I can get hexane or heptane for around 400 a drum
Cheaper then alcohol IMO
2 Likes
place by LA?
After getting N-heptane quoted on Friday I would say no but when it comes to the EPA regulations of how much Hexane can be released to atmosphere in a year,then what permitting cost for additional off gassing from spent biomass I would say yes defiantly the cost of Heptane is significantly lower.
I assume that price is for Tech-Grade Heptane?
Yeah but the steam recapture on biomass is pretty efficient. Those EPA numbers are more of an issue in the 50+ ton per day rapeseed plants and such. That would be enough hemp to make it worth solving the problem.
From what I’ve seen we can only loose 55 gallons per year.
I can look up the statute but I believe it is based on daily throughput for edible oils, I assume hemp would qualify
I pay 1.44 a lb for hexane and 1.43 a lb for Heptane.
I was quoted at .99 per pound for Heptane through our normal vendor. Hexane we pay $5.50 per gallon all in.
1 Like
You American s are crazy I mean CRAZY
Pounds lbs gallons damn that’s a shitload of
A anything we have one and one only
Theeee 
LITER plain and simple
16 Likes
Trust me… it drives me nuts when I ask for a quote on a 55 gallon drum and they send me a price per pound. But I assure you as soon as I take the liquid out of the 55 gallon drum its forever to be measured by liters.
6 Likes
who is your normal vender?
Industrial chemical in Wheat ridge CO. Talk to a guy named Matt.
Heptane
Have you considered adding more prefiltration to your setup to stop the fats from making it to your particulate filters in the first place? I use stainless steel scrubby pads to catch a majority of my waxes before they reach my powders, let alone my particulate filters. Here’s a picture of a very old used scrubby pad.
Also when winterizing or dewaxing if you add a bit of bentonite to the solution it facilitates the formation of larger particles of precipitated waxes. This allows you to remove them by simply adding something that can physically stop the waxes without affecting flow rate.
If the stainless scrubby pads are chilled then the waxes will stick to them like glue, takes a lot of the work away from your philamentz down stream.
6 Likes
It is always about all up production cost in the chemical industry as long as specs are met.
We really don’t have much for specs but, ignoring that…
Both processes can make similar yields and produce a crude suitable for distillation.
The economics come down to labor cost , capital cost and operating costs.
Heptane should be able to beat butane on capital cost and operating cost.
Refrigeration is expensive, heat is cheap.
Likewise low pressure operation is less capital intensive than higher pressures.
This is where CO2 falls out but heptane has only a slight advantage over butane here.
Vessels and piping compliant with fire codes should be rated for butane level pressures.
Butane has a slight advantage over heptane based on solvent loss and recovery concerns.
That leaves labor costs which I see as being similar for both processes.
At very large scale, heptane likely has a slight advantage over butane and that’s the way I would go if I was doing process development work in this area.
Compressors are a pain in the ass because of maintenance and operating costs.
Realistically, at what I would call pilot scale, it’s probably a wash.
If you have knowledge and operators that know butane, stick with it.
Retraining folks and blowing a couple of batches would be more costly than sticking with a process that has only a marginal disadvantage.
I have been working with methanol recently.
Cryo-winterization is an expensive process step.
Methanol doesn’t pick up waxes and plant oils but does pick up more chlorophyll color.
I’m using LLE to deal with that but that isn’t an inexpensive operation at scale.
ya pays yer money and takes yer chances…
6 Likes
Can you throw more insights into your LLE set up? will it be the same for Ethanol?
Following winterization, I louche the MeOH/Cannabinoid solution into heptane.
That leaves behind about 10% of something from the cannabinoid solution.
I’m not sure what the left behind fraction is but it isn’t really soluble in either heptane or 50/50 Water/MeOH.
I isolated some of it but, without analytical, I cannot tell you what it is.
It has surfactant properties so maybe it is phospholipid based.
What I do know is that if you dab it, it tastes and smells like dirty old socks.
The flavor profile of my full spectrum concentrate got noticeably better without it.
This can be done with ethanol as well as methanol but the cost is higher.
MeOh is cheap enough to throw away and is easily distilled from water.
I do have another reason for wanting to get into a heptane phase but it isn’t relevant to most of what goes on here.
6 Likes
The unknown compound in 50:50 MeOH:H2O is likely hydratable phospholipids. Especially if it is their first contact with water following MeOH extraction.
This is why people get shit separation on their first go round with LLE, they don’t properly louche…and their cannabinoids get stuck in phospholipid micelles suspended in the aqueous phase.
4 Likes