Hey y’all I’m new here and seeking assistance or advice regarding improving our hydrocarbon extraction efficiency. I’m talking about cannabinoid recovery based off of COA’s from our input biomass, not just by weight. We’re currently doing two injections, soaking for 15mins then dumping and resoaking for another 10mins before moving all to collection vessel. Using Solvent Direct 60/20/20 blend. Injecting around -60C. Only running cured biomass atm but yielding 15% this past month (input weight between 12,000-15,000g). Just seeking to improve overall cannabinoid recovery. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.
3 Likes
Are the COA’s recent for the biomass or is old material?
Our starting material is a few months old. Our spent biomass testing says we’re still leaving behind roughly 30% cannabinoids. Roughly around 60% efficiency. Aiming for 85% +
You say you’re looking at cannabinoid recovery, then give raw yield…?!?
Edit: see you posted efficiencies while I was as typing …
30% of available cannabinoids…yeah, you need to do better.
Top or bottom fill?
Try extending your soak times. Try a third wash. Ideally you would use mass balance on your cannabinoids, but you can also get a reasonable approximation on “is this helping?” by recovering that third soak separately (makes exploring the search space cheaper if you don’t have in house analytics).
5 Likes
A 3 minute soak and a rinse was getting 90-95% for me on an X-10 straight butane.
Even on older cured material. We pulled more garbage but the yield remained about the same.
1 Like
Top Fill. And yes, discard that raw yield part. We’re sitting around 60% extraction efficiency at the moment
How are you packing
1 Like
Usually either untrimmed buds or trim. Between 1,500g - 2,500g per sock.
Blasting 8 socks per day.
Notice a difference in efficiency between 1.5 & 2.5kg?
Suggests more solvent…
No?
Suggests otherwise.
Aiming at 80-85% seems reasonable. attempts to get more out of every bag need to be balanced against total throughput.
Which is where showing the boss how much that third soak on 6 bags yields vs running two more bags in a shift comes in.
3 Likes
The density of the pack won’t mean as much for the trim since there is still a majority of the surface area exposed. But that is a large difference in sock weight.
We haven’t noticed a direct difference, mostly because each sock differs drastically in weight. One 1,500g sock might be loaded into the same run as a 2,500g sock.
I hear ya. Weight definitely differs quite a bit sock to sock. I’m curious if packing each sock as close to the same weight as possible would make a difference, doubt it though.
If you’re going for 100% extraction efficiency then you’re going to have to sacrifice some quality.
I’d start with increasing temp to -20 on the solvent for your final pass. Warmer solvent will pick up more noids. Obviously you’ll get a little lower quality but you can save that first pass for the top shelf.
5 Likes
We somewhat tried this. Since our main focus atm is producing crude for distillation, we increased our injection temp from -60 to -45ish last month and noticed an increase in yield, still searching to improve efficiency or cannabinoid recovery.
1 Like
Welcome! You have some really experienced extractors chiming in here. You’ll get some good advice. Where are you located?
Hello! I’m aware! I’ve received much insight from @cyclopath before on other topics.
We are operating in Eastern Pennsylvania.
2 Likes
He’ll keep your Didgeridoos from your Didgeridon’ts.
5 Likes
I used to be in Pittsburgh working for PurePenn/Trulieve
2 Likes
i would try flushing with a large amount of solvent after your first soak. run solvent over your material until it runs clear or at least very very pale.
-60C is super cold, great for quality extracts, awful for efficiencies. Additionally, higher propane blends tend to preferably extract terpenes over cannabinoids.
If you still want quality products AND good yields, do what someone above me said.
1st wash -60C soak, send to recovery pot # 1 (high quality fraction)
2nd wash -20C soak, send to recovery pot # 2 (low quality fraction)
That way the majority of your stuff is still primo, and your efficiencies are higher due to warmer soak. But that second fraction is probably not gonna be dabbable quality extract, so send er to infused prerolls or distillate.
5 Likes