Tomorrow, I am launching a new, simplier, salt-free version of RSO 2.0. That name is now retired with a new identity going forward. GrayWolf has been instrumental in the development of this process and suggested the name change, as he put it, “to get away from the stink of RSO”. What can you say, he was right. Unrefined cannabis oil is nothing more than “La Brea” as I affectionately call it.
So let me introduce you to RxCE - Refined Cannabis Extract. The ‘x’ in the name is the solvent used for the bulk extraction. This covers the various ‘flavors’ of extract -
This page (and all the hype) is going to be announced to the world tomorrow via twitter, cannabis forums, and facebook groups. Its all free, nothing for sale.
I’m posting this a day early to acknowledge @Beaker contributions in this area. After you read through it, you’ll see it confirms a lot of what Beaker was presenting on degumming and room temperature winterization. I call the new winterization “Rapid Winterization” because it still uses freezing temps to accelerate the wax formation.
Great read! It’s nice to see water being added to remove more impurities during roto distillation. 7+ years ago I had a similar work up I did for end of bho runs I would do, I’d collect enough resin in 99% isopropyl and then after so long of collecting you can of course pull solvent off, well it already had a volume of water to it and we had noticed the white film coming into the band that was rolling around the flask in the roto so decided to add additional water and ramp up rpm and heat to exactly 100c. After a bit the oil became a translucent bright orange. It was beautiful and one of the first times I ever encountered it. The oil was SUPER stable too.
thanx for posting this i will be trying this immediately .
if you don’t mind would this work with hexane or would i be better off dissolving the crude in ethanol
I do suggest watching the video on the website and duplicating that as a way to get to know the process. I used 99% isopropyl to wash 2 ounces of hemp. The hardest part of the process is actually dumping out the waste water without losing oils and sediments. Adding ice to the boiler is the best way to freeze the oils and secure them with a fork. Then you can dump out the waste water. It sounds silly but it works on a small scale in the kitchen. Using this you can imagine how it would scale up. On the website to the left of the embedded video is a link to the QuickStart guide. I recommend downloading that as well.
thanx for the advice I’m going to try acetone its reasonably cheep here in South Africa and that fits with your original SOP
i was wondering how you separated the two after getting rid of the solvent i have a 600g batch that I’ve just finished boiling off the hexane i will re-soak in acetone and try your process
Thank you for posting! I’m a bit confused. For the degumming step you distill water through the material (mixed with ethanol?) and it releases phospholipids?
Have you boiled the water off and tested the residue?
Actually, using Acetone is going to be harder than Ethanol or Isopropyl. Acetone forms an unfavorable Azeotrope with water, a ration 8%:92%. For every 8 units of Acetone that gets boiled out, 92 units of water boil out too. so it take a very substantial amount of water and boiling to clean the oil. Its better to use 100% acetone and no water through distilling. Is Isopropyl available in South Africa?
Yes, add water to the boiler before distilling. The water hydrates the the hydrophilic phospholipids, these form an emulsion in the water. I have boiled this down. Losses from classic winterization have been reported to be around 15% cbd, 18% thc. RxCE losses are around 25%. So there is more losses in the emulsion. If you’re interested, save the emulsion that gets dumped out after distillation. You can boil it down to save what oils remain but its nasty. The water soluble plant material make this very bitter. The oil retained this way is not going to be a large volume. I’ll show pics soon.
Yea the hemp guys used to winterize this way back in the CBD gold rush. Just on a large scale it can be hard to maintain pH with so much water involved and can result to red distillate. Just to be clear they would do this in 50L rotors and reactors. Salt out fats in reactors, then add water within the roto work flow.
The wash is mixed with the water so the water absorbs the polar compounds. The phospholipids and proteins will make an emulsion. That is the outcome of water degumming. The extent of the initial alcohol/water emulsion follows Beaker’s Louching concept, but the final emulsion is more about the phospholipids building an emulsion. You can boil out the alcohol by reaching 212f, but the emulsion remains indicating is from a different source, ie, phosphlipids. This also deodorizes the oil. The terps are subject to emulsions. The oil tastes more like oil. Graywolf suggests people can use this as an oil base stock the add their own terps for custom flavoring.
With large volumes of alcohol, the 1/2" of water added to the boiler is small enough to keep the alcohol/water ratio down, so less emulsion. But a 1 to 1 alcohol/water ration makes for a larger emulsion. I have seen lightly translucent wash, boiled that down with minimal yield. That was a good run. Then I’ve seen a heaver opaque emulsion that looks like whole milk. I added a matching Isopropyl volume then salted it out with brine. The isopropyl separates with all the oils in the top phase and leaves the water and salt in the bottom phase. The alcohol was then drawn out and boiled down. It did have a substantial amount of recovered oil.
I went to distilled water as a pure polar solution to pull maximum water soluble compounds. It does form a small emulsion that adds to the losses as mentioned. You are implying distilled water vs clean water may be making a thicker emulsion. I would love some views/perspectives on this. Maybe purified water would be better, haven’t tested the two. That’s worth looking into.
One unexpected problem I ran into at a friends place was an oversite. We ran a gallon 99% Isopropyl wash, added a 1/2 inch water to the boiler, poured in the wash and boiled it down. We let it stay on full power till a majority of the alcohol boiled off and turned it down when the temperature started rising. Our fault, we turned away for a few minutes and the boiler ran dry and scorched the bottom of the pan. I was surprised it ran out of water. But thinking about it, the 99% ISO immediately bonded to water and became 91%. This stole some of the water. When the alcohol boiled off, it took more water than anticipated leading to the boiler running dry. I don’t anticipate this happening when using 95% EtOH or 91% Iso. This is an FYI, I’ll update the notes to account for this water loss.
Yes neutral is the goal. But alcohol/water tends to shift pH, the longer they hang out together. For example, it’s not a good idea to winterize a bunch of hemp crude, then let the alcohol solution sit overnight before recovering the alcohol the next day. In the CBD world this usually what leads to pink/purple distillate. It’s definitly creating isomers of some kind because it gets harder and harder to crystalize as it changes purple. I forget the Isomer, but I know @AlexSiegel remembers the name.
I just did a 2oz run with Acetone. It boiled out fine in distilled water. The distilled water will look milky with a minor emulsion. You can boil this down further to save any residual oils.
The only head-up is don’t use plastic funnels or nylon nut milk bags to filter the acetone wash. Plastics and nylon are not acetone safe. Use metal funnels and unbleached coffee filters to filter out the waxes.
Edit#2: Forgot to say, make sure your acetone doesn’t have other added stuff to it. I used the 16oz version of this product, but it does have Denatonium benzoate to keep you from drinking it. Denatonium benzoate
I tasted the oil and its fine. The bittering agent must be polar so it must have got flushed with the waste water.
I’m also happy to report that Room Temperature/Rapid Winterization works fine. Here I had poured off the waste water, rinse the pan, then redissolved the oils in 95% Ethanol (placed the pan on heat for a minute to greatly speed up the dissolving action). Place the pan in ice water, and this is what you get -
Pour this through a paper napkin filter or coffee filter and you are ready for final reduction. Edit#2 Here’s what was caught in the paper napkin filter.
I’m running a run video session tomorrow, Thursday May 4th at 8am PST. I will post the video info here, a half hour before showtime. We will cover Distillation with water and how to collect the oils from the waste water, then on to Rapid Winterization, Reduction and then Decarbing. Last week, this took just over an hour. So grab a cup of coffee and join in! These small session are great Q&A sessions.
Everyone is invited, but remember, the target audience and the process are small quantities made in the kitchen, nothing industrial here. If you make RSO at home, you will want to see this.
What can you say, he was right. Unrefined cannabis oil is nothing more than “La Brea” as I affectionately call it.
