Is it possible to make a gold/yellow ethanol extract?

Is that what happend to my oversized styrofoam cooler? :wink:

Just kidding, that one was a St Vinnies find…
$10 if I recall correctly.
I got mine free from the local university.

Traditionally used for shipping stuff on dry ice.
They don’t hold water (or solvent) unfortunately.

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I think the ethanol reacts with styrofoam? I’d be cautious as to making sure everything in your system is ethanol compatible! Any gaskets, seals, rubbers, etc. along the way needs to not dissolve!

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First and foremost, I appreciate the concern. It needs stating repeatedly that
having equipment that is appropriate for the task, and safe for the operator and end user is absolutely mission critical.

As stated, the cooler in question doesn’t hold water.
So no fear of filling it with solvent.

Pretty sure acetone will get you styrene :wink: (or at least liquid cooler)

Also pretty sure Everclear in a styrofoam coffee cup won’t do you any more harm than from a mason jar…but I wouldn’t take my word on that.

Both solvent & biomass are stored in nice shiny beer kegs. I’ve described the mods to those kegs around here somewhere. Including the recommendation that you don’t try fitting a 10" tri-clamp ferrule on there.

…because you have to cut the rolled edge of the keg to allow access to the bolts. That compromises the keg, and the ferrule ends up bending over time. making those ethanol resistant PTFE gaskets way harder to get a seal on.

…so I substituted the slightly less impervious viton.
Rather than the ethanol & hydrocarbon susceptible silicone.

transfer hoses are PTFE with stainless overbraid, or whatever elastomer Delta ships with their CUP. (I think I posted my best guess on that too).

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@tweedledew I think @Akoyeh is probably using the cooler to chill the biomass not run the extraction. Beyond whether it will survive the ethanol it definitely won’t survive whatever is used for aggitation.

Ethanol has a low (but not negligible) solvency with polystyrene. You will have some chemical reactivity and likely pick that up in traces in your extracts if you have the alcohol in styrofoam at any point. At the low temperatures it’s likely even more benign, but there’s still some reactivity.

good to know (documenting it with a link would be great)

I personally would never do it.
I like shiny things too much :wink:

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Add some turbo yeast and ferment those sugars! #hempshine

If you suspect starches then be sure to use alpha amylase first to break them into glucose units.

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Those 20 dollar cyro gloves are about to change your life

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Great info! What reduction in yield do you typically see with AC? Less than 5% loss of cannabinoids?

@anon81723932 I usually see a bump in cannabinoids using AC. I think AC’s ability to adsorb cannabinoids is greatly overstated. At the very least it adsorbes everything else at a fast enough rate that the overall impact is a higher concentration of cannabinoids. We may be losing some yeild by weight but, honestly, it’s not something that’s come up for me. When we switched to this method we saw yeilds by weight stay largely consistent but the overall concentrations went up slightly. The improvement in the quality of the oil was pronounced and significant. And with all the extra earthiness scrubbed out the terps really shine through.

Just to be clear, I don’t see a significant loss using AC the way we use AC. The extract is passing through AC in our SOP, not soaking in it. There is a bit kicked up into suspension by pouring the extract onto the cake but it doesn’t sit for long. I am not saying definitely that AC doesn’t adsorb cannabinoids at all as much as the benefits of scrubbing outweigh any costs in our method.

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Thoughts on cold extract passing directly through a column of AC vs. getting warmed up through heating coils first prior to passing through AC. :thinking:

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@Deleted I’ve noted (but not tested) that the bentonite is better at removing water solubles when the material is passed through cold. I’ve had a few occasions where I passed warm material and still had contamination precipitate out upon decarb. There may have been other variables. Like I said, this is just an observation without testing. I will also say that not everything that went through warm came out contaminated.

All I know is that while running warm is sometimes a problem running cold has worked 100% of the time. I generally take a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach to such things. :slight_smile:

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Do you think you can share your method for making a filtration cake. Start to finish. After reading this I’m starting to think the person who “taught” me how to make a cake was wrong. None the less I still make decent 90%thc+ light colored distillate. Thanks

Sure, I’ll post some notes. I’ll post that in a few days. I’m super backed up at the moment. I just wanted to acknowledge your request. In the mean time, enjoy this video of one of our recent extractions. This is the first purge, unwinterized material.

Spinning gold

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@Beaker

I followed his tek for cake making in the buchner. Suited me well. Maybe he can chime in as well.

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Thank you I’ll search through his posts and see how it compares to how I do it currently.

Here is my chlorophyll removal run last night. Boiled first in iso and water at 70/30 ratio then pulled through an alumina column at the same 70/30 ratio. This is highly effective at room temperature and targets the chlorophylls but much of the wax is also removed this way.
I do not use carbon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpwi6_FBZBy/

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God damnit that’s sexy

Also, when you say boil. Do you do it on a double boiler? Directly in a pot? How much heat is on there?

I boil it in a flask set on a stainless steel pan and just bring it to a boil on my stove. Setting the stove to medium does the trick. Then the rest is carried out at room temp. Cryo can get a bit more stuff but this month I proved to myself in a lab that the filteration as seen here is 99% effective with the cryo part pulling out the trace scums and gums.

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