Hi!
I work for a company that is trying to use their co2 collectors in a very strange way.
I’ve been tasked with optimizing their process, but have some intense restrictions on the process.
It’s gotta be quick (less than four hours)
And It’s gotta be fractionated.
Right now, I’m running the reactor vessels at 42C and 4,000 psi (pump pushes only 300ml)
My collectors I’ve got set at 1,000, 500, and 0 respectively, just as a starting point.
We typically get 95% of our harvests from collector 1 right now, and I believe that it isn’t 100% only due to our CO2 extractor not having downstems on the input side of their collectors, which is insane, but hey, its not my machine, I’m just operating it.
Collector temps are 60-50-50, again just as a starting point.
If I were to bump the first collectors temperature up to say 70C, and drop collector 2 down to say 40C, do you think that would help in shifting some of the undesirable lipids into dropping out in collector 2?
1 Like
More heat = more degradation. Pressure differential is the key.
I would guess your system cascades, as long as the path is short enough, you should be able to increase your C1 pressure to ~2000 and it will keep more stuff in solution that will drop in C2.
piggybacking, you can use temperature to move your pressures to an extent, but not to the degree you would almost certainly need. I’ve ran a waters for a couple of years, and the fractionation is pretty weak. To be of more help we’d have to know much more about the system. However, if they’re thinking they can get all their cannabinoids in one fraction and their waxes in another, they’re dreaming unfortunately.
1 Like
Can’t argue with ya, but I’ve been told to try haha.
Figure with a downstem and some plates, I could clean up my fractionation quite a bit, but first I need to find my parameters for separating, even imperfectly, the majority of lipids from actives.
Idk if its gonna happen. The extraction process is a continuous one, and works on a gradient - I think you’d need a homogeneous “feed” of CO2 saturated with extract in order to have successful fractionation. It’d be like feeding a WFE with a non-homogeneous oil.
So basically you’d have to fully extract the plant material into a holding tank, and once extraction is complete than you feed that CO2 through your fractionation unit.
This is cool though and I’m super curious! Keep us all posted
if such a separation was trivial, winterizing CO2 extracts in ethanol wouldn’t be a thing… would it?!?
3 Likes
Which is why adding SF chromatography on the end is considered a win (eg the PIC machines)
1 Like
I am unfamiliar with PIC, care to drop a knowledge bomb?