So i used to use the standard ebay kit, 2L bioflask above a boiling flask, collected in a sep funnel.
I want to build something you can pack/unpack quick and can extract a decent amount of terps without having to run it for a long time.
A must is something that is vacuum sealed, so this is the drawing i made for what i plan to build in the next month. But im having trouble finding one piece.
A SS cap with two 1" Male NPT threads and a Vaccuum sealed shaft going straight down the middle. Or atleast a hole capable of sealing a rotating shaft.
I havent ran numbers on what would be the best settings but heres the drawing for the whole thing.
Its nitrogen “powered” by preheating the gas above the boiling point of the terpenes within the column. The column is also kept at this temperature in order to drive the terpenes up and through the condenser. It finally lands in a Seperatory funnel which can be drained by attaching a flask under vaccum to constantly keep that water portion from overfilling the flask.
Most expensive part will be the column and motor
I can probably make the whole thing for under 1500, if i can find that cap made for cheap enough.
Should be able to run 4 pounds every half hour in a 8x24 column. Should yield 30-60ml/hour, and multiple can easily be all connected into the condenser.
All vac lines would probably have dewar cold traps on em just incase theres some sneaky monoterpenes.
I was gonna use a pool heat exchanger (shell and tube) to cool the vapors to right above freezing point.
So I skipped the agitation and tried it without.
This machine works.
I’m getting 1-4ml per pound depending on if its trim or Nug and how well its kept. 1ml/lb on non-frozen trim. 2ml/lb on frozen trim. 3ml/lb on non frozen bud. 4+ml/lb on frozen bud.
Takes an hour per cycle. 1 kilo per cycle.
Changes I still need time make:
separately heat the nitrogen intake coil so it can get hotter then the jacket.
-get PID controlled heat wrap for the top of the SS column and kf Bellows.
-widen the bore on the silicone tube for the nitrogen feed.
Right on, thanks for sharing. Any idea what vacuum level you are running at? What temp do you push the material / nitrogen to? How about the temp on your cold trap?
Have you tested or have a idea of what the flower terp % test at?
You’d be drying the flower at the same time as extracting the terps. At the end of a run your flower is bone dry. You have an extra 1.5-1.75 liters of hydrosol though. I have a very similar setup.
Problem with these systems is the cannabinoids still present. Even the lightest heat will cause decarb releasing CO2 and greatly increasing vapor pressure.
High vapor pressure, poor resolution, just like any other distillation
But its not a closed system the vac pump is constantly reducing the pressure, if some extra co2 was an issue wouldnt the swept in nitrogen also be or the large amount of h2o? If the cold trap is good enough the resolution wont matter as your condensing everything your vaporizing minus the nitrogen and co2. At these temps/pressures there are no cannab’s or undesirables that are volatile, so catch it all and separate the terps from h2o. HTE, flower, crude whats the diff?
You have to have a very large pump to overcome it. CO2 and nitrogen will be affecting ultimate depth. The lower the better, cannabs won’t but other undesirables definitely will come off at higher vapor pressures, just like most cold trap terps
HTE has the ability to remove the THCA before separation. This avoids the CO2 mentioned and allows for great separation.
That’s my next test, I left a ton of smalls/mids on the plants. So in a week or so, I’ll chop em and throw them straight in and report back.
I’m going to test the flower after to see how much it decarbs, I’m hoping to get thca from the fresh material and recrystallizing in the extracted Terps.
The system is air tight, holds vac for a half hour.
I ran the system at 25 inhg, not sure what micron that is.
I’ve done very hot steam distillation before and tested it for thc and it doesnt come over.
Compare with distillation of cannabinoids, if you don’t separate properly or fully Decarb, you can never reach vac levels to see good separation.
Say you took a crude extract and just pulled vac with whatever shit pump then turned up the temp to 220-240. Yes you’ll get a distillate, but it’ll be an impure mix of everything, including higher bp waste.
With Terpene(volatile modulating compounds) distillation, the compounds we are trying to capture have very low bps with foul compounds with bps very close(cold trap/short path terps/heads)
I think that pulling terps from a condensed oil mixture vs flower are two different beasts. I dont disagree with what you’ve said I just think that its not the only way.
Allow be to ramble.
To focus on oil mixture terp extraction for a moment. We all know everyone can just catch terps off of the common purging oven, many people get decent to good results from doing such. Its fundamentally not very different than using the common cannabinoid short path setup to catch terps. A big difference though is in the common result, most people with cannab short path experience are well aware of the foul terp heads, but most people pulling terps from ovens arent getting any kind of foul terp fraction. The difference imo is temps. You dont have to boil a oil mixture to anywhere near 220-240 to pull the desirable aromatic fraction. You can let time do most of the work, spread it thin and let it evaporate at lower temps with lower pressures, the ideal setup imo being a straight bulb to bulb horizontal kugelrohr setup with beefed up and backup condenser.
Or if your not afraid of minimal loss/changes one of the key parts to my terp education was learning about limonene distillation and raoult’s and dalton’s law, and how limonene with a normal boiling point of 175 can be mixed with water and together will boil at 97c, below eithers normal BP. Which is relevant to both beast of starting material.
My contention being that the foul odors are primarily a factor of heat and are of minimal contamination if one is to specifically target the friendly aromatics in a gentler manner, such as slow evaporation or mixing with water to reduce boiling points, which in turn lower pressure requirements. With the caveat that many terps and similar compounds are water soluble are different rates so the more water mixed the more that becomes a factor and will eat away at the over all yield and effect the quality as the ratio of aromatics diminish in a varying manner, meaning you could completely lose certain compounds to the hydrosol, which is a whole other can of worms.
PDF warning(doc on boiling points, distillation, raoult’s, and dalton’s laws.)
The Distillations I do specifically start in an ice bath and I pull good stuff on most profiles.
The reason vac ovens pull what they do is the weak vacuum used and the THCA Decarbing like mentioned.
Decarb is always happening, even at room temp and below. You can always see it on a vacuum meter. Removing THCA as diamond crashing before separating volatiles avoids the CO2 produced altogether
The foul stuffs boiling points are too close the good stuff, without deep vac(below 500) most capture those foul compounds with the good ones
What about all the other non cannabinoid acids that arent crystallized out, they are continually decarbing too, no?
Like I said plenty of good acceptable terps are pulled from ovens with no foul odors like you get with short path temps. So these foul terps are in your pre processed HTE but the good odors just cover it up?
Ive pulled plenty of terps from flowers with excellent results, at plenty of extreme parameters and never had anything foul or close to what the tails of a distillate runs smell like.
