Thats what I was thinking. Instead of attempting to freeze dry material while its in the spool just pull a vacuum, heat the spool, then sweep with nitrogen to capture the terps.
The use of a freeze dryer may be helpful if you’re trying to maintain the integrity of your THC-a molecules while drying. Too much heat, coupled with the drop in vacuum may decarboxylate some your product.
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perfect napoleon
Vac level does NOT affect decarb temp or rate.
It is often applied, and is useful when also stripping terps, but it has no effect on the rate of decarb.
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That’s good to note! I was thinking that the decarb temp would drop as a function of reduced pressure as it does for the vaporization temps of cannabinoids under vacuum.
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Yep. Not the only one.
There is at least one thread on the subject.
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https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvc-d54hQMD/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=10380tyta0bn9
Qure Concentrates on insta steam distilled their freeze dryer water (it seems from the comments section) but that doesn’t fix the water soluble terpene problem as far as my knowledge goes…
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Ill be experimenting with nitrogen assisted freeze dry terp extraction when my vac/pressure oven gets here
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This is a great thread. Hydrosols (water soluble) can be dealt with a number of ways. I’ll refer you to the essential oil literature on how to proceed.
Also, you’ll want to analyze your essential oil your the first few times. I can recommend @AlexSiegel as a lot of testing labs can’t handle the high percentage samples. You might be surprised at what you have.
As for scaling this method to 100+ pounds, what do you guys think? When one uses variable “terpene” input, as low as 0.2% running a few pounds at a time doesn’t cut it.
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Would like to my hands on that Essential oil literature for dealing with hydrosols as well @drjackhughes would be much appreciated lol didn’t know there were way besides burping lol
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Keep us updated on that please sounds wonderful, what are you going to use for a cold trap? glass or stainless?
It has a built in stainless cold trap
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DM me an email address.
It might. Where are you located?
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Im located in the bay area.
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Cool, I’m in Oakland. I did something like this in early 2018. Sadly, some of the water soluble terpenoids seem to not be accessible with ether alone.
If anyone has access to an HS-GC-MS, I have plenty of floral waters, worked up and raw.
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How does the worked up product smell in comparison to the raw extract?
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If using a vac oven and LN2 cold trap to try and freeze dry terps from fresh frozen flower, should the plant material be in a thin layer for best results?
I know very little about extracting oils and terpenes from cannabis, but I do have a Harvest Right Freeze Drier and understand the basics for how it works, but first a short background story. Birdseye (so the story goes) noticed how well fish were preserved when ice fishing somewhere, where the temperature was -40 degrees or colder, and then applied what he observed to vegetables. Before then there was no such thing as frozen vegetables for sale. By flash freezing vegetables with extremely cold temperatures they didn’t turn to mush when they thawed. The faster water freezes the smaller the ice crystals are, though I don’t understand how flash freezing better maintains the integrity of cell walls, it apparently does. Harvest Right’s freeze driers can be used to flash freeze food, but generally they are not. The freeze drier’s (unit) default setting is 9 hr freeze time before the vacuum pump starts. There is a stainless steel cylinder inside the unit that is sealed on one end with a stainless steel plate and the other end protrudes out of the metal box it is housed in with a thick rubber ring over it that seals to a 3/4 in plexiglass door. The cylinder has “refrigerant coils” wrapped around it that keep the inside surface area of the cylinder -50 to -60F. My unit has 4 shelves for 4 stainless steel trays. After the vac pump starts and it reaches below 500 microns the shelves start heating the trays and sublimation begins. The heating is controlled by how much the vacuum decreases when heat is applied, and then the tray heaters stop until the vacuum drops below 500 microns again. The cycle is repeated over and over (20>) times until the unit’s (mine) vacuum is in the double digit range, then the heaters stay on for another 7 hours for the final drying stage. The hours for the freezing stage are adjustable, the final drying time is adjustable, as well as the temperature setting for the trays which have a 125 degrees F default setting. I too would very much like to know how efficient freeze drying is at removing terpenes.
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