Hello people,
i have an idea of producing distillate out of an extract made with a natural deep eutectic solvent.
What do you think?
I just realized that the vapor pressure of the solutes drop in NADES.
Maybe one could moisten the plant matter with NADES and distill from a microwave rotary.
Or add some “liquifiing agent” to keep it from sticking.
I would imagine the hardest part would be fully separating the THC from the solvent, but maybe that wouldn’t be necessary if the end product was intended for ingestion rather than inhalation. I could see that being a good route for a better version of RSO or some kind of fast-acting capsule.
Nanofiltration could work well for concentrating the extract but you’d probably need higher pressures to compensate for the high viscosity of the extract.
What exactly is the final product you are aiming to make?
The product I am aiming for should be vapeable but actually I am just thinking about new processing ways.
I have not been able to identify an DES that makes sense in our line of work
Either by it s price or it s functionality
Boiling point s azeotrope s or else
I like the idea but so far no luck
Do you think ionic liquids could be an option?
I have wondered myself if the natural in situ storage form of the cannabinoic acids might be a deep eutectic solvent, (terpene mixture).. Ionic liquids would be a stretch as a solvent, but cannabinoic acids in anion form paired with correct counter ion pair may well not crystallize and exist as an ionic liquid.
There was a paper by Verporte that explored the eutectic solvent question: Green solvents from ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents to natural deep eutectic solvents
I think it’s possible what you say about the storage form.
I believe aswell that there are numorous possible azeotropes between cannbinoids an terpenoids.
Right now I am exploring lipophilic or amphiphilic ILs because I believe that the reduction of vapor pressures of the cannabinoids is much less in these compared to a mixture with NADES because of the missing hydrogen bonds.
Also these solvents are less volatile due to stability of their charge even at high extract concentrations.
The solutes would just become part of the NADES or the polarizing hydrogen bond structure of NADES would get disrupted by nonpolar aggregates which would not happen to the elektronic structure of ions themselves.
I think the cannabinoids need to be in their neutral form to be evaporated.
They can be surrounded by the nonpolar moieties of the IL or they are in ionic form.
I think there would be some in both forms.
If there are NADES in trichomes that would be a useful extension to my imaginatory molecular model of steam distillation explaining the way that water liberates volatiles.
If steam injected to the rotovap a amphotheric biological ionic liquid could be quenched and purged in situ to facilitate faster evaporation of the in situ extract phase.
Vaping with moist air for example seems to increase extraction efficiency. It also tasts better.
There is a denser aerosol at later pulls when there are a lot of terps present in the beginning and you could sometimes taste terps until no more aerosol is visible after 30 liter of air went through it at 331F or 166C.
A few years back, working with some rosin poducers, we were working with water extracted cannabinoic acids Att high pH. We precipitating with various acids you can get large amounts of cannabinoic acid hydrates . And the rosin guy tested the hydrates ….the evaporating water can to some degree modulate the temperature of the decarboxylation and subsequent aerosol produced with vaping process. I do not think in any case when vaping one is producing anything but aerosol, and not pure molecular vapor. Even if you could it would recombine with water in the lower lungs to produce an aerosol rain before hitting mucosal detergent-mix at the exchange interface.
The in situ storage is complicated in recent years by the observation of “heads” (terps) and “tails” (cannabinoic acids). Observed when alkane extracting fresh frozen at various temperatures, and the fact of a lower temp for each choice of alkane, below which the cannabinoic acids are not soluble. Suggesting the terps and cannabinoics do not get equal exposure to alkane solvent.
So water seems to be a catalyst for decarboxylation. I wondered about that.
(Heterogenious) evaporation leads to no bigger aggregates than small clusters over the surface but the evaporation of the resin is faster because of forces at the interfaces and surfaces leading to disruption of the intermolecular forces of the lipophil phase and dalton’s law for immiscible mixtures.
It is not pure vapor but mixed with air.
As soon the vapor gets oversaturated by cooling, the heavy molecules nucleate and subsequently the terps and water can heterogeneously condense on these nuclei. That happens in a fraction of a seconds.
I don’t think the the problem of dissolving the acids when extracting fresh frozen with cold alkanes is a matter of exposure.
They are being freeze precipitated to isolate them from these solvents.
I think it is just about solubility at these temperatures.
The mixture in fresh frozen trichome heads is likely to be heterogenious but it’s finely dispersed so I think the diffusion should be fast enough.
When i blow through the mouthpiece i see the condensate stuck in it getting opaque not only on the surface but inside.
Maybe something precipitates.
“Heads” and “tails” is a therminology derived from surfactant chemistry.
They have a polar head and a nonpolar tail.
Cannabinoids and their acids have this structure and exhibit such behavior.
Please explain to me why this therminology is used to discribe different species in mixture.
You need to dig a little deeper into the 4200 literature. Heads and tails refers to phenomenology associated with closed loop extraction systems and alkane solvents. Are you using AI to generate the conversation?
I will take a look into what is written here about it.
I don’t use AI to generate a conversation.
I am a german autodidact scientist that’s why I sound so technical maybe..
I could use a speech to text software though.
Do you use that?
I use AI a lot to find relevant topics by specific questions.
I heard about this practice of fractionating flash extraction. I would not believe it works well if I wouldn’t know people are doing it. For shure it depends on skill to make a good cut.
I wonder why temperature allone doesn’t do it.
Maybe the speed temperature decreases while freezing effects how the cannabinoids precipitate in the trichome and subsequently how terps are washed away?
May I know what pressure it would be? And what material should the container be?
I’m a machine manufacturer. If it’s workable, we would support your process.
Thanks for being here and knowing the requirements of your process.
I think this method resembles vmrhde
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026265X24005976
I don’t know if there are any patents about it.
I cannot predict that but I would guess it to be in the range of 10 to 50 microns.
Let is be a 100 microns with the help of water.
In this article they used a rotary evaporator made of glass for transparency of microwaves.
I think submerging the biomass would be necessary in order to prevent sticking.
Scalable embodyments made of steel would comprise other means for agitation.
To maintain low pressure the flow resistance of the vapor conducts may be lowered by using a wide stainless downer that connects to the flange connection of the motor.
I thought about the condenser being a dubble walled tube with a spirally shaped built-in to enable manual discharge of the resin.
The trap would sit below and can have the same kind of built-ins.
The power of the inverter microwave needs to be controlled by a high frequency pwm signal from the PID controller with temperaturen values from the vapour stream.
I would think these operational vac levels would not be attainable with the presence of water.
But idk.
It is dry steam that is injected into the vessel and it dissolves in the solvent at least a tiny bit.
My guess is that it opens the micella of extract at the surface when it adsorbs to it effectivly increasing the vapor pressure of semi-volatiles by reducing the work for leaving the liquid. Microwave should also enhanced the evaporation in this mesoscale process.
Periodic changes in microwave field intensity would lead to periodic assembly and disruption of micellar structure.
For science sake I like the subject
But the way the industry is at and the volume
That needs extracting to be viable as a business these methods are of little use
Nor is there any endproduct of such quality that make this tech necessary/of use
Not to harasss yust my point of view
It can be divided into agitated MAE and VMAHD both with a solvent in the system that needs to get filtrated in between.
I just thought about a continuous VMAHD in a wiped film evaporator. The condenser would be downstream, a scraped surface heat exchanger.
There are vessels that allow to combine it and scale it in the in situ way for batch processes and for continuous operation we have to wait for the transparent Loxloey screw I guess.
How do you know about the quality?
It is not even state of science.
I would say it finally depends on the choice of solvent as it influences the selectivity of extraction and evaporation.
In case the temperatures are high enough the cannabinoic acids get decarboxylated and water is generated in situ. I do not believe it to be enough for the optimum flow though.
It can be divided into agitated MAE and VMAHD both with a solvent in the system that needs to get filtrated in between.
I just thought about a continuous VMAHD in a wiped film evaporator. The condenser would be downstream, a scraped surface heat exchanger.
There are vessels that allow to combine it and scale it in the in situ way for batch processes and for continuous operation we have to wait for the transparent Loxloey screw I guess.
I have actually no idea if it is less work to support the process (preparation, solvent recovery, cleaning disposal, idk) but it is not flammable and you could skip winterizing before distillation so it might be worth a few tries.
How do you know about the quality?
It is not state of the art yet.
I would say it finally depends on the choice of solvent as it influences the selectivity of extraction and evaporation.
Jack, why don’t you just invent and construct the apparatus. When you have cannabinoids dripping out of your exit pipe, send us an SOP. I saw a 250K$ SS microwave unit that was supposed to do something similar to HEMP. It did not work.
