I doubt decarbed cannabinoids lose much extraction efficiency in ethanol… after all, they still have their alcoholic hydroxyl groups! The loss of terpenes from the resin during decarb might have a deleterious effect on solvent based extractions in general, though.
However, I might have said that CO2 extracts decarbed cannabinoids more easily than their acids. That is true, according to direct studies with reagent grade cannabinoids and acids using supercritical CO2.
Does 151 not attract as much moisture as 190 ?
I’m no chemist so I could have miss understood or simply do not fully understand the effects but I’ve definitely read articles that claim a difference in polarity between the acidic and non acidic forms of THC and CBD. Seems that if THCA and CBDA are indeed more polar there wold be at least marginal benefits in extraction using a more polar solvent? I have not found any research demonstrating any difference and have yet to do a side by side myself. Was on the short list of to do’s but got side tracked by permitting/compliance fun!!
I just realized that the difference, if any, in polarity between THCA and THC is probably much less a factor than the presence of h2o in terms of increasing/decreasing efficiency in ethanol extraction.
151 has more moisture than 190. it will extract a yucky green mess, and may miss some of your cannabinoids.
There are states that sell Everclear at 151proof (eg VA), and the kids there are sure isopropanol works better than ethanol. because “water”.
Yea I’m using a scope after a first wash with, I’m sure diluted eth . Seems to be missing a lot of thc . I still see a bunch of crystal stalks . Did a second wash still seeing good amount of thc stalks on the boimass. It’s frustrating. Any advice ? 1 gal per 1.5-2 lb . Usually soak for 30-1 hr. Let this soak sit over night , didn’t help . My guess is over saturation or diluted Eth. You think iso would be a better choice
if your ethanol was “wet”, then yes, your extraction would not have gone as expected.
Do I think Iso is a better choice? NO! see: Iso vs ethonal
Not unless you simply can’t obtain ethanol in the required proof. 190.
Can you post pictures?
Because you should see “stalks”, they just shouldn’t have anything in the heads.
1gal to 2lb should be plenty.
what size are your “buckets”?
have you read: Bucket Tek (Cold Ethanol Extraction on a Budget)
You’re not going to get it all.** The economics of solvent recovery mean that most folks optimise on a cost basis.
Aiming for 95% isn’t unrealistic, but 90% might be closer to the truth if you’re not agitating. Capna claims 98.5%?
I hear the CO2 guys give up at around 90%.
I certainly aimed at “90% or better” when I had access to a GC.
I didn’t see much difference in extraction efficiency (HUGE difference in the quality of the meds!) when I changed the companies week long room temp ethanol soaks to QWETs targeting 90sec residence time.
Yes, there were yield differences, but who needs 45% CBD that takes a week, when you can get 80% CBD that takes 15min? especially if you’re getting essentially the same kg of CBD??
I didn’t have a fuge at that point, and @Lincoln20XX reckons that should have put me closer to 83% …(same as Capna)
I drip dried the material with no evaporation for 3 days. so I’m sticking with ~90%.
I’ll admit I didn’t test all my input. I did however run the same 3-4 strains, always tested the output, and always did a sanity check on the expected yield.
I’m shopping for a GC right now to develop solid efficiency numbers for the Ace15 & Ace30.
compare @Demontrich’s ethanol extraction to yours.
then go check out @TheLostBiologist’s
** you can get it all…and you can do it with only water as your analytical tool. you just have to do 3 washes, or a whole lot of solvent. You also have to understand what it means to be a loucher 
Hard to take a pic down the scope . Just looks like a lot of crystal heads stalks etc . I feel like the boimass should look pretty naked of anything on the leaves. 20-30 f.
not if it’s a $5 clip-on for your phone.
really useful tool.
the stalks should not go away.
the heads should looked “melted”
the all knowing one is being stubborn.
I’m sure someone here can post appropriate pics.
@Roguelab @Soxhlet @Demontrich @TheLostBiologist ?!?
Or I’ll take some tomorrow.
did they look like this?
because these have not been extracted.
Top head missing means it has ? Going to double check . Got one of the after ? I’m going to look that up to . Hard to tell , like I said figured it would look like a bare leaf after the fact .
if I had pictures of post extraction you’d be looking at them.
if you can get google to produce a picture of post extraction trich’s your googlefu is better than mine right now…
oh bother.
that suggests I may be hallucinating again…
Yes, the acids are more polar than the simple cannabinoid-ols. However, this only really makes a difference to CO2, pretty much the most non-polar solvent people use in cannabis. CO2 is considerably more effective at extracting/dissolving/carrying decarboxylated cannabinoids than their acids.
You can think of ethanol as being just “bi” (semi-polar is the term for it) enough to kick it with non-polars and polars… but like anything, it mostly enjoys the company of compounds like itself, id est, alcohols like tertrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol.
And your last thought was definitely more accurate. The cannabinoid acids like water about as much as the decarbed cannabinoid alcohols… the non-polar parts of the cannabinoids are much bigger (and therefore have much greater influence on solubility) than the tiny slightly polar regions, those being both the OH groups and the COOH groups. As for cannabinoid acid acidity, look up the pKa values for them… low numbers mean low “dissociation constants” (that’s the search term you want to learn more about it).
Got it, that makes sense. Thanks for the knowledge @Photon_noir I’ve got some reading to do! Excited to learn more about “dissociation constants” 
What kind of volumetrics (LN2 usage) are you seeing with flash freezing material?
I have no idea. On all the dewars I’ve used not a single pressure gauge worked so the only way to measure usage would be by weight and I don’t have a large enough scale to place a 180L dewar on to weigh. Plus the better spray nozzle, hose insulation, ambient temps, and total mass to be frozen all play a huge roll in how much LN2 would be needed.
All my biomass goes into my dry room I use to dry harvests. Temp and rh controlled environment. 75*f and 55%rh.
I then use 200 proof food grade (absolutelyNO denatured garbage in my spot) , and have found using the dry ice I use (used for commercial food service and electronics cleaning), i add t ok my ethanol wash. I mix and soak for up to 40 minutes. Yes, 40 minutes. And i get super golden “liquid gold” ethanol wash.
Below is my dry ice cryo ethanol 40 min soak after filtering ONLY thru celite 545 in a buchner funnel. I had 10 gallons of this to rotovap
How many lbs of dry ice to gallons of ethanol do you use?
This last run I did
Aprox 13lbs mixed trim and flower
10 gallons of nondenatured ethanol
I bought 150lbs dry ice. I used at least 75% of that.
I yielded aprox 750ml of decarbed/purged crude to run
That has to get costly overtime right? Would love to give it a try with our 55 gallon vessels.
I pay 1.00/lb for my food grade dry ice.
