Hello everyone! I was recently hired on with a start up company for ethanol extraction to produce the famous golden honey oil that everyone wants. I have no experience in this industry and my employers/investors do not either! We purchased an extraction machine (250,000) and have been working with hemp. I am doing all of the research and development and producing all on my own for the time being and need some direction. From my understanding after extraction we have to evaporate the ethanol before putting the solution into a distillation machine. We have also purchased a short path wiped film. Do I need a jacketed reactor or rotary evaporator to remove the ethanol to make the oil more viscous before putting into short path wiped film? My oil right now is dark green and has the consistency of water. I have done research on winterizing and also BĂĽchner funnel techniques to remove the chlorophyll as well. It would be helpful to know exactly what the workflow process is and if we are missing anything. Thanks for the help
You need a consultant. That green is not good enough to go on and should be remediated with activated charcoal at least.
this. Where are you guys located?
Take it from someone a year ago, was in your position ( ten levels higher ). $750000 in and the, then production Manager, ME ! . Became the only employee, with family and friends investors counting on you.
This is a great forum but it IS also a platform for selling Products and Technology. READ MORE, ASK VIEWER QUESTIONS, or the assholes will waste your money and time. Listen to @SNAPDRAGON, great advice. Based on your question and comments, sorry but you have no clue. Green liquor, in an SPD ? Through a buchner etc. ??? RED FLAGS. Please get a consultant. Cold extract -40 c min. Saves you 40 % of cleaning and filtering, NO GREEN. Evaporation in alcohol extraction is always an issue, FFE Equipments not Rotovapes for evaporation. THC remediation will be you next big killer. Then Vendors for all of it, ??? I use
Equipment : LABSOCIATY, MIKE. @Future works with him.
Consumable media: @Shadownaught, carbon chemistry
Tech Information: Future4200, @GreenMachine_Consult, @Roman, @Killa12345 and so many others here. READ, READ, READ. get a consulted. Figure out what your producing and for who !!! GOOD LUCK !!
Chill you alcohol before putting it in your extraction equipment -40 c, even -20 you would see a difference.
I really appreciate you spending the time to get back with me on this. It’s a new industry for me and I understand that I don’t have the experience or knowledge about chemistry. We used liquid nitrogen at only -10 before extraction and then a 2 stage evaporation process with the machine using a vacuum. Of course it is a Chinese machine and the information they gave us was not accurate and now we are left with this liquid. I know we can’t put it in a short path distiller in this condition to get a distilled product. This is why I looked into removing chlorophyll with activated charcoal through a Büchner funnel and also winterization. So I have been cleaning our liquid with -35 chilled ethanol to remove waxed and fats and color. Then I was told we need to buy a jacketed reactor to remove ethanol under heat and vacuum again. At this point I am so frustrated that I will probably seek a consultant and take your advice.
You cant blame the equipment. I rock china equipment with zero issues.
AC is for color remediation
AO is for lipid and wax removal (at winterizing temps)
@Zman where are you located?
@Zman where are you located?
@Siosis is a good consultant for the equipment like you need. He can walk you through the process over the phone (if he still consults).
I can help you if you would like. DM me @Zman .
Are you running the Capna Ethos series ethanol extractor?
your work flow is something like this:
biomass goes into the extractor, the output is your ethanol cannabinoid solution.
if you are doing a warm ethanol extraction, you will likely have plant waxes in your ethanol solution. you can remove those by winterization.
if you are doing cold ethanol extracts, (which the capna is designed to do from my understanding), you can bypass the winterization step.
with warm ethanol extracts youll have some green pigment (chlorophyll) which you can remove with activated carbon. DM me about this, I can show you pictures and share my method for a very fair price.
you then need to recover the ethanol. most will use a rotovap but some will use a falling film evaporator. if you use FFE, you may still have 5-10% ethanol left in your oil. you can remove the residual ethanol with a rotovap.
once you concentrate your oil (remove the ethanol) you will have viscous product which should have minimal ethanol.
then prepare your oil for distillation. do this by removing the terpenes and other low boiling compounds (like residual ethanol). you can use a vacuum oven which has a cold trap. You also may want to go ahead and decarb the oil. I can help you with this over the phone.
you then can transfer oil to your distillation setup. I can give more details on distillation if you DM me.
I can walk you thorough much of this on the phone. DM me. I am very fair priced.
I can also help draft SOPs for your organization, Batch Records source equipment, contact vendors etc.
If you are interested in developing in-house analytics (like HPLC) to test your flower, oil. distillate, etc. I can help you develop that capability. More than happy to talk to your investors to help you guys get up to speed.
Oh, Man, you’re me last year. There’s some learnin’ to be done before you are a) safe and b) productive, and it just doesn’t happen overnight. My suggestion is that you log some reading time on this forum and only ask a question where you really, truly, cannot find an answer after a good-faith effort. Folks on here are very knowledgeable and incredibly helpful, but many of them also sell their knowledge, so they will be more receptive to helping you out when it is clear that you’re not wasting their time.
That doesn’t look like a Capna in the photo to me, but the rest of @anon81723932 's advice is sound. If you are extracting at a low enough temperature, a bunch of stuff you don’t want never gets into your solvent. If you are above about -40, you’re going to need to add steps to crash the fats and chlorphyll out of solution and filter them out of your “tea”.
The ethanol that you are using as a solvent will make up about 90% of what you get out of your extraction machine. You need to concentrate the desirable oils that are in that solution and to recover the ethanol so you can use it again. The (easy) way to do that is with a rotary evaporator. If you don’t have one, I happen to know that @asher has one sitting in his garage in Oregon that he would let go very reasonably. The principal of these is that you put the “tea” into a big rotating flask, draw a vacuum on it, and add just enough heat to get it to boil at that level of vacuum. I use .08 mPA and 50c, your mileage may vary. At the same time, you run cold water through the tubing of the condensers of the rotovap, and the boiled-off ethanol collects on the cold coils and runs down into a collection flask. The big challenge is keeping that fluid cold - you’ll spend more on a good cooler than you will on the rest of the rotovap.
You’ll notice the stuff in the flask stop boiling at a certain point, and it will begin to coat the inside of the flask like motor oil. This is usually when you’re down to just oil. This is where you shut the thing off, drain the vacuum, decant the oil into something (it is easier when it is still warm) and pull the ethanol out of the collection flasks.
Then it’s decarb, and distill if you want, and even crash out into a crystal if that’s your goal. I won’t go into all that here, but you are welcome to message me if I can be helpful. You can also find lots of posts here, many with instructions.
Most of all keep in mind that this business has a big learning curve, but you shouldn’t have to learn with your life. Wear protective gear, especially eye wear, at least until you know what you’re doing. And even then.
Good luck!
I could be a potential consultant. Experience in short path ,wiped film and roto-vape.
Yeah man you need to be washing at -35 or below.
The rotovap helps it turn back into an oil. Or you can get a falling film which is like a vertical rotovap. Or a turn style we have a ecochyl too it’s like a rotovap but instead of sitting in hot water it has raw burners over the glass.( it can bust your glass if left too hot with nothing in it) So yes before you make distillate it has to be an oil. I dunno much about that process I rock CO2 processing and ethanol. Currently learning the ins and outs of it but with dry cured material you can get 4-6 washes I lean more to 2-4 but we’re sitting on 10 tons of product. Fresh frozen nothing more than one. My last badder was 79.9% pretty solid for ethanol.
If you want distillation when you’re recovering your oil back you can burn it at 190 F if you want to isolate your first washes to turn them into a badder or shatter you can also do that. Throw it on a hot plate or rotovap at 60 C ( 140 F) and before it hardens lay it out flat on some trays then toss it in the vac oven. Burn below 140 to prevent it from decarbing and to preserver your terpenes.
Dude it is frustrating AF. Because the polarity of ethanol and the density of it it is very hard to work with but once you figure out key temps it’s nice.
I dunno your cycle time but ours is about 7-8 minutes.
Keep your bags the same weight. And try to run the same stuff at first we do a lot of mixed in ours but for a SOP we’re keeping things simple. 3000g a sock with 6-12 L of ethanol. We use 200 proof, also I use 10 L but that’s the ratio that follows with that.
After the first wash chill the ethanol again and go for a second third and fourth. If you’re running for disilate. It’ll come out golden. Technically at that stage it’s a full spectrum hash oil. Ethanol honey oil whatever you wanna call it.
I have a spray vap same guy that gave us the washer. Colorado extractions. He doesn’t have perimeters but solid equipment just be patient with it when it wants to not work right. And the glass equipment.But the spray vap sits beside the washing tanks and once I’m done with it I put it in a 50 gal drum then suck it up it’s got a falling film and a double layered glass water jacket that heats up the tincture into a oil it starts flashing into a oil halfway down into the honey pot. And a cold condenser coil with glycol and water to keep it chilled the glycol keeps it from freezing.
It has wayyyy to much ethanol after my shift so I turn off the feed even if the tincture isn’t done then I set the transfer pump the one that recovers my ethanol to manual because it can’t handle deep vacuum so I don’t let it run and I set the deepest vacuum I can get leave it cooking over night come in the next day watch your condenser if it isn’t dripping ethanol and it isn’t bubbling a lot you’re good to recover but I have it set up so I don’t even have to pull the pot I just use the bottle vac and suck it up in a 20 L.
The yield is shit compared to CO2 supercritical but the fact you don’t have to winterize because you use cold ethanol really helps.
If you’re gonna distill it the green doesn’t matter but you won’t get it this way. It smells like ass tho all those terps will come into the room get ventilation installed above it.
I used to get green washes it took a solid while and I just now figured badder to an extent.
Get a good vacuum oven that can pull at least to 25.
And like I said if you want to do that isolate your first wash and you won’t have to clean it up so much. I’ve not had any charcoal to play with yet but I’m pretty sure our system has a filter I can get for it so once it transfers from the tanks it’ll clean it up. I know I have a particulate one. Keep me updated on your progress my man. Peace