why tho? I’ve never smelled CO2 terps that weren’t put to shame, and then in their grave, by HTE.
Sound more expensive than making some sauce (with butane, not CO2 which requires all that bullshit modulation of extraction parameters) and buying a centrifuge. Why not purify terpenes after extraction with ultra low vacuum and low temps, if you must purify them?
I honestly don’t know why anyone would buy Co2 terps or a CO2 extractor. I’ve smelled the product for both, and unless the CO2 extractors were trying shit on hardmode with exclusively bad biomass, I just don’t understand the point. Substandard output for an exceptional investment cost.
Some people like being able to have the flexibility to have a wide variety of extraction parameters they can experiment and dial in with. As far as purifying terpenes…if you pull them first and light enough you can throw them in a separatory funnel, drain the water off, throw them in a fridge and call it a day.
I’ve seen the bad and the great both. Most of the time the results are most dependent on the input, extraction parameters, and the operator. Making a blanket statement like CO2 terps and extractors have no upside speaks more about your experience around them then the products and systems themselves. There are people out there making solid products all day and a smaller number making some impressive dabs as well.
The real question anyone should be asking when comparing methodologies is what do you want to make and how much of it? And yes, how much do you want to spend? All methods have a time and a place depending on what the operation calls for.
No - the lines are not too short. They are rigid and -50C. There’s about 4 feet of extra movement about. Regardless - without a super slow ramp at top RPM the torque is just too high and it takes it out on the piping. So I run it slower. I still run it every day and it pushes through the pounds we can get in 75lbs a shift right now, and could do more.
Wow. Try experiencing some good CO2 terps then. People use CO2 for all kinds of extractions of terpenes outside of the cannabis industry. You can even make HTE with CO2. Hydrocarbon cannot be organic - and that matters to some of my customers.
I can understand not wanting a CO2 extractor - they are expensive to maintain and definitely not the best throughput. However, as I’m sure you are aware there are some municipalities and states that don’t allow you to use anything other that CO2. You can’t use flammable solvents in some places, no hydrocarbons in others.
So no reason to shame products that are made with industry standard practices. People can realize that things are not efficient easily enough on their own.
I, for one, like to support people who have made the choice for small scale CO2 extraction - as an environmentally friendly, organic alternative. Because there’s all these haters out there.
I think @ApeksDeltaNate has it 100% correct. What do you want to make, how much do you want to spend. Because every piece has a reason to exist - otherwise no one would have spent the R&D time to make it “work”.
Not everyone likes hydrocarbon. Not everyone can afford the yields on rosin or CO2.
But those things are not even what this discussion is supposed to be about. Its supposed to be about CXE vs cryo-etoh. I gave my honest opinion of how cryo-etoh is working in my licensed production facility. (Its going great, product looks excellent, smells excellent, and is efficient.)
Hydrocarbon equipment costs y
Co2 equipment costs z
Back when dabs sold for over 20 wholesale you could probably justify the capex of co2 equipment to make a fraction of the products that can be made with hydrocarbon.
I’ve always felt that co2 is ok for terps and bad for cannabinoids and when you can buy a nitrogen terpene extraction system from tandem and a budget hydrocarbon setup for less than a co2 machine it’s a hard sell.
I get some jurisdictions don’t allow these solvents but in 2022 in the land of 20 plus rec states these areas are few and far between and it’s usually a municipality thing and not state wide so move your city so you don’t have to pour honey on your peas so you can eat them with a butter knife you are allowed to have, mover to where you can use a fork
The biggest thing that has irked me over the years about the co2 equipment industry over the years is their bs marketing. It isn’t safer because it’s non flammable, didn’t the LHO guy kill himself with co2 explosion? It’s also not organic or solventless because you have to winterize it all in ethanol and to do that without paying tons of taxes you have to use ethanol with heptane in it.
Not even really useful for the hemp folks to make CDTs because they all come out to hot to sell and they need to be degraded and diluted to be sold.
I just don’t see any situation that exists in our industry’s framework that make the purchase and operation of co2 extraction equipment a good or educated choice. Way better ways to spend money in an industry with shrinking margins.
There is good CO2 gear and shit CO2 gear. Any inefficiencies with CO2 solubility can be remedied by increasing the flow rate since it is a true recirculating closed loop process (versus hydrocarbon which is one-pass through with reusable solvent… except maybe illuminated extractors units).
CO2 has a future, and it will continue to be around.
Maybe when they start costing the same as hydrocarbon extractors with similar throughput.
The number on thing for me to skip out on a job interview is when they tell me they run co2 equipment. That’s a red flag for them being bad and dumb at everything. If they were dumb enough to spend money on that overpriced stuff they probably do other dumb stuff too that will eventually make my check bounce and have to look for a new job.
Well they were the rubes that got sold on a co2 machine to make dabs that don’t sell at retail and now use it for terp runs they could be doing better with hydrocarbon and distillation for Pennie’s on the dollar. So yeah it’s a huge red flag for poor decision making skills and leadership.
Hey this is Ray from TruSteel, sorry this message is reaching you so late. We have some solutions for insulating the pipework inside your InstaCool as well as some potential fixes for the issues you’ve had with cooling. Shoot me an email, ray@trusteel.com.