Anyone ever used methane for extraction?
I had a friend of a friend say he was playing around with methane.
I know it needs to be ridiculously cold or highly pressurized to stay in liquid.
He was saying he was doing the extract at -180 so it leads me to believe that it’s not pressurized.
Didn’t get to see any results, but he said he was doing it live.
Seems real advantageous for terp preservation with the obscenely low boiling point (-161c)
Curious as to the chlorophyll/wax pickup? Has anyone done this? Any theories as to what might happen?
@Photon_noir you seem to be in the know with solvents. Any ideas?
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I question how efficient it will be for extraction at that low of a temperature! Might as well try and extract with liquid nitrogen. I’d be interested to be proven wrong though!
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I was thinking the methyl group (like with methanol?) might help the solvency at such low temps. But my chemistry knowledge is high school level (maybe slightly higher because of this forum).
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Guess it’s easy enough to try with some liquid nitrogen on a small pilot
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Should be good for some terpene extraction perhaps. Don’t need to make a liquid out of it in that case.
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Will it taste like cow farts though?
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Never tried it, always though about it. Safety first.
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You don’t think it’s worthwhile for thc-a?
Maybe with pressure and agitation of solvent, enough residence time, etc.
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At very high pressures, methane becomes a supercritical fluid at the slightly more reasonable temp of -80C. That could yield some interesting results when run in a CO2 like manner.
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I wonder if Mercaptan would stay with the extract? Unless you could access pure methane without that added…
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I was gonna go with purified methane off the start, and maybe play with purifying it myself off of my LNG line down the road
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What equipment would you run this on?
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Not sure tbh.
Probably start with a chill and soak to check initial returns. Then either soxhlet or tube style pending on what works well?
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Mercaptans can be removed from a liquid or gas stream with either 13x zeolite or just copper scrubby pads.
turbeville2006.pdf (654.4 KB)
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I read @Photon_noir vanderwal forces post and still wasn’t really clear on how methane would preform in relation to the other alkanes. I’m leaning towards a lower solvency on cannabinoids than the rest of the alkanes? Seem like heptane is best and they kind of lower in solvent power the simpler the molecules become?
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IIRC the longer the chain on the hydrocarbon the more solvation power. So yes the simpler molecules will have less power of solvation.
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Ah, so I’m going the absolute worst route… nice… lol
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lol i mean…
Methane sitting at -86c will rest somewhere around what, 880 psi? i cant even imagine what room temp would push.
Im very interested in ethane however, its critical point is very similar to that of co2, so could be operated in a co2 unit if the seals and gaskets were appropriate. id be terrified of a blowout tho, The worst parts of co2 and hydrocarbon combined, at 5000psi would methane self ignite if it blew a gasket just on friction? @drjackhughes @MagisterChemist @Photon_noir
As you go down the lines of alkane liquids solubility definitely decreases, but who knows as far as in its critical state. all bets are off.
I do think with any of these liquid solvents, anything colder than -80 really doesnt make sense to me, excluding critical conditions. Being so cold is just gonna freeze terps and not extract them.
Would love to see it either way,
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