"Hold My Beer Ethanol Injector". any thoughts or suggestions?

Hash and Stuff Extraction
, ,
1

Hey Guys,

So to put things in context my company made the unfortunate decision to purchase a CO2 unit as their “start up” machine. Despite giving them my best advise against this purchase, the people in charge at the time went with it anyway. I still wanted to be gainfully employed, so I pushed down my reservations really deep like, rolled up my sleeves and went to work.

What my company eventually discovered is that well… CO2 is super slow, yields are shitty, and the overall product quality doesn’t compete with the likes of your fancy CRC butane extractors…

BUT HOLD MY BEER right?, I can fix this… Kinda sorta…

So I went about designing a cold ethanol injection system for our CO2 machine. Concept was super simple. Put ethanol in a jacketed tank, chill ethanol, provide a bit of backpressure with inert gas, and boom my CO2 system is now able to run cold ethanol… Sweetness.

So now I am going about the next phase of the process in getting the unit PSI certified. I plan to have the certification by the end of April, and was wondering if anyone else had any interest in such a unit?

Just to be clear this is for those of us stuck with a CO2 extractor who are looking upgrade their system to achieve yields and speeds somewhat comparable to our hydrocarbon colleagues. You can still run for terpenes before you run ethyl of course, but why wait 2-12 hours only to extract a low yielding cannabinoid fraction via CO2? Why not run cold ethanol after your terp extraction? Skip winterization entirely, save time, money, and valuable product?

This unit would be vastly cheaper than buying a new hydrocarbon system, and would easily attach to any fittings on your existing CO2 machine. Maybe I’m crazy and my company is the only one that has a need for such a unit…

and yes… I will be naming the unit the “Hold My Beer Ethanol Injector” for anyone who cares…

Nevertheless I thought I’d ask the community for their opinions…

Any and All responses are appreciated!

Best Regards,

7 Likes
2

Just sell the machine and get something appropriate. The minute you start fucking with it you void the engineer stamp
And that’s not a good look on a co2 bomb

They already made 1 dumb choice going with co2. Don’t let them modify it and make 2

You could call it the “hold my skull”
Model because it could very well blow your head off if at scf pressures.

2 Likes
3

I think you’re missing some info my dude. Maybe i wasn’t clear enough, so I apologize. Basically this ethanol injector does not run alongside co2. That would be dangerous i agree. But that’s not whats going on here at all. Also this unit is going through full ASME and PSI certs just for posterity. Basically you just run terps, recover fully, connect the system to your columns, push cold ethyl, and recover in a roto or whatever you may have already for ethanol recovery.

6 Likes
4

That’s how co2 systems should be made. Then, maybe the terps won’t be toasted from folks decarbing biomass for a more efficient extraction. However, you could do that with tri-clamp parts if you are just running sub-critical extractions for terps.

4 Likes
5

Just get a fuge my guy

2 Likes
6

Agreed. The terpene quality is much better overall when you don’t use your CO2 machine to pull cannabinoids. It’s also sooo much easier to clean with this system in place. No more crusty separator columns! Haha

1 Like
7

So I have 2 centrifuges, but a fuge won’t separate a pure terpene fraction from biomass (from my experience). That’s where the CO2 comes in handy. Granted very low yields, but pretty nice terpenes if done right.

20210205_124008
20210205_1240083024×4032 1.75 MB

8 Likes
8

There are better faster and cheaper ways to do this than a co2 machine

Got 250k?

2 Likes
9

110% agree. In no way shape or form am I saying CO2 terps are better than hydrocarbon/other methods. This is just the best way I’ve found to run this particular method. Unfortunately I got stuck with this thing and now I gotta figure out how to turn a dollar for these nice folks that hired me. Im also building out my hydrocarbon lab which will be open before August 2021. So that’s cookin, but until then I’m just a slow inefficient CO2 show pony. :sweat_smile:

3 Likes
10

Also I totally agree on your 2nd point. Someone should make a much simpler version of this machine if it is only going to be used for terpenes. Only benefit I find from having the ability to go to 1900psi is that it makes for quick easy cleaning of the filter discs. Also the ability to switch CO2 flow direction via the HMI is nice. The HMI is really nice in general. Very smart people obviously built this machine, but the final implementations lacked in a lot of ways unfortunately. There was a lot of improvements I had to do to make sure this machine would produce the way I needed it to. I even had to get custom tooling made for the thing, which was a massive pain.

4 Likes
11

Nah, that’s a stupid idea, only a complete idiot would think something like this would work…,

But seriously: Maybe @Jonaaronbray will hold your beer… Open source CXE retrofit for Co2 extractors

Any relevance? I don’t think this skid went live.

6 Likes
12

Sounds like an MRX or IES.

1 Like
13

I believe Apeks is coming/came out with an etoh injection unit for all their extractors, better get that patented quick lol! I used to use an IES and they are right, it really does make “cart ready” oil; however, after checking the potency of my spent material, I would have to do several extraction on one batch to get all the cannabinoids off. Please keep us updated on how it is going, if you are able to get repeatable quality products without voiding any warranties and still PSI certified, I would be interested.

1 Like
14

So apeks already has an ethanol injector, but theirs is completely different than mine. Basically they heat and pressurize then inject 5% by vol hot ethanol into the columns in tandem with the CO2. This still takes a 2 hour ish vs 5+ with just CO2 alone.

Here’s are the problems with their concept, and why I wouldn’t purchase the unit.

A) it’s hot ethanol… hot ethanol never did anyone any favors when it comes to color/undesirables being extracted in the process.

B) it still takes 2 hours. My runs take 10 minutes. Only bottlenecks that can happen are at ethanol recovery.

C) you’ll definitely have to winterize. That hot ethanol will pull through all of the phospholipids, that you’ll have to winterize out which makes it necessary to have ethanol recovery anyway.

D) most of the booster pumps that come with CO2 systems are not rated for copious amounts of alcohol. Ive even seen ethanol vapors damage them. Apeks has a sturdy diaphragm compression unit which I really like, but I wouldn’t try and run ethyl through it. Also the seals on separation and expansions often times don’t hold up to a stronger solvent like ethanol. This makes for a super dangerous situation, because it can cause accidental leaks mid run.

There’s more than that, but I feel like I am rambling.

Thank you very much for your interest! I will keep you abreast with updates.

5 Likes
15

I believe he’s talking about a hot ethyl injector. You have to heat the ethyl too before you inject or you won’t maintain pressure and therefore a supercritical fluid state.

It’s over engineered in my humble opinion… all you need is some cold booze to get this job done.

Nothing fancy or crazy going on here. Just some good old fashioned beer holding ideas!

Good thing here is it will be cheaper too! Unless you want some mondo chiller to bring the ethyl to -80 or something…

I just use a little 1kw @-20c and it works great for my purposes. I still carbon scrub but that’s it. If someone wanted to skip the powder scrubbing they could definitely up their chiller size though.

The hope is this can help companies who got bamboozled by a CO2 rep.

2 Likes
16

@cyclopath here’s why I’m not a fan of the hot ethanol & co2 co-solvent idea. It causes more maintenance issues down the line. Bypassing the recovery side entirely and just shooting cold booze through the columns is what I think works best for this job. Shit, the weed is already in the columns. All it takes is 10-15 minutes after your terp run. Then a quick 10 min supercritical clean run and your ready to roll again. Super simple. Not trying to convince anyone im a rocket scientist here :sunglasses:

4 Likes
17

couldn’t stop myself

542zqb

9 Likes
18

Nicely done! Thank you for this!

1 Like
19

:octopus:You’re welcome. I saw the word “Bamboozled” and was like… I can’t not… … my meme senses saw the opening and dove in!!! No but what’s even funnier is I posted that before I saw

And then I died laughing.

-please return to the conversation at hand, wasn’t trying to derail the thread,just wanted to drop a meme-

2 Likes
20

Doesn’t Apeks already do Ethanol injection?

1 Like