Also… Weird thought, and I’m sure it’ll bite me in the ass later.
But I was noticing a few mLs of water in the bottom of a couple jars due to my water washing and it falling out of solution later.
I’ve got it outside in below freezing temps… I wonder if the water would freeze and create some potential nucleation sites, that can be thawed and drained out later?
If the water froze solid to the bottom I’d pour the rest the solution info another jar
And why meoh? Methanol right?
Yeah methanol.
It has the highest throughput on my membranes. I’m up to some pretty solid throughput numbers on a pretty rinkydink setup.
Could’ve used any alcohol mind you, but methanols quite nice for a lack of wax pickup, and any sugars or polars get washed out in my Louche step.
Yeah I was gonna pour it out, but then i got to thinking… Maybe it’s a feature not a bug? 
I was gonna tell u but then I thought it can’t hurt. The water is always there after LLE
Personally the water seems annoying. I’d dissolve in butane or pentane and run through some media, preferably acidic clay. Actually, first see if u can drop it out of a sep funnel
Yeah I was humming and hawing about whether or not I wanted to do my drying and de coloring step before or after crystallization. I was leaning towards doing it after has to hopefully impact the yields less with any CRC hold up. But perhaps I need to adjust the order of operations.
Well, you got me. I’m interested in how things turn out. I think the goal of this is using a procedure that allows you to get large growth from a meoh extract as your starting point? Your obviously not the average joe making diamonds for the first time I’m guessing. 
My method isn’t the best in many regards… But I’d challenge anyone to get my throughput on my budget lol.
We’ll see how this goes. Might also to towards a basic ph thc-a pull if I’m not happy with the results
What temp are u able to do the metoh extraction? I’d suggest -30 for color. Usually got green anything warmer. That being said, I switched to heptane extraction for this same procedure. Only issue is heptane recovery at 60-70c will decarb enough to inhibit crystallization. Need an LLE into metoh to bypass solvent recovery then once again LLE into pentane and water.
I’m doing whatever the outside temperature is right now, in this freezer of a country. -5c on average lately.
I’m waiting on some hardwood charcoal to get those greens out, but it’s never been an issue in the past. The d - coloring membrane takes out some of the more stubborn dark hues as well
Wow membranes are a game changer
Did you build your own membrane? Dying to know the numbers lol
Started there
Bought a hydracell D10 head off eBay for $750
Got the tubes & fittings for $1200
Membranes were $400ish apeice (courtesy of @MagisterChemist)
Motor was $700
VFD was $400
I had lots of high pressure hoses and swagelock stuff from when I built a couple CO2 extractors. But I’d tack on another $600 or so for ancillary parts and hoses.
AC DIY chiller with pump $150
I run around 40-50lph solvent removal. I can do about 30-40lbs per hour with my little panda army (3x $200)
Methanol in bulk is under $2/L
Shredder (optional) $2k on eBay for live material. Or else on dried material a leaf blower in reverse seems to work ok? Dunno that’s what a buddy of mine uses.
Probably throw an extra grand at the setup for random small bits and bobs, wires, pipes, etc.
Can do around 30lbs per hour being pretty lazy 
50ish if I was trying hard. 150/h+ with another couple grand invested.
I could throw a couple more housings onto it and get 150+lph solvent removal/dewaxing. Or else I hear there’s some new methanol rated membranes doing over 100lph on a 2540. But then my bottleneck is my pandas/fuge. But I average around 1lb per litre of solvent on mid grade material.
Show Us a picture:eyes:
Bahahahahah, thats insane! I love this community, to do that much in BHO would be costly for start-up ,not to mention price to run. This might be my new favorite clandestine lab. Is state regulators allowing self build membranes for rec?
I highly doubt it
Always happy to see clever solutions. A couple questions; what temp did you extract at? I’m guessing around room temp.
Interesting though the methanol will form a layer so you don’t need to do anything with it except wait! Hopefully the solubility of methanol in pentane is low enough it doesn’t affect your yield and/or speed.
I don’t use methanol, I use ethanol, but I’d still might follow the same procedure (after color remediation). Sugars would be less of an issue in ethanol, but louching with pentane could form a layered solution, especially if adding salt and or water. And with enough pentane, there’s a low-boiling azeotrope with ethanol (95:5) at ~32C so removing solvent during recrystallization is easy.
You could also do a few recrystallizations to pull color instead of CRC. And if you have percentage yield loss in your CRC, it won’t matter if it’s before or after (mathematically speaking)
I posted above; it’s been averaging -5c because it’s outside.
My Louche involves 2 parts water to 1 part methanol to dump all the cannabinoids into the pentane.
I wash the pentane layer with misted water with 4 volumes to remove trace water solubles, methanol, and some color. I’d probably run it with even more water once I get my RO system built. But in the meantime I’m just using about 4 volumes.
To answer your question, I find with most recrystallization processes (unless your going for faceted stones), follow a similar motif. Start with your poor solvent, the less solvent the better, heat it to fully dissolve, let temperature drop naturally with agitation. This can take hours or days. Once it looks like no more crystal growth is occurring you can either decant your mother liquor and end it, or chill it further if there is more remaining. That’s a good blanket way to develop a method.
So what this looks like is dissolve at high heat, let cool on bench, stir plate or ultrasonic bath; this is where the solution will get cloudy because it is seeding. Bring outside to get to 0C and let it go until no more growth happens. Place in freezer to crystallize further.
You can always get fancy with it; temperature pulsing, solvent blends, louching, solvent removal, but start simple and add steps as needed. This should yield some nice looking chunks while not taking too long. Really the slower you go, the better your recrystallization will be (purity-wise)
Yeah I think I’ve got too much pentane at 2:1. Just gonna give it another day or two to see what dropped. Otherwise I’ll probably throw it all in the vacuum oven at mild heat and reduce/recapture. And see if it spits out some more goodies.
People don’t seem to pay extra for the big stones right now. I’ll probably make a few just to show off, but for the most part just need sugar
Id like to talk to you about this skid design.
Just delving into membrane tek (I know, I know… a little late 
) and looking at doing something like this.
If ya can, toss me a DM when ya get the time, if ya don’t mind!