Hi guys im new in the forum, im a chemical engineer (sort of) im currently in my internships and im developing a processig path to obtain crude oil, i think i have it all sort out but (have read a lot in this forum) still you fellas are the pros in this, any advice or coment is well apreciarted.
Initially im thinking of placing the dryed flower right in to a mixing tank with ethanol ratio 1/8, ambient temperature, this will be done on a basket mesh (sort of like a tea bag) the batch will be of 15kg of dry flower, after this the mixture will go through a sock filter (220 microns) im going to use a pump to move the liquid in to the distilation unit (specs will be at the end) remove most of the ethanol and the go for a winterization with a ratio of 1/10 chinnig it with a chiller down to -40°C and then vacumm filtering it in a droid through paper filters with pore diameter of 10 microns and 2.5 microns, after that it will go on to the roto vaps to recover the rest of the Ethanol.
my setup includes the following:
2 - 180L stainless steel 304, 16 gauge tanks for mixin gwith agitation, and a bsket mesh to collect most of the solids.
1 - 400L reception tank, to collect all the ethanol with the cannabinoids.
1 - double diaphragm pump 1/2" polyethilene body, with aluminium, 8 bar discharge pressure
1 - 100L distilation unit, heated with oil.
1 - Droid (its like a vacumm filter but on steroids, so it can handle 20 L per run)
1 - Chiller, 10L cooling liquid capacity, reaches -40°C not much discharge pressure (its not stated)
1 - 5L Rotovap to recover the ethanol after winterization.
My concerns are:
1 - will the size of the biomass afect my yields?, also i’v seen that some ppl have isues when they get realy small trims, so they get bitter taste on their extracts which may affect whatever product they will be doing with the crude oil.
2 - some guy that used to work in the company tat im currently in told me that i could skip winterization step and after the mixing go right away tot he filtration going from 220 to 25 and to 5 microns that it would save me the winterization but it doesnt sound right. still its better to ask before.
3 - has anyone done witerization on a big scale, say 25L per run.
4 - whats the best path to obtain pure cbd or thc crystals? Cristalization ?, cromatography column?, if i did a fractional distillation, would this help somehow?
No need to remove etOH then add it back. Just take your initial sock filtered solution and freeze it for a day or two. After its sat cold for a while then filter it to 2.5microns and then remove solvents
Edit: try this for winterization it’s cheap and will get you through 25L in about 60 secs.
Fellow chemical engineer here. I’ll chime in regarding your 4 questions:
Yes, the size and grind of your biomass affects many things. In my experience, a finer grind means better “yields” and I can also fit more mass into an extractor for a run. However, it also results in more fine material making it into the oil, causing problems down the road with clogging and generally gunking up the equipment. Also, bear in mind that the cannabis plant has many things in it besides cannabinoids (terpenes, plant fats, chlorophyll, etc) and generally speaking, a better “yield” doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pulling more cannabinoids. Ethanol in particular is polar and really good at pulling the “everything else” parts out of the plant (except for fats at super cold temperatures) along with the cannabinoids. Hydrocarbons are non-polar are better at extracting only what we want from the plant (except for fats).
Like the others have mentioned, if you extract with ethanol at a “cold enough” temperature, it’s generally accepted that you don’t even need to filter because the fats don’t extract. I can’t speak too much about this because I haven’t worked with cryo EtOH systems. I believe some others here have had good success doing a room-temp fat crash and filter with Methanol instead of Ethanol; but I wouldn’t recommend working the MeOH (especially large amounts) unless you REALLY know what you’re doing because it’s very toxic.
Yes. Especially in the hemp world where margins are crazy tight and it’s mostly a numbers game at the wholesale level. Even my old lab had a wack-ass vacuum funnel setup and we were still doing 10 gallon (37L) batches. Check out lenticular filter skids for the high volume throughput setups anywhere from 100-300 L/min filtering capability.
CBD and THC are two different animals when it comes to purification. Generally speaking, for CBD the process flow is going to look like: Extraction → Winterization → Decarboxylation → Distillation → Crystallization → Filter and Rinse CBD crystals. Neutral CBD crystalizes really easily, so the process isn’t that complicated. Neutral THC, on the other hand, does not crystallize. If you truly needed pure (99+%) THC, you’re looking at chromatography instead of crystallization after the distillation step. However, the acid form THC-A does crystallize, so some folks are crystalizing THC-A and filtering and THEN decarbing to convert it to pretty pure THC.
Fractional distillation as a purification method doesn’t really work because all the cannabinoids boiling points are too close. It’s impossible to effectively separate the different cannabinoids from each other using that method. When it comes to distillation, think of it more as separating a main cannabinoid fraction from non-cannabinoid materials rather than separating cannabinoids from each other.
but lets say that i will be processing about 100 kilos per day, wouldnt be a waste of time to freez it for 24 h ?, besides i have a chiller and a jakceted vessel, for the winterization, will this work ?
thx
if you want to skip the freezer you can change solvents, or use membranes for defatting instead.
edit: if you needed to pay someone to monitor it every second it was in the freezer, it might be a “waste” of time, but you don’t, so I would posit your looking at it wrong. at scale, isn’t it really about throughput? does it matter if your production scheme takes two days or two weeks so long as it puts out XXX amount per day?!? (who cares about the 12 days it took you to get spinning when you’ve been at it for 18 months?!?).
Another way to think about it is once u get the ball rolling u should be processing first in first out in regards the your frozen tea. So you’re always going to have material dropping waxes while your recovering solvents off the other batch.
Always fun trying to explain to the bosses that the whole process takes 3 days but I’ll miraculously be able to give u a kg of finished disty every day passed day 4
