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
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.
8 Likes
There are better faster and cheaper ways to do this than a co2 machine
Got 250k?
2 Likes
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. 
3 Likes
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
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
Sounds like an MRX or IES.
1 Like
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
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
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
@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 
4 Likes
couldn’t stop myself
9 Likes
Nicely done! Thank you for this!
1 Like
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
Doesn’t Apeks already do Ethanol injection?
1 Like
For sure. My comments above address that, and explain why I believe my unit is far better. Very sorry I meant to tag @OvertheEdge earlier in my comment above. I keep hitting reply on the thread not comment. 
1 Like
Whats an MRX? I’m familiar with IES but I don’t believe they do a cold ethyl extractions separate from their CO2 runs (maybe I’m mistaken). Thats what this unit does.
No mixing of CO2 and ethyl happening with my unit. That way I can keep my cannabinoid extractions at low temp and avoid pulling over all the BS that has to going filtered out later anyway.
From my understanding no CO2 company will release any unit like this. Heres why…
The concept is too simple and too cheap for those hustlers. Sure they’ll take that 200k for that CO2 machine, but imagine them trying to go back to you to sell an upgrade that turns over your cannabinoid runs over in 15 minutes. Not to mention you don’t have to winterize, decarb your plant material, or clean out crusty separators ever again… They’d look foolish if they pulled some shit like that… They know that. Its too cheap, too effective, and too fast. They’d prefer to bleed you slow… sorry that was a rant. My frustration gets real on this topic.
1 Like
@Hashoholic heres the skivvy on the apeks injector 
don’t get me wrong…It will totally work if your goal is slow 2 hour runs for hot crust ethanol crude. This unit only services those who want a fast, high quality, high output, high yielding product. 15 minutes in and out. Throw in roto, then done. Here’s some crude done this way at -20 C. Could get colder if you needed
3 Likes
what quantity of biomass in that time period? what type of post winterization yields are you seeing?
1 Like
Ill post a photo of the trim tomorrow. It’s C+ to B grade I would say personally.
Yeilds are typical of what I see out of ethanol extractions in most senerios. Considering the quality I usually pull about 15-20% crude weight.
So I basically 2-3× my output and cut my machine hours to down to 1/3 of my previous usages. Basically I was turning over 5lbs w/ 21 hours of runtime. Now I can turn over 10-15lbs in 8 hours.
I only have small columns (two 5L) so this one only runs about 5lbs a run. However it’s simple ethanol extraction, so the concept and design will easily attach to the vast majority of the existing CO2 extractors.
1 Like