I dislike throwing water down the drain, so I’m using a 50’ ss coil with fans as the condenser these days. Using a couple of 1/4HP hydroponic chillers (craigslist) in parallel wasn’t quite enough cooling to allow recirculation. budget constraints keep me from pursuing that option further.
the still pictured sells for $700. but uses direct heat. you want to go with jacketed or bain marie style heating.
Rainer probably has everything you need.
Yep. EtOH is budget tek for sure. you can even make your own solvent…
For sure wasn’t recommending the temp controller for the bucket tek lol, I was inquiring if that controller would be an economical option for applications requiring temp control. I appreciate the Amazon recommendation. I grabbed one of these Briskheats off the shelf. Amazon.com
I looked into making my own solvent, and legally, you need a federal permit to do anything. I’m not sure anyone in the cannabis industry would apply for that permit.
was hoping to feed my spent biomass to edible mushrooms, and use the mushrooms to make ethanol.
I put a couple of interns on the problem, and one of them got their sterile technique to the point where they could actually get lions mane growing on post hydrocarbon biomass before we stopped producing it.
Post ethanol biomass was more problematic. I may try again now that my CUP has landed. although I suspect I’ll still need to do something about the last bit of solvent.
You can also apply to the Feds to get the all but 1$/ gal of the “beverage” tax on your extraction solvent back…if you’re up for telling them you’re using it for extraction…I left a link around here somewhere.
Do a butter or cooking oil extraction, cheese cloth is super cheap and will work for straining in a pinch although it does suck up some oil. Then do three or fours water washes in a sep funnel (or mason jar), taste will be vastly improved.
I’ve never done brine washes on cooking oil, but I don’t see why not. Several washes with pH 7 water does a good job of deodorizing the cannabutter. You could probably even A/B extract THCA out of cannabutter, provided you managed to not decarb it all. Would probably be difficult to perform a thorough extraction with butter without getting to decarb temps, it could probably be pulled off with canola or similar. Then you’d just need a small amount of solvent for recrystallization!
Does anyone extract with anhydrous alcohol? It seems easy to remove the water from the azeotrope with a molecular seive, if that pulled over less chlorophyll it would be worth setting up I would think.
You would need to work in an air free manner, etoh will pull moisture from the atmosphere and become well…hydrated. Absolutely you can dry etoh, keeping it that way is hard. Most dry chemistry is performed on a shlenk line, solvents are all freshly distilled and dehydrated.Glassware is dehydrated under vacuum with a heatgun, reagents are kept in a glove box under dry inert gas, chemicals are added through septa or valves. Considering most extract at quite a low temperature with etoh to avoid lipid pickup, I would say most water soluble compounds are locked up.
Lots of companies are willing sell you 200proof ethanol to perform your extractions. Some will swear it’s better. I picked up some because it was cheaper than the organic 190 I usually use. I made sure it was manufactured in an appropriate manner (last of the water pulled with sieves rather than eg benzene).
I did not split a pile of biomass and run side-by-side extractions.
I did get great results, but I put in high end flowers, and ran at -80C, so I was expecting great results. after recovery, it was at 190 proof (no surprise). Second extraction seemed on par with first, but I made no attempt to actually quantify things like extraction efficiency, color, terpene profile etc.
While both extractions were the same strain, they were different runs, and differences in input would likely have confounded attempts to quantify 200 vs 190…all I can really conclude is that it was not obviously inferior to using 190 proof.
@Photon_noir has stated a couple of times that the azeotrope is almost perfect for our particular extraction (if performed at the correct temp).
My take is that if you don’t have your material & solvent cold enough to lock up the majority of your water solubles, 200 proof will pick them up, along with some water, and be at 190 (or less) moments after it hits your material. It loves water!!
You are absolutely correct! It loves water, and getting it cold makes water condense into it, driving it to the azeotrope that much faster. My point is that if 200 proof is more expensive (over 5% more expensive), it isn’t worth it, mainly because it goes to azeotrope in no time… and if by some very careful procedures, you did keep it 200 proof, you would pull stuff you do not want (see plot posted by @gratefulhearted (sp?)). Also, just in case, you did right to make sure it was made properly, though they rarely use Benzene anymore because it is toxic to workers.
Can you elaborate on how the thca would crash out? Wouldn’t he just be making hash by washing trim/flower with high ph water? Would the thca crash out of the trichome heads when phd down?
I have a question for others running this method: do you pack the plant material on dry ice prior to extraction?
I’ve been running kief extractions in dry ice acetone recently, and there appeared to be a green tint to the run I did that was stored in the deep freezer then dumped in the cryo solution, compared to the run I stored the material packed in dry ice.
I ask because this tek is expensive to run when you have to pack all the plant material in dry ice for several hours, cause it takes a lot of dry ice! I was considering switching to liquid N for the freezing of the plant material, then throwing the frozen material in the cryo solution. Liquid N works in seconds so it shouldn’t be such a hassle. Thoughts?
Not running the tech yet, but it sounds like you just cool the solvent with dry ice, the biomass could probably just come out of a freezer and go into a bucket.
Does anyone put their biomas in some sort bag? I was looking into bubble bags or something. I’m looking for giant chemical and temperature resistant tea bags…
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