I have some Inline winterized BHO and was wondering what would work better for a wash to ensure the extraction of any fats and lipids. I have a heated magnetic stirrer Büchner funnel and a gallon of heptane but am willing to buy hexane if it will provide better results
2 Likes
Both will dissolve the waxes/lipids. If the goal is removal of these components, re winterizing would with etoh would be your preferred route. If your goal is to wash against something polar a non polar solvent would be your choice. Heptane is a better choice over hexane, you can find it cleaner/cheaper. If you want to use hexane I would buy a good grade, or refine it through distillation before use.
3 Likes
When you say washing winterized bho to extract lipids, I assume you mean you are wanting to wash a solution of bho:alkane (hexane or heptane)(nonpolar) with saline (polar).
If that is the case, I prefer Heptane for the reasons @soxhlet mentioned, but also because it has a higher boiling point. This makes it easier to perform a hot #CBleach scrub without evaporating all of my solvent or needing a reflux condenser.
FYI, adsorbent scrubs are significantly more effective after removal of phosphatides. Also, disassociation of said phosphatides with low pH saline is crucial to making them fully water soluble
8 Likes
Yeah from my understanding it’s 10:1 with etoh, should be same ratio with the heptane right? I’ll get some C-Bleach from Colombo this week. Any advice on the hot scrub process? Thanks for the help guys!! @Soxhlet @Future
In a glass reactor, with a condenser on top that’s open to atmosphere (Sensei @Photon_noir Pro Tip: place a marble on top of the condenser) and cycling coolant, bring Alkane/resin solution to 80c (for Heptane) while agitating. Add desired amount of CBleach and mix for 10 minutes. Filter out CBleach.
The condenser on top will keep evaporating solvent in the system from escaping by condensing these vapors as they rise through the condenser and allowing them to fall back into the solution “Reflux”.
This can be accomplished on a smaller scale with a large boiling flask, a stir bar, a stirring/heating mantle, and the same condensing setup.
This is to be performed without additional pressure or vacuum inputs.
6 Likes
So I have the heptane and a good amount of bho to wash, no C-Bleach though 
I have some dark bho I’d like to wash but don’t know if scrubbing with heptane will help filter out the bs I would like to dispose of, any thoughts or should I just wait to carbon scrub it? I’d like the final product to be a little lighter than it currently is thanks for all the help ahead of time I appreciate all of y’all!!!
One might think ethol would be cheaper and easier way!!
Was you not pleased with the first results?
Maybe you need to describe what you mean by “scrubbing with hexane”.
Once crude is dissolved in hexane, it is usually subjected to liquid/liquid extraction to modify the target/off-target ratio. No filtration involved.
Or you might be aiming for chromatography. Which can sort of be looked at as filtration…
Can’t tell from your description.
Won’t ethanol dissolve waxes and lipids at room temperature too? What makes it better for dewaxing than hexane? Isn’t hexane used in other industries to dewax solutions? I can probably link you a few papers…
Please enlighten me.
1 Like
Both will dissolve waxes at room temp, chilled etoh will precipitate lipids. The lesson to take away here is “cold”. This changes the solubility of the solution allowing precipitation of waxes. This is the most commen route for winterization Hexane will pick up predominantly more waxes. Link me to your papers.
https://www.goldleaflabs.com/how-to-remove-waxes-and-lipids
@goldleaf_scientific you care to chime In ?
I’m not saying you can’t minimize wax pickup, butane is commenly run cold to minimize wax pickup. But it is better to winterize from etoh, it is more complete with its wax removal due to its nature . Not to mention it is more commen. Do you winterize in a nonpolar? Give some reasons why this is advantageous ?
4 Likes
Yeah you summed it up well. Both hexane and heptane are going to work basically the same, and just as you point out the solubility decreases as the temperature drops. In fact the drop in solubility is quite dramatic as hot solvents can dissolve many times more than cold solvents (see below for ethanol+waxes)
I would imagine this is even greater with np solvents instead of alcohols. You could fractionally freeze out anything in theory.
The alcohol is used because it’s also polar (waxes are non-polar), so both temperature swings and differences in polarity work together to precipitate the waxes better than any np solvent could. Keep in mind that temperature is just an averaged measure of kinetic energy so both agitation and heat can be sort of though of as the same thing (good write up on temp affecting solubility here). I have left an ethanol extract “sit” for a couple weeks at room temp and it fully precipitated the waxes and they clumped on the bottom.
“The ability of ethanol to dissolve wax compounds, as an alternative to traditional lipid solvents, was investigated for the recovery of cuticular lipids from biomass. The solubilities of fatty esters with carbon chain lengths from 40 to 54 were measured in ethanol over a temperature range of 30–80°C. The greatest increase in solubility was observed between 40° and 60°C for the long chain waxes that are characteristic of flax cuticle lipids. The solubility of a 52‐carbon wax increased by a factor of four over this temperature range. The Van’t Hoff equation was used to estimate enthalpy of solution values. Ethanol was an effective lipid solvent at these modestly elevated temperatures and offers an economical method to recover lipid co‐products from biomass prior to conversion to bioethanol.”
6 Likes
So I got the bleaching clay I have the heptane, purged bho, magnetic heated stirrer. What’s better a wet bleaching or boiling in flask? And what’s the recommended way to purge the heptane if I do turn it into a solution?
Any suggestions on the reply to future??