A (likely) unsolvable problem with ethanol extraction (keep them terps!)

What’s his thoughts on pulling the remaining stuff from the floral waters?

If you don’t want super tight separation you can indeed just continue to dilute until the terms separate then using a SEP just separate that way. I’ve used this method several times. Personally for really clean terps I find it easier and faster in the roto and SPD.

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So to recover terps from terpshine we would want to dilute the terpshine with distilled water until we had severely impacted solubility(any idea what percentage?) of the terpshine then put it in a separatory funnel and it’ll separate into what exactly? A layer of terps followed by a layer of low proof etoh or a layer of water soaked terps and a layer of clean etoh?

If low proof etoh we just run that through a still to return it to 95%, but if the terps are trapped in an water soaked layer would we still have to put it in an spd to get the terps separated from the water?

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now my feelings are hurt. Taking my comments and going home…

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So to recover terps from terpshine we would want to dilute the terpshine with distilled water until we had severely impacted solubility - yes

any idea what percentage? - no, haven’t tested it yet

it’ll separate into what exactly? A layer of terps followed by a layer of low proof etoh or a layer of water soaked terps and a layer of clean etoh?

layer of terps on top, then a layer of water with low concentrations of EtOH and water soluble terpenes

@Jay-TL is saying that a little water and a fractional distillation with true vacuum control would work. For me that’s an issue as my roto has great vacuum control but wont get great separation and my sbd is manual vacuum.

Working towards automation…

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Just to be clear there are 2 methods being thrown around

  1. dilute with distilled water until terps start to separate then using a sep funnel captured the floating terps. Issue here is that water soluble terps won’t separate.
  2. My brilliant lab tech took Ethanol that was around 170 (could have been lower) and evaporated the ethanol low and slow in a roto then used an SPD to separate the watery terp mess left in the rotos boiling flask. Seems a WFE would also work.

Persuasion is for sure key!!

p.s. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition :rofl::joy::grin:

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Membranes are 100% the future of cannabis extraction.
I’ve got a friend that retired from Dow with a couple patents…he built the membrane for the water in Paris…they can extremely specific down to taste level diffences through small percentage points of how much of a single pesticide is even permitted through.
I wonder how much this tech is worth maybe we should start working on membranes :thinking:

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Once you have that water dilute solution, why not add pentane?
SEP that and then rotovap the two or three layers individually??

Aa lipidphobic dye could be introduced to the solution also for visual aid. Bright red dye etc.

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As a type 6 manufacturer in CA I’m unable to use Alkanes in extraction/processing. If I could I would. Using an Alkane to wash your terp shine seems like a great idea, you should be able to move most the water soluble terps into the water layer and your non water soluble terps into the Alkane? I wonder how the increased presence of ethanol would effect the process?

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So my thoughts on that, and they could be wrong. Is that pentane is non-polar. And the only turps left are water soluble(polar).

You’d be looking for a solvent that is polar but immiscible in water… Dichloro-ethane is the only one that came up in any common solvents with those properties.

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Help me on my membrane project! :smile:
We just need to figure out what turps form the ethanol azeotropes, then find the right size nano filtration… Then probably spend 15k on the right high pressure system :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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My thoughts were use a nonpolar solvent (pentane) to grab nonpolar cannabinoids and terps.
Water added to EtOH lowers solubility of terps and cannabinoids —- leaving a lower proof alcohol solution that contains water soluableb terps.

Idk maybe that EtOH is flavored better than gin?!
Might be the next big cannabis infused liquor if we just super run terp EtOH lmao

But okay, maybe a third layer using a polar solvent would then isolate out the terps that are water soluable however i would assume that would stil misc with the h20
So I wouldn’t have a separation of polar to water

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I cant remember what people do to get etoh to separate from other solvents. It’s miscible in pretty much everything.

I like the idea for sure, its worth trying!

sounds like we have another loucher :wink:

I think it was friday when @Akoyeh handed me 1/2gal of 190 he had just got back off a couple or three CUPfuls of Durban Poison (just so I could smell it… :wink: ).

It wasn’t perfect, but it was still amazing.
Didn’t taste as good as the 5pass Lezberado, which was outstanding.

at 190proof, most look at me like I’m nuts when I say it tastes good.
they stop doing that around 140 I think
but that might be diluent dependant :stuck_out_tongue:

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…and that…is how Gold is made!! :rofl::rofl:

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If only our state would allow us to sell that terpene infused ethanol. Bet it would sell as well or better than top sellers in each respective market. Terp-shine is amazing, albeit something of an issue if you want to continue extracting with it.

Anyone tried to re-distill it in a roto and see if the Terps stick with either the heads or tails? I feel like that may work. Probably will lose a bit of ethanol, but one should be able to keep all of the terps in higher concentration.

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Why can’t we just keep using the terpshine for extractions?

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The flavors eventually muddy.

Using the Durban terpshine on anything is likely to alter the taste of the crude.

Not a problem if you’re heading to distillate, but not so good if you’re making shatters etc.

Activated Carbon should fix it (ref here somewhere). I’ve not tried

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If you keep your ethanol and biomass strain specific, I don’t see why one couldn’t keep extracting with it, @cyclopath. If I continued to use my Durban terp-shine to extract more Durban, why would there be a problem? (Unless my alcohol is too diluted with Terps to be an efficient solvent for extraction…)

And good call on the AC. The bentonite, AC cakes we make pull non-volitiles from our booze. Should pull the good stuff out too…

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