Looking for tek on hot extraction of plant matter with ethanol as I don’t have any chilling facilities and dry ice isn’t available. I think the term is crude. Thanks
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ethanol + plant matter
filter
reduce solvent
???
profit
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Huge difference between rm temp & “hot”…
See: Thread for dummies & Bucket Tek (Cold Ethanol Extraction on a Budget)
Understand that without chilling you’ve got more stuff you don’t want in that crude. You’ll need to winterize and probably figure out some way to remove the chlorophyll and sugars that come along for the ride.
If you’re planning on selling crude, and don’t clean it up, you may not get repeat customers
Running above the flash point of your solvent brings additional risks.
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Thanks for the reply cyclo. I’ve been experimenting with a soxhlet, ethanol, winterising and filtering with carbon and diatomaceous earth under vacuum. My product is amber after the filtration but it’s very tedious running such a small amount with the soxhlet. I’ll be coming to a fair amount of trim (to me) soon and was looking for a quicker way of creating the starting product. I’m also interested is learning short path. Luckily for me the wife has a lot of glassware from the essential oil business she used to run. I even have access to a rotovap. Room temp ethanol is what I’d be looking at. The soxhlet is extremely efficient with ethanol usage as non denatured ethanol is prohibitively expensive and difficult to get in my country. But, as I said, very tedious. Any suggestions as both of the link’s you posted are chilled and my only access to any chiller is a small fridge running as cold as possible. -1c
Where are you
Australia
Oz? Where 40C ambient is not unheard of?
Maybe you need a bonfire powered chiller…
Edit: check this wee beastie… 72 Liter, 8 ft tall Soxhlet apparatus for sale
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People build large SS Soxhlet extractors. Like this:
https://www.evolvedalchemy.com/soxhlet-extractors/1lb-soxhlet-extractor-1
Can you get dry ice?
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You need a larger Soxhlet? I’ll make you a killer deal on this one. My old baby. It’s just sitting in storage. The 72L flask Holds about 30L of solvent and the material column holds 1kg of material. You will need your own chiller with enough cooling capacity for ethanol
Sugars are NOT fun. Can you butane blast and use etho as a secondary?
Butane is not an option. I want to keep the process as clean and chemical free as possible.
Butane is as chemical as ethanol, and as any other solvent.
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So is water, but I know what I’d rather put into my body, and it ain’t butane.
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Ha so you mean that you would be less concerned of ethanol leftovers in final product, rather than other kind of solvent.
If you intend to produce tinctures through the classic way (which involves removal of most extraction solvent, winterization, decarboxylation…) the likelihood of finding significant amount of butane in final product is very small.
No matter what type of solvent you intend to use, you perhaps rather focus on using clean enough solvent, otherwise your risk to eventually concentrate their impurities.
To my opinion the questions ethanol vs LPGs concern more the processing aspect itself, and local regulations.
Hey Hoopsnake, I really think you’ll need at least a -20C freezer if you plan on doing short path distillation. Even if you extract at room temperature, you have to cool it down to winterize and remove waxes before distilling. Even then you will need to do some degumming or your distillation will be so much work to clean up afterwards. If you’re working on super small scale, check out a Kugelrohr for distillation
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If you’ve got ethanol recovery equipment, you also have ethanol manufacturing capabilities.
Making a gal or two of high-test (190 proof) is no more illegal than the cannabis processing you’re already performing (if my understanding of Aussie rules is correct)…so why worry about the price of liquor?
You in the city? Or back of beyond?
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I run ethanol extraction at less than ideal temps. Use ac and TClay then filter, recover, decarb, distill. Make beautiful liters every time. My only issue is this black build up from recovery on. Like some gums/sugars/plant matter i don’t know about makes it through then coagulates under heat. Any ideas? Hope my insight help and can go into more detail if you’d like. .
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1000 word substitutes usually help. More detail about your process would help, too. Black buildup from recovery on is pretty vague. Where are you seeing it? What temp are you extracting? How deep are the layers of T5 and AC in your cake? What type of AC are you using? Have you changed anything?
If you make beautiful liters, I’m not sure what the issue is. Cleaning is harder?
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I am also having similar issues, we are also seeing black particles.
Our process is ethanol extraction with delta separations cup15, filter thru 5micron bag filter, filter thru 1micron DE linticular filter, filter thru 1 micron carbon linticular filter, then filter thru .5 micron post/polish and carbon removal filter.
Next we take our tincture and recover the ethanol thru our rising film evaporator/falling film. The black particles start showing up here. I have took those particeles and diluted it in ethanol but nothing happened. I took some more black particles, mixed it in hot water and it dissolved right away with a little agitation.
Since it dissolved in water it makes me think its sugars, waxes, lipids etc.
Has anyone had any luck with removing unwanted material from tincture. I can do winterization but its a lengthy process, more equipment, more time to process. i’ve also looked into Liquid-Liquid separation but again lengthy process, more equipment, more time to process.
Does anyone know a way to do it faster? Is there an inline process that can make it faster?
Why on earth would you imagine waxes or lipids to be water soluble?!?
The only item you’ve listed that IS water soluble there are sugars…
Seems you might need to get someone with some chemistry on your team.
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