It washes the cannabis and then it washes the cannabis some more

Hash and Stuff Extraction
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101

Yea I ran a couple runs anyway by just pumping the total solvent over the biomass and I’m going to test it but I have a feeling it is inadequate.

Once I get the results back I’ll hook up a recirculating system and just recirculate through and then do a quick wash with fresh ethanol for the final minute to pull off all the residual I think.

As others have mentioned, that is really what gave us the best efficiency doing traditional ethanol soak in a centrifuge was during the spin dry cycle, we would rinse the biomass with fresh ethanol from the CIP spray ball for 2-3 20-30s intervals. It brought us down to <0.3% THC remaining in the biomass post extraction, often times much lower.

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102

What temps did it see during solvent recovery?

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103

Only went to 68C on our rotovap. I think its biomass producing the deep brown color. What are your thoughts?

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That staying below 30C will improve the color…(if you care)

Data collected long ago, whilst winterizing BHO…it absolutely could be your biomass…unless you try recovering at lower temps you’ll never know

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105

This is definitely a thought I’ve had, but my concern is always the balance of time:color. I do believe that cusomers want a light colored oil, but in my areas they almost exclusively shop based on potency… which is silly.

This rotovap is already the incorrect tool for our scale and I feel as though if I run it much cooler it’ll take days. I will probably try it just to do it.

We use a welch pump on rotovap and usually hover around -25"Hg (digial gauge/bullseye used elsewhere). Should we compensate for the cooler temps by pulling the deepest vac possible? Or will that leaves us back at square one?

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106

To get best color, we stayed below 40C during rotovaping.

I also agree, old biomass will have more color. I got that good looking result on quite fresh trim, and stayed below 40C through it’s entire lifetime.

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107

Sucking harder should mostly compensate for heating less. But your chiller needs to be set appropriately as well.

I remember looking up (and posting) a chart for ethanol, and you can boil that stuff at -80C if you’re determined.

Edit: found it!!

image
image640×529 31.2 KB

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108

Oh that’s a fools gambit! People telling me “You can do X, if you’re determined” is a fantastic way for me to waste a whole bunch of time. Usually resulting in me doing it, but hating every second of it.

I’m not super confident in the little welch that could being able to go deep enough to prevent excessive run times. If my lab partner wants to go for it we will though.

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What sort of biomass, what is it’s history?

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110

It’s actually decent quality biomass. It was harvest less than 3 months ago, hand trimmed, some smalls/larf, and obviously completely cured. We’ve had different growers biomass produce a much more magnificent yellow color, but our in-house biomass has almost always produced this color.

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111

Hmm. I’m not really sure then. I admit i don’t have a ton of different biomasses I’ve run by this method. I definitely did observe some browning when the temp was up and had to keep below 40 to stay golden.

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112

PSA:

Always shut off your valves that lead to a soft line that could potentially break when no one is at the lab.

This was a joy to walk into at 6am

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113

Good thing you had that floor drain!!!

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114

Duuddeeee…. That fuckin sucks.

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115

Floor drains in the bathroom also helped quite a bit. :joy:

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Don’t see as many floods here as we used to get in the old growers forums. A silver lining, thanks for the nostalgic memories.

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117

Have you ever looked into the Tagouchi method (design of experiments)?

Currently running a 4 factor model test right now, from Start of our process to final.

Have learned a a lot to dial in the best parameters etc. Try it out, you will find some amazing results.

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118

In my opinion, this is definitely the ideal way to optimize processes like this.

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I am quite familiar with DOE but we haven’t invested in any DOE based software to assist with this and if I’m going to model DOE and run statistical analysis I would much rather leverage software than trying to do it all manually or with excel :).

I mean really the best way to give anyone advice from nanoemulsion formulation to experimental extraction can all be told to use a DOE type methodology.

Either way I’ll definitely end up sharing the results I get with or without applying DOE methodology.

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120

Try out MiniTab for free once you get your data and plug it in , thats what im doing lol

But appreciate it!