump operating at say, 405nm. The labs that make these do so in an oxygen free Schlenk line, but clearly this YouTube video shows that you can get away with some oxygen exposure. This looks like fun.

http://www.shop.spectrecology.com/media/QD%20Powder.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNuoYm7Su4o

[kecked]

I have an older fishtank RO that I am replacing so I mixed up some ethanol and rhodamine to see if it would separate. Not efficiently and not well.

I then tried plain fishtank carbon and let it slowly drip through at about 1 gallon per hour. That worked pretty well. If you pack a 5 gallon can with carbon you might be able to just pump it in and let it sit over night and then filter out any particles left from the carbon. It should last a while and since it is fluorescent in nature you can just dump some filtered carboned ethanol in a glass and hit it with uv to see if its clean. No glow and its good to go.

I like you and just don't want to read about you in some house fire over ethanol. I can also hook you up with a solvent recovery place that will sell you cheap solvent and take your dirty back. The carbon however works fine. Try a britta water first. Follow that up with better carbon. The britta leaks a little plasticizer. Pass the final through a water roughing filter and then a polishing filter. The setup should last years. It will also work for other alcohols and if you put the carbon in glass other solvents like hexane, toluene, benzene.... Works real well on methylene chloride but avoid all metals as it reacts with aluminum.

[kecked]

I have an older fishtank RO that I am replacing so I mixed up some ethanol and rhodamine to see if it would separate. Not efficiently and not well.

I then tried plain fishtank carbon and let it slowly drip through at about 1 gallon per hour. That worked pretty well. If you pack a 5 gallon can with carbon you might be able to just pump it in and let it sit over night and then filter out any particles left from the carbon. It should last a while and since it is fluorescent in nature you can just dump some filtered carboned ethanol in a glass and hit it with uv to see if its clean. No glow and its good to go.

Here is everything you every would want to know http://homedistiller.org/activated_book1.pdf



I like you and just don't want to read about you in some house fire over ethanol. I can also hook you up with a solvent recovery place that will sell you cheap solvent and take your dirty back. The carbon however works fine. Try a britta water first. Follow that up with better carbon. The britta leaks a little plasticizer. Pass the final through a water roughing filter and then a polishing filter. The setup should last years. It will also work for other alcohols and if you put the carbon in glass other solvents like hexane, toluene, benzene.... Works real well on methylene chloride but avoid all metals as it reacts with aluminum.

[planters]

The carbon is a good idea. I also have a marine tank background. I tried the Kent activated carbon a few weeks ago by the overkill technique. About 1/2 a kilo of carbon in a beaker saturated with about one liter of rhodamine in methanol. I left this for approximately 12 hours with occasional swishing. The result was much lighter, but still quite florescent. There are numerous patents for dye lasers that incorporate carbon scavenging systems with injections of fresh dye, but I am not impressed with the purity I've been able to achieve. I also don't' have the instrumentation to determine if the non florescent, but absorbent degradation products have been removed. The dye is just a marker for the process, but not necessarily related.

Maybe a tall column of carbon something like a chromatography set up. If the carbon is loosely bonding to the organics by surface adsorption then it will reach an equilibrium with the dissolved phase. As the liquid moves downward it sees fresh surface over and over again.

Another neat idea if time is no object then don't heat the starting mixture, but in a completely resealed distillation set up, just refrigerate or freeze the recovery flask. Over time the same process occurs just slower.

[kecked]

The carbon is a good idea. I also have a marine tank background. I tried the Kent activated carbon a few weeks ago by the overkill technique. About 1/2 a kilo of carbon in a beaker saturated with about one liter of rhodamine in methanol. I left this for approximately 12 hours with occasional swishing. The result was much lighter, but still quite florescent. There are numerous patents for dye lasers that incorporate carbon scavenging systems with injections of fresh dye, but I am not impressed with the purity I've been able to achieve. I also don't' have the instrumentation to determine if the non florescent, but absorbent degradation products have been removed. The dye is just a marker for the process, but not necessarily related.

Maybe a tall column of carbon something like a chromatography set up. If the carbon is loosely bonding to the organics by surface adsorption then it will reach an equilibrium with the dissolved phase. As the liquid moves downward it sees fresh surface over and over again.

Another neat idea if time is no object then don't heat the starting mixture, but in a completely resealed distillation set up, just refrigerate or freeze the recovery flask. Over time the same process occurs just slower.

Maybe try powdered charcoal and let it take on the now slightly fluorescent solution. Or try using ion exchange resin on the now cleaner solution. If you send me as ample I can run hplc or gc/ms on it to let you know. If the depredation products are gone then it does not matter if a little dye remains. The other way is to expose it to extreme uv to break it down. And then let the carbon or zeolite tackle the now small molecules.

sounds like a small still in the backyard out of the house is the best way to do it.