Cleaning ethanol after extraction and filtration

I just use a warm carbon scrub at 40° to 50° C for 15-20 mins. Then run it through the hochstrom with vacuum and a 1 micron filter. Clear as ever! Or sometimes just a simple roto evaporation works for me. I set the water bath to about 28° to 30° C But I noticed sometimes if I take it any higher than 30°C the color still makes it through with the ethanol. I’m guessing that the heat being hot enough it can carry the lighter weight color moles with the ethanol. Especially if it’s chlorophyll. I always use carbon scrubbing method with chlorophyll. With a generous amount of carbon. Then freeze it to minus 30ish and through hochstrom with 1 micron filter.

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Dry bio is key. And I like what you said about checking the etoh ph prior to runs.

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So to re-proof there a bunch of options…sieves, calcium oxide Or even just a rotovap with appropriate settings…

My concern right now is the ‘other stuff’ , terp-ey smell. How do I get that outta the ethanol?

Ahh, good ole terp-shine.

Chance are it’s not gonna come out of the etoh. You can try and run thru ac.

I have 55x 2 drums of terp-shine.

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yeah…figured if I can’t find a decent answer it is probably above my chemistry knowledge to accomplish effectively :frowning:

will vacuum purging biomass pre-extraction then decarb, all pre-EtOH wash, solve this (using a cold trap to reconstitute in the resin after solvent recovery?) or would i still be missing something that ends up in the ethanol?

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Terpenes are technically a solvent. Same as etoh.

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You’ll have better luck cleaning alcohol at atmosphere not vacuum when you distill ethanol under vacuum lower the boiling points of all the terpenes with it and they like to codistill. So the higher the pressure you distill at the further you separate the boiling points of compounds and easier it is to separate fractions

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do you soak in the panda?

Sort of. I have a trick I do to make the magic happen. It takes 2 ppl total for easy use and no spilling.

I’m not sure how the nda, since we use my sop at my work

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Hrmmmmm I’m very curious… :innocent::upside_down_face:

Our on hand ethanol volume (chilled) is usually around 800 gallons plus. We’ve tested the proof multiple times and never read below 97%. Our equipment manufacturer told us we wouldn’t have to worry about the ethanol purity, as the FFE handles reproofing and any water is carried out the oil side and not the ethanol recovery side. So far this seems to be true. What are yalls thoughts?

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What I do is just before you turn the heat up on the roto to extract the end of the ethanol that is still in the thick crude syrup is empty the ethanol reservoir. That way the terps don’t drip into the evaporated ethanol that is clean. And you minimize the ethanol and terps mixing together. Otherwise you will have a lot of terp contaminated reclaim ethanol. And it don’t take much terps to stink up the ethanol with it’s aroma. And just like Demontrich mentioned I to have a couple 50 gallon drums full of good ol terp shine.

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Sometimes when you don’t use larger sized micron filters for the initial filtering process. Your crude clogs the filters because there is still so much fat inside it. And when your filtering flow rate isn’t filtering fast enough your material temperature rises enough for the fats to unfreeze and make its way through the filter. And takes a long time to drain into the reservoir. I use a drain Droid for initial filtering process. 50 micron filter refreeze then a 10 micron filter. Refreeze again and run it through the hochstrom with a 3 micron filter. Carbon scrub warm and run it one more time warm through 1 micron filter. For CO2 crude anyways. I have gone with alcohol extraction recently to avoid the long winterization process and just use a lenticular filter one time and it eliminates a lot of time. Although you do lose a little bit of oil that way but process more crude as well.

There’s some great gems of info in here, thanks everyone.

Been MIA since the company I worked for went belly-up, but got working in extraction again (even if it is the graveyard shift).

Right now we’re processing some half-rotten garbage that’s not even being dried; just going straight to extraction. The amount of water, oh and the smell, is appalling. In winterization more than half of it is wax. I question whether or not any of it is viable.

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Pfff that sounds like a tough spot to work for
Good luck :+1:

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I still haven’t figured that one out myself. The terpy smell stays embedded into the etoh. I think that the longer you keep the material in the etoh it bonds with the etoh molecules. Especially if the etoh is stored in warmer temps.

Very possible. Decarb pre bio mass under vacuum with a cold terp trap. I’m wondering if it eliminates the chlorophyll color also. :thinking:

I noticed that the etoh will suck the humidity right out of the atmosphere and into Itself. So I make sure to keep my etoh sealed tight. I noticed that inside of my rotovap after I am finished and the alcohol is completely evaporated there would be water marks on the inside of the cooling coil column.

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Side thought and note:

Why does water condensate and sweat but other solvents dont?

Anyone know?

Sure it does. The conditions just aren’t right. If you were in a room where the air was just totally saturated with ethanol and no water, and had a really cold object in the room, you’d see it.

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