Just about the most wasteful winterization procedure I’ve ever seen even if it does technically work.
Mix crude with warm ethanol 1:4
Pour equal amount into each 500ml PP bottle within 1 or 2 grams, fill 60+ bottles at a time on SS baking sheets
Place in -80c for awhile
Centrifuge for 15min. 3 centrifuges running, so every 5min you’re rushing to…
Decant first supernate carefully, refill with prechilled ethanol to equal weights again and shake. Then put back in -80c for awhile
Centrifuge again, decant second supernate
Waste even more time hand cleaning all 60+ bottles of ethanol saturated waxes.
Realize your waste waxes are still 20% CBD and your ‘proprietary dewaxing tech’ is the dumbest technique ever and your employee is having existential dread because all they do is move freezing cold bottles around 8 hours per day.
We pellet for 30 min -10*c @ 2272 rcf, It does it in one spin. Then filtration through celite 545 to remove any other junk. Filtration is very fast with the majority of the particles removed, One filter cake in a 4" funnel can handle 25-30 gal of solution easly. You need a fuge with liter sized bottles!
Thanks for sharing! Did you settle on that method as preferable over others (filter press, something like Sambo’s trolley, etc) or has that always been your tech and a “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mindset?
Also curious if you use those centrifuges for any other processes? I’ve always wondered if they’d assist with something like THCa isolation. I only have experience with hemp.
spinning the terps off the crystals prior to solvent rinse. I find that the thick sludge of terps is the hardest thing to rinse off without melting everything.
My goal is to winterize 3-5kg per day. I have had success with this method just doing one pass using a thermo scientific Sorvall lynx 4000 which is a 4 x 1L bottle fuge with a fixed angle rotor that does 10,500 RPM (20,500 RCF). Centrifuge -80C 3:1 ethanol/crude mix for 15 min at 10,500 RPM → filter through buchner funnel. collect waxes and spin those again → filter. I am looking into getting a fuge for a new facility to do a similar process and also use to help clean up co2 terps. They have benchtop fuges for about a third of the price of the lynx 4000 but are swing bucket rotors and only achieve 6000RPM and 7000 RCF but not sure it ill cleanly pelletize the waxes. Any input or advice?
The buchner is a safety measure as we were only doing one pass of wax filtration and there were sometimes little floaters of waxes that got dislodged from the pellet.
I no longer have access to the old fuge otherwise I would certainly try out different parameters. I see @Soxhlet has had success with 30 min @2272 rcf… so it seems this cheaper benchtop fuge will do the trick…