I’ma ask a dumb question that’s semi-unrelated, so I apologize for any unintentional derailments → Why are folks using the term “micelle” to refer to their extraction solution? I’m certain my confusion stems from my incomplete knowledge/always more to learn and such (background in microbiology, not chem), but as far as I know, a micelle is a term used to refer to molecular aggregate formations in colloidal solutions.
Like, how oil forms lil bubbles when you add it to water, what’s really happening there is that the oil molecules are being repelled by the water due to differentiations in polarity, with the end of the molecular chain that is most opposite in polarity from the solution itself facing inward, and the most similar in polarity facing outward.
Now, I wouldn’t consider a solution of cannabis oils in liquid hydrocarbons a colloidal solution, nor a micelle/micellar solution due to this polarity-dependent mechanic of micellar structure formations, and the same-same polarity of the subject solution here.
How far off is my own understanding? Where am I veering off-course?
Idk if any other glycol chillers have a variable drive on the compressor but Ultracool does. Its a competitor to MTA. Most glycol chillers on the market are just on/off. Having an intelligent drive leads to a ROI of about 2 years, depending on use and load.
After a quick google search looks like Multistack, G&D, Trane, Carrier and some others do. No mention on MTA website of vfd/variable speed compressor. LAUDA Ultracool_English_21-05-25_jam.pdf (2.8 MB)
@Zack_illuminated, Presumably If one wanted to implement your thermal tech on a 3rd party system and throw the power hungry chillers and heaters away, One would then be required to purchase and/or retrofit any jacketed vessel to a thicker stainless steel ?
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the Bizzy vessels have 6mm jackets ?
Go back in time…before we groked what you have down as “micelle”
Definition of terms
Medicinal plant. It refers to a plant comprising active ingredients or secondary metabolites that possess biological activity. A whole plant may be medicinally active or plant parts.[4,6,7] Herbal medicine. These are medicinal preparations comprising active ingredients obtained from the herbal plant. The product can be made from the whole plant or any part. Preparations from by-product herbal plants such as oils, gums, and other secretions are also considered as herbal medicine.[4,6,7] Menstruum. It is a liquid or a suitable solvent chosen for an effective extraction process.[2,3] Marc. It is an insoluble or inert drug material that is left behind at the end of the extraction process.[2,3] Micelle. It is the mixture of both the extracted drug material and the solvent of extraction. Preparation of Medicinal Plants: Basic Extraction and Fractionation Procedures for Experimental Purposes - PMC
Huh? That just sounds like they’re using the word incorrectly then, in that paper? I mean, micelle is a very specific term. To go even further, within that paper, the term solvent would be a more precise and technically correct term to use than menstruum, right?
Hell, at least ‘winterization’ is just a made-up word.
I get it , there’s a history, of course, but those terms aren’t used today in that way anywhere else but a cannabis lab. Solvent is the modern term for menstruum, and solution is the modern term for micelle (and the modern definition of micelle has little to do with cannabis extractions, and has been used this way since the early 1800’s so without reading more from Mechoulam I’d hazard that if they used that term they did so incorrectly). I wouldn’t believe that folks in cannabis first learned about chemistry from 150 year old texts if you told me that. I mean, the folks who first modernized hydrocarbon extractions for cannabis had backgrounds in the petroleum industry if I remember right. I’m sure they learned their chemistry from relatively more modern texts.
actually it’s NOT. we pulled that from the vegetable oil whirled…
Winterizationof oil is a process that uses a solvent and cold temperatures to separate lipids and other desired oil compounds from waxes. Winterization is a type of fractionation (also known as fractionate crystallization), the general process of separating the triglycerides found in fats and oils, using the difference in their melting points, solubility, and volatility.[citation needed]
Winterization is an oil refinement technique commonly used in biotechnology. The process involves dissolving the extract in ethanol, then placing the mixture in a freezer to chill. The cold allows for the separation of compounds by differences in their melting and precipitation points. In the cooling process, the fats and waxes with higher melting points will precipitate out and can then be removed by filtration, centrifugation, decantation, or other separation processes. A pure, liquid oil extract is left behind, ready to be further processed for consumer use.[citation needed]Winterization of oil - Wikipedia.
Edit - It does if you throw an s in there! Though that seems to mostly find “miscible”, which is technically unrelated to micelle, with latin roots in “to mix”, so maybe micella/e is just a bit of a hodge-podge of miscible? as in “a mix of”? In which case it would be most correct to say something like “miscelle/a”??
Not to nerd out on tangentially-related language/etymology.
One of them was a 4" jacketed column with some structured packing inside and I had my hand on it… was a loud bang and the column bounced in my hand. It didn’t leak but the ferrule was turned into a saddle - curved in two directions. When I cut it in half, the outer jacket was at normal size but the inner core column with the packing was a quarter inch thick.
The 6" ones are either loud as hell or completely silent when they deform and you just can’t get the sock out no matter how hard you pull on it.
If you want a system that actually works without failure and to get the training on how & why it works then yeah, you kinda gotta buy from the inventor of the tech. There is definitely more to it than just exchanging heat that is required to make it functional.
It is not like we are up-charging an arm and a leg for the equipment or charging licensing fees to our customers to utilize the tech, even though I spent countless hours trying everything I could think of to get it to actually work as required and built my own c1d1 to test everything in.
We are PSI certified for propane use on all parts of the system.
The columns we supply are designed for making big transitions in temperature in a very short period of time, as well as the expected operational pressures of propane.
For instance, we can go from +50c to -50c in roughly 5 minutes or -50c to +50c in about 2 minutes on the R600 Behemoth.
This thermal shock is very hard on an improperly designed column.
One thing I am interested in & relevant to this thread is how illuminated machines handle recirculating the recovered solvent. Having only 75lb of propane in cycle I assume means the solvent being recovered is piped rite back to the material column ?
How is this achieved when CRC filtration is being preformed inline, post material column ? (Especially with b80 or other finer media)
Does this require an additional 75lb in post CRC filtration evaporator or GD1 to make up for the filtration time ?
Also how do you control the amount of propane that hits the columns ?
We do CRC after extraction because it is more effective to have multiple socks of bio in the run vs one sock.
The 75lb is cycling (our patented extraction tech) from the basin, to compressor, to condenser, then back to the column, non-stop, at whatever rate your compressor can handle, until you go to the next column.
The amount that goes through the column is a factor of whatever compressor the system is using and the inlet and outlet pressure and temperature of the gas. From there I calculate various conditions and it becomes a time-based scenario for the extraction.
With our systems the 12lb / 40lb / 75lb would in theory fill up with product very fast but we are constantly cleaning it and sending the fresh solvent back to extraction while the product rests in our GD1 or double basin.
The only real loss we experience is from the bio and you can see the basin level decrease throughout the day. To which, you can always just throw a little more solvent back in there and keep it where it should be or just ride it out and know you won’t have much to recover at the end of the day.
, there’s a history, of course, but those terms aren’t used today in that way anywhere else but a cannabis lab. Solvent is the modern term for menstruum, and solution is the modern term for micelle (and the modern definition of micelle has little to do with cannabis extractions, and has been used this way since the early 1800’s so without reading more from Mechoulam I’d hazard that if they used that term they did so incorrectly). I wouldn’t believe that folks in cannabis first learned about chemistry from 150 year old texts if you told me that. I mean, the folks who first modernized hydrocarbon extractions for cannabis had backgrounds in the petroleum industry if I remember right. I’m sure they learned their chemistry from relatively more modern texts.
