EHO Color Remediation

I’ve been following the BHO color remediation tek thread pretty religiously these last couple days and am very impressed at how much progress those members have made. Admittedly however, I’ve been feeling a bit envious as my home extraction days are far over and have unfortunately never extracted with hydrocarbons in my commercial career.

With that being said…

I figured why not start a thread for the exact same purpose for all us Ethanol or Co2 folk that post-process in EtOH ! :grin:

From what I’ve gathered, those members are utilizing the various adsorbents I’ve listed below:

Celite
Activated Alumina
Neutral Bentonite (T5)
Silica 60
PVPP
Magnesol (Magsil)

The BHO members alternate the sequence of adsorbents by packing them in their inline filter and presume that we could achieve similar results through filter cakes during post-processing.

I’m waiting for the arrival of a few more items before I start to really experiment with all the adsorbents but invite anyone already utilizing the compounds to chime in and share their experiences.

Hoping that we can get as productive of a thread going as the BHO member’s…

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A very large portion of my EHO color success has been upstream doing extractions at -60c to -80c, chilling solvents and biomass prior to combination and extraction and maintaining those cryo conditions. If I do end up with chlorophyll a simple AC scrub filtered on a silica 60 bed seems to do the trick 90% of the time.

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Agreed - I’ve had the same experiences. Although an AC scrub removes the chlorophyll, it also attracts cannabinoids and often makes the extract more amber. Mind you, its definitely an improvement - however, my intent for this thread, is to determine if we are able achieve a similar result from the same combination of adsorbents being used in the other mentioned thread. Essentially a colorless ethanol extract?

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perfect timing as this was just posted by @Waxplug1 in said other thread

Is it possible to achieve this with EtOH?

@Waxplug1 hope you dont mind me borrowing your picture :sweat_smile:

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I am also very interested as my state can only use CO2 or ethanol. I think a good place to start is doing pretty much what they are doing in the BHO thread, except filtering through a buchner after removing all plant matter from your extract. Assuming we are all doing cold extractions to not pull fats and waxes, it could just be filltered cold, pretty much like in the @TheLostBiologist tek thread, but I have been pretty interested in warming the extract up before filtering, something that is being explored in one of the BHO threads.

Lets make 2019 the year of the clear! (not distillate)

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I believe pure ethanol will dissolve PVPP so that one probably won’t work too hot.

Nah. I was cleaning it out of my system with etho and it didn’t do anything. It doesn’t dissolve in solvents.

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Is anyone combining there activated carbon scrub with a bentonite scrub or should they be done as two separate filtrations

I think I want to experiment on my next run and add 50% water to my tincture bring it up to 90 degrees then when I go to roto I’ve noticed I get water left in the evaporating flask I can just boil that off in a separate step after I reclaim my ethanol baby before decarbing just burn off all the water

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@square_root_pharms do you have a reflux column for re-proofing your ethanol? I’m not sure how much vacuum will help with re-proofing, but I know in a standard pot-still a 50% etoh/water mixture will come out around 70-80% ethanol after distillation.

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It’s on the list of equipment & glass lol

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Not sure if you’ve ever distilled ethanol to azeo, but god damn it’s a slow process at small scales. I have a 15 gallon still with a 2.5” column and I’m lucky if I get 1 liter per hour for 190 proof. If you go that route, I’d recommend just going with a 4” column. Boiler size doesn’t matter, but column diameter size makes a huge difference.

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Did you make it yourself?

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I did. The boiler is a 1/2 barrel keg, the column is 2” & 3” copper pipe. I can DM you the blueprints I used here in a bit if you’d like.

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Sweet man! Thx. I might do something similar

Just read about the bho tek yesterday and will give be giving it a shot with my closed loop but am really set on setting this up for ethanol.

Where i’m a bit confused is the pressure or vac required to move the solvent through the filters. I’m thinking about building a larger sized spool 6-10" with the necessary stacks on the bottom and feeding off into a ~2" hose leading to a diaphragm pump.

If we can find diaphragm pumps strong enough - we could have a res (to be filled with crude) with a pump filling the top of our filter stack (keeping the head pressurized), and have another pump feeding back to res after stack.

Let that bitch ride for 8 hours until those filters are finally saturated, boom - I can finally pay rent

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I’ve been distilling at azeo around 4L per hour with a setup that I built which consists of a 3"x48" column packed with SPP on top of a 26 gallon boiler. I made the column out of borosillcate so that I can see what’s going on inside, it’s pretty cool!

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Got a pic? Sounds sweet, I definitely want to.build a still now

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Ah, column height is a big factor as well. Mine is only 36" tall just because I didn’t have the ceiling height after the burner and keg. Been thinking of throwing a 3" head on it for a while though. Might have to throw in an electric element and raise the height of the column while I’m at it, because that takeoff rate is impressive. Is yours liquid managed?

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Used to always only scrub with AC

Then started scrubbing with only T5 but filtering over Celite and a a thin layer of AC

I think I may try to phase away from AC and utilize the other adsorbents listed above

To address your question - I dont believe scrubbing with both AC and Bentonite would be the most effective. To my understanding, Bentonite works best when heated and allowed to cool prior to filtration. AC is most effective when heated but is best to minimize the amount of time exposed to your cannabinoids to avoid yield loss. If you were to scrub together, you’d essentially have to compensate by either not maximizing the effectiveness of the Bentonite or incur the yield loss by prolonging the exposure to AC.

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You guys just using water heater elements to control heat?