Does anyone have any experience in running a rotovap to distill ethanol once winterized cannabis oil (from CO2 extraction) has already been blended with MCT oil?
Traditionally the winterized cannabis/ ethanol solution is distilled using a rotovap, then oil is added to the cleaned resin to create an oil blend.
But removal of the resin from the Florence flask can prove difficult. So if we could blend it with MCT oil first it’d help.
i think they want to add MCT to their ethanol tincture… as in add it before they recover their etoh so the viscosity is low after recovery and enables them to “pour” it better i guess?
I know that @cyclopath has a fondness for the addition of MCT to reduce transfer loss. He has encouraged me to use it before in similar situations, though I never had the opportunity. Maybe he’ll chime in too…
The ethanol should evaporate just fine, and you shouldn’t have to worry about burning anything. The only concern I would have is separating the oil from the resin, but you aren’t doing that. Let us know how it goes.
If you’re still skeptical, get a tare weight of your roto flask. Then once ethanol is fully purged, add your specific amount of mct relative to the weight of oil on the flask. Spin the flask on the rotovap with some heat to get the solution to mix
I came across this old thread quite by chance. I currently extract on a small scale (run size around 1Kg of biomass) and am working on product development. I had been frustrated by the difficulty of fully purging ETOH from resin, given that as the level of ETOH reduces then the viscosity of the resin increases, hindering the release of further ETOH. I have recently switched to using a vacuum chamber for this process. I hit on the idea of adding MCT prior to final purge, initially on a 2:1 ratio to anticipated CBD yield. It appears to work very well. Purging time is reduced, and subsequent testing using a magnetic stirrer hotplate showed no signs of any ETOH bubbles, even when taken up to 105degC. As my CBD is being mixed into tinctures and salves, using bases of MCT and coconut oil respectively, a simple calculation is all that is needed in order to compensate for the initial injection of MCT.
As to previous comments concerning the possibility of burnt coconut oil, refined coconut oil (Crisco for example) is extensively used for frying food, at much higher temperatures than those used to evaporate ETOH, especially under semi-vacuum conditions.