I’ve done a fair amount of kief extraction with ethanol and butane. When using ethanol I found it easier to mix a slurry and load it into a column and using positive pressure to push it through. I’ve needed pressures up to 80 psi to keep up with the recovery speed of the 20 liter roto that was also assisting with vacuum from the bottom of the column. It took more energy than what it was worth to keep the ethanol and column chilled through extraction so I would render it down to a high concentration, winterize, and scrub before recovering the last of the ethanol.
Dry loading with butane worked but if there was any clumping in the kief, the butane tended to channel and there were pockets of un-extracted material.
Apeks recommended I not load kief in their machines when I asked. “It would not be efficient”. don’t have a machine.
I do see kiefing as a viable solvent reduction technique. I think GW’s purification of CBG by running their water hash collection out to 45min to collect the non-stalked trichomes was a brilliant piece of applied biology.
I haven’t processed enough of it to have a good feeling for the problems that it brings. Last time I used butane on kief was outdoors on a sub 0C night in a small stainless thermos… I was very unhappy with the last “kief” I processed with Ethanol, but it was harvested from a trimming machine and was terrible quality
Curious what @Jonaaronbray would say about loading kief in his machines?
Edit: CBC, not CBG, which is why it took forever to find the ref. it’s in Potter’s Thesis
Hey buddy quick question, I have some kief that sifted through 75 micron screen, I planned on blasting to grow crystals, gonna do the strong Tek on it… It I don’t pack, just smack sides and let settle without packing, would this not work? Thanks buddy
Also would I get bigger crystals from dewaxing column or no dewaxing column… strictly the way I’m gonna run it
Do a warm filtration before you try to winterize. Trying to filter the keif and the waxes in one shot will be extremely difficult and slow. Stage your filtration in order to get the best flow rate. Filter the crap out of it while still warm, once it is really clean you can winterize.
We have never had the chance to run kief in our machines yet. If we did the cycle would need to be 3 times as long because of the higher potency of the kief.
With California’s tax structure on transfers of trim I could see people kiefing all of their trim to reduce the tax burden. Currently all we extract in California is old mountain mix and bunk flower lots. I have found a pound or two out of hundreds that would even be worth a terpene extraction.
Can I not load the kief without packing? Just tapping sides to let settle some, and either warm or dry ice which ever y’all say best… I’m attempting a 6in 2in wide closed column today, gonna sift the kief with 75 micron screen frozen I guess with dry ice
Your gonna clog depending on how you filter. Beware of solvent channing around your material.Have a sample of your extracted keif tested for canaboids, this will give you a better picture of how the process went.
Ok so basically what I caught is do cold, bc gonna soak material, and basically that I need to keep my screen from getting clogged,I use that ones that come with it, metal mesh,I usually set couple coffee filters I cut to size on top and bottom, but to keep the kief from getting clogged in filter I need to ball up filter paper, I have fast qualitive filter paper or whatever it’s called for more buncher, should I load just couple those before the screen or do I have to ball them up?
Also should I dry Ice freeze the material before sifting it
Ok just toss them in, if I use marbles do they have to be made of anything in particular, I may have old glass ones, but if I don’t steel ball bearings?
glass will work. some extraction suppliers carry ball bearings for dewaxing. the trick of using a magnet to agitate the ball bearings from outside the column might be worth the expense over the marbles you’ve got lying round.
you might double check that your marbles are ok with dry-ice temps before mixing them with cannabis and performing the same test.
Yes I def will do a filtration while it’s still warm. Do u suggest I do a cake with carbon and celite545? With a ruff filter. I was thinking do that cause carbon I hear is better while running warm…
The 545 bed is meant to filter carbon powder added to the etoh. Most people don’t use carbon in a filter cake. The carbon is more effective in the solution rather than a filter aid. The Celite bed most likely will be too fine for your first filtration.
Take it through something like a silk screen before going that fine. Think bubble bag type mesh in accending order. Then you can run a fast, medium, then slow filter. After that you can winterize. After winterization use a fast paper, re- winterize, continue further with finer fitration. After your satisfyed with wax removal you can do the carbon scrub, then filter through a Celite bed.
Get rid of synthetic fiber lolz! What an optimist!!!
You could just use my method to test a room for excessive and explosive vapor accumulation. Enter the room (with all cotton cloths) and carefully hold your big lighter high above your head and light it. Then holding the flame move it close to the floor where fume accumulates.
If the cotton clothing remains intact and with the same number of carbon molecules you started with after the Bic gets to the floor then the room is safe. If not, exit immediately…
So far my lab has always tested safe.
P.S. you have seen my pro sewing gear from my embroidery business at home @cyclopath. If you are serious about protective clothing around solvents then let’s sew you up a shirt or apron(s) of Nomex and Kevlar. My machines can not only sew up cloths but we can embroider cool pot leaves too in Nomex thread? It would be nice to fire up the creative gear for a reason again.
imo ditching synthetics to avoid static discharge is a reasonable precaution. as is making sure your equipment is bonded to ground. you need fuel, oxygen and an ignition source for combustion…I’d also suggest that an alcohol based flashover is more likely to be manageable if your clothing chars rather than melting and sticking to your skin. I agree it won’t help if you do something really stupid.
does nobody increase the rooms humidity that’s how they make explosives in an ordnance factory to dissipate electrical charge to avoid static discharges i increase humidity to safe levels then proceed
