first of all I am really happy that I found this friendly forum. I learned a lot thanks to the forum. I am trying to improve my process of cbd extraction and I’d really appreciate your feedback.
My setup is:
rotary evaporator (5L)
water vacuum pump
vacuum pump
vacuum drying oven
I am looking also for a chiller but for now I am a bit short with money so yeah, above setup is what I have. My goal is to produce cbd full spectrum oils. I already produced around 100gr of the extract but with different equipment.
First of all, I grind the hemp and I try to separate the seeds from the biomass. It takes time but I don’t see a purpose in having seeds in the biomass. So once I have the biomass grinded I mix it with ethanol (95%). For 1kg of biomass I use around 6-7 litres of etho. I leave it for a night. Not sure if it’s sufficient or not, maybe there should be more etho or should leave it for more than just a night? Next I filter etho from the biomass by using coffee filters, I know that it’s not the best way to do it so recently I bought filtering bags and I will test it. Maybe you guys have a good way to filter the etho and biomass?
Next I use rotary evaporator, I don’t have a chiller so I use ice cubes and I change the water from time to time to cool down the condenser, again - I know that it’s not the best way but I work with what I have.
When etho is mostly evaporated I put the final extract on the silicon mat and I put it in the vacuum drying oven. I set up the temp at 35 C and I set the max vacuum (-0,1 MPA). I leave it for like 4-5 hours so all of the etho evaporates and there are no bubbles.
I am not sure about the temperature in vacuum drying oven, also I am not sure if -0,1 MPA is ok? Do you have tips and tricks how I can improve the process to obtain better quality of the CBD extract? I will upgrade my equipment - chiller for the condenser, chiller to freeze the ethanol and separate the wax and so on.
Of course I do the decarb before mixing the biomass with ethanol.
Sorry for the typos, english is not my native language
If possible, try freezing your biomass and crushing it by hand in a bag instead of using a grinder. The plant material will break on the cell walls instead of rupturing everything. You end up extracting less chlorophyll.
A panda spinner clothes drying machine to use as a centrifuge is an upgrade over your coffee filters. Put the soaked biomass in filter socks and it spins out the ethanol.
I am no chemist or extraction expert, but I never soaked my biomass that long. I did three washes at 15 min or so apiece.
thank you guys, I appreciate the feedback. Definitely I will take a look at everything you mentioned, to be honest I already saw the video with the washing machine “salad spinner”. Great dude.
Right now I have a small issue with the vacuum drying oven. Not sure what is the best temperature, first I set up 35C and -0.1 MPA and keep it for like 2-3 hours. I couldn’t see any bubbles at all after that time so I thought that the process of the final evaporation is already done. Well, how wrong I was, for testing purposes I decided to set up the temp a bit higher to 45-50C and -0.1 MPA and I was quite suprised that the bubbles showed up again. This made me thinking if the process of the final evaporation is good. I was keeping the crude under such enviroment for about 30 min and after that time bubbles disapeared. Right know I am sitting on different chemical websites and trying to find out if I harmed the crude in any way…
Just trying to understand the basic chemistry here. Is it safe to set the temp at 50C and max vacuum?
