I’m just wondering how pure propane would do? It seems to be very selective of the cannabinoids compared to terps.
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I believe the pentane did better than any other solvents would because the pentane vapor has a similar temperature to the boiling point of the terpenes that I was targeting.
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Very good point! Never had time to delve into terp extraction. Nows a good a time then any, I guess.
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In fact this reminds me of something I think @Photon_noir was saying about pushing methanol out of your extract by adding and boiling some ethanol to the solution. The higher bp ethanol pushes the methanol out.
So the higher bp pentane could be pushing out terps quite nicely.
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Same idea behind butane/propane mixes.
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Lol no, the ethanol isn’t pushing it out, it’s just got a lower boiling point so you’re able to boil off the methanol without reaching the BP of ethanol. This ensures that if any solvent remains, its ethanol. I used to do this in college 8 years ago with hexane extracts, using ethanol’s higher BP in order to ensure it was the last solvent remaining and safe for consumption if there was any residuals left.
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Push pentane out with acetone
The azeotrope will bring bp down
And then the final purge will be acetone
Wich if clean is allowed in high ppm
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Well I dropped out of college buddy haha so bare with me here.
I do want to take some classes though. The teachers would probably think I’m up to no good
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I’ve heard of people using dcm with great results
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Hmm… I may have been talking about methanol and isopropanol azeotrope distillation… not sure. I don’t think ethanol would necessarily help remove methanol, but maybe. It depends on the system; how they are set up.
Ah, yes! That makes more sense!
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Checking in here to see if anyone else has tried this/made any progress with the method recently. Still haven’t gotten the boss people to let me try it
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One thing I found is the biomass needs to be heated to avoid reflux
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Great tip! I wonder if this would work better running -40 condenser and cold boiling or if it wouldn’t be worth the effort
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Would they possible let you try other gasses with less hesitation? Would suggest argon or butane.
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Nope, purely about the time off of production. I’m thinking pentane, chloroform, and ether when I get a chance but I’m in for the info. I thought about argon/nitrogen but honestly, how’s it any different than running a gas run on a CO2 system?
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I could see cold boiling benifiting the pentane recovery , but not sure in the vapor extraction.
Its just difficult to run a hard vacuum on pentane without vapors going out your pump. Need a dry ice trap and a good exhaust system. I usually pull a half vac, close valve to pump and allow the flask rotation and 32 c to do all the work in the roto.
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Help me out here, @Apothecary36 and @Roguelab, im a little confused. To my knowledge, the reason steam distillation works is because the terpene water azeotrope settles back out into two layers so the water layer can be returned/separated. And I would assume that terpenes and alkane solvents are miscible in each other. So if they dont separate into distinct layers after the distillation, how do you separate the final terpenes from the solvent?
Roto mane
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Terpenes should never touch water
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