Hello everyone - I was hoping some of you could post your experience on my thread. I wanted to see what other peoples averages were on some different kinds of material.
Dry trim less than 10 days old testing at average 20% thc:
Nug Run less than 10 day old material averaging 20% thc:
Dry trim between 11-21 days old averaging 20% thc:
Nug run 11-21 days old averaging 20% thc:
I run bucket tek to rotovap to vacuum oven.
Given the same input potency, yields should be very similar. unless you don’t bother breaking your buds up appropriately, in which case you’ll do better with the trim.
follow the cannabinoids, not the cadabinoids.
calculating yields based on input weight is not the correct way to look at the problem. You want to look at extraction efficiency. ie what percentage of the input cannabinoids are in your output. if you’re doing multiple rounds of biomass with the same solvent you won’t be getting anywhere close to all the goodies. @future actually posted approximate numbers in one of the bucket tek threads.
the reason most folks give a range on their yields, is that they have no idea on their input potency. So sometimes they get 15% from trim, sometimes they get 10%, and sometimes they get 20%. if they actually had input potencies, they might see that they really got 80% of their input cannabinoids every time…and could work to improve that.
without input potency, errors in technique that reduce extraction efficiency are masked by variations in input potency and “great” vs “mediocre” yields reveal little to nothing about skill or understanding of the process.
Consider an ethanol centrifuge or something like it if you aren’t already. I’ve noticed with bucket tek I lost yield because I wasn’t fully recovering the ethanol from the biomass. I verified this by hplc.
But @cyclopath is right. Cannabinoid content varies a bit harvest to harvest, pheno to pheno, etc. So some sort of in house analytics even if it is only an estimate will be more illuminating than trim to oil numbers.
Don’t forget the variance in testing labs too, send an identical sample to 3 different labs for a potency test, you’ll probably see 5-10% or more variance in potency
Ahh thank you very much! So basically if there is 20% thc cannabinoids available and 2% terpenes. If I have a 100% efficiency then i’ll remove 22% in weight from the biomass i’m using. Dependent on the processes i’m doing/ethanol recovery. I was thinking this was the case thank you.
Get a cheap home alcohol still and cook the ethanol off.
Way cheaper than a centrifuge in smaller quantities.
Ethanol will pick up some contaminants that are easily removed with AC.
Ish…
You’re never going to hit 100%, but you can come close. That’s actually one of the reasons there is variability in lab results.
Even if you did, there is more in the end product than cannabinoids and terpenes.
I’m confused as to how one conflates a still with a centrifuge
A centrifuge is definitely next but the combo I need to make it make sense for future growth is about 30large. And i’m not quite there yet on play money.
Ah ok yea I figured your operating procedures would need to be spot on to get all of those. But yes I like it - we can definitely come close!
Conflates?
Lissen Up.
The most used ways to get a solvent off biomass is to use either gravity of heat.
A centrifuge uses centrifugal force to quickly drain the solvent from the biomass.
Typical recoveries are around 80%.
Using heat in the form of a heated drying vessel and a condenser can recover over 95% of the solvent with a much lower capital investment.
The process industries generally avoid the use of centrifuges whenever possible because they are failure prone, maintenance intensive and expensive.
You can put several pounds of wet, spent biomass in a cheap 5 gallon pot still and heat it slowly to recover the alcohol while you do something else.
The alcohol will strip some heavies off the biomass but carbon will clean that up easily.
On bigger scale you use a drum dryer exhausting through a condenser to produce bone dry spent biomass.
how long is this process?
fair enough.
when cannabinoids were worth more, the possibility of leaving them behind because you evaporated the solvent rather than spun it off was a concern. right now getting, more of your solvent back certainly seems like the prudent goal.
I’m still working on getting more solvent out than I put in 
edit: and bone dry waste doesn’t require HazMat fees…
I suppose im not comprehending.
My understanding is that a centrifuge is beneficial for recovering the solution (tincture) from the soaked biomass but it does not replace, nor consolidate steps in the cannabinoid extraction process. A centrifuge will replace the standard “bucket tech” and screw press portion of extraction but solvent recovery would still be necessary. This is specifically regarding cannabinoid extraction.
Im sure soaked biomass in a still would work, much like a soxhlet extraction, if the desired compounds are more volatile or as volatile as the solvent?
Bro, you dont need a centrifuge unless your focus is crude at volume. Youll end up with this
If you want to optimize your yield and still make craft ethanol extracts, run your initial QWET to pull your “heads” and separate that.
Then re-run your spent material at warm or room temps, pull everything, winterize, dewax, roto and then distill.
I’ll share some data. Past 3 extractions:
Outdoor flower - decarbed crude yield 12.9%
Outdoor trim - decarbed crude yield 10.9%
Indoor trim - decarbed crude yield 15.7%
Don’t have potency info for starting biomass, or for the oil as it’s all been going to distillate. This is from extracting in -80 to -60C ethanol. Volume of 1 gallon of ethanol per pound. Yields are from combining 2, 30 minute soaks.
OK so… I’m still confused…
You soak the biomass… then you heat the biomass/solvent to recover… the solvent
Uhmmmmmmmmmmm
Sorry I’m confused here but…
I must be missing something this is a joke right?
@Rowan If you split the streams coming off the biomass it could make sense. Drip dry the biomass, solvent recover that liquid and you get crude oil and clean ethanol. Take the drip-dried biomass and add some heat in an atmospheric or vacuum still with a cold condenser and you’ll get most of your solvent back depending on parameters and residence time, you’ll leave some cannabinoids behind but won’t have to deal with winterization or filtering whats coming out like you would if you used a screw press.
Most of my outdoor yields post decarb usually end up about 14%, but it all depended upon the quality of the product going in. I’ve seen batches of the same weights hit only 9% yields using the same methods. When it comes to solvent recovery a steam jacketed screw press with a recovery line and cold trap would do the trick to get dry spent that doesn’t require haz removal
