I did a consultation with @MagisterChemist to do what you are talking about. He is probably one of the most knowledgeable people out there on the use of membranes in this industry. Highly recommend his services.
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I think your process could benefit a lot from a THCa detector. Youâll be able to modify your recipe in the moment. Iâve got a white paper coming that is going to make the case for extracting with saturation points visible.
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@ddec6 Appreciate the recommendation, do you happen to have any data to exemplify your difference in extraction efficiency pre and post membrane usage? Or how your recovery rate has changed?
@alexsiegel It 100% would. I am a huge fan of your work and I definitely see the value in the THCa detector. I highly respect what you are doing for the community, and I hope to make a strong case to acquire one at some point.
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After running and designing smaller setups i have to say this sounds interesting. im in industrial ethanol so im not looking to steal ideas. i run some cryo 10lb tubes on occasion for head stash but not interested in any other projects aside from CO2. i would love a pic
Keep in mind, the hydrocarbon system is HUGE! It does, at the smallest level, 10 lb/min and scales up to many 100s of lb/min cheaply. Iâd make a smaller one, but there just isnât any â thatâs as small of membranes as they make.
So, for the âaverageâ butane system, eliminating CRC doesnât look like a huge economics, but the scaling factor is very significant.
Also, CRC absorbs terpenes and changes the flavor. With membranes, nothing gets absorbed, just passed into the permeate maintaining the original ratios.
Now, what you write about temperature is all very true. You can run warm and yet get a result similar to if you had ran cold. I had always thought of this more from the other direction, that if you donât need to get cold you can prep runs faster, but itâs also true from the other angle, that if you never cooled down, you also donât need to warm back up to do recovery. So really youâre improving the speed from both ends. I suppose I thought about the cooling side more because big heaters are a lot cheaper than big chillers.
As far as efficiency, at one point in the ancient past I used BHO as a distillate feedstock (this was when distillate still went for $10k a kg), and I did exactly what you said, squeeze every drop out with warm extraction and then use various remediations to get it up to snuff for distilling. This was before I ever touched a membrane, but I frequently made 99% TAC distillate with this method (in fact, my very first post on Future4200 was on this topic).
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Iâll post some as soon as I complete the new setup.
I do all my extraction at 40°F and my recovery rate is 85%. That is with pre and post testing the biomass. My recovery rate is currently 33 lbs min with pure n-butane. The membrane setup uses a separate solvent so it doesnât affect the extraction efficiency in my setup.
By using a THCa tracker you can eliminate the need to potency test before and after extraction. Youâll be able to tune your run in real time and respond to more THCa without the issues with homogeneity and cost to do LC potency testing
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