R134a hemp and cannabis extraction advice and comments

Thanks for the reply. That was what I was thinking but have no hands on experience to find out. Looking for the best latest tech to extract hemp and cannabis for edibles and full spectrum plant products the best way possible.

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Ethanol extracts extremely cold (-80)will grab more cannabinoids than anything else, while leaving behind all the undesirables.

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And I can push in one run, what that silly ass machine does in an entire day. So can Ethanol

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Dont forget the huge fines if your are found to be venting r134a into the air. R134a is an ozone depleting substance.

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R134A extracts nothing unless you use a co-solvent or extract under very high pressure.

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You have to decarb beforehand. And they were running high pressure. That’s why it looked like a C02 machine, but with downs

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You have experience with -80 ethanol? I’m looking for a solution to process wet biomass strait from the field. We purchased a Deutsche ethanol extraction

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What type of harvest are you looking at, cbd or thc? . I have experience with cold etho extracts, but short chain hydrocarbons are more my thing.

The problem with ethanol and wet biomass, is that I believe that it will bring a considerable amount of water along with. Any of their extraction systems are top quality.

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@Dred_pirate is correct wet material with Ethanol is not a good idea. Plant material needs to be free from as much moister as possible. Flash freezing the material helps a lot. Once frozen DO NOT ALLOW YOUR MATERIAL TO WARM UP AT ALL or undesirable compoundswill be extracted.

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So do you know how frozen material will effect extraction? We did freeze all our biomass straight from the field.

Awesome that’s the way to do it. Freezing the plant material helps lock in water soluble compounds that you do not want to be extracting. Just be careful because as the material drops in temperature and starts to thaw you will pick up more water and water soluble compounds in your extract and ethanol.

You will need to get your extraction system and ethanol to temperature (Needs to be cold enough so your plant material stays frozen the entire extraction process) then quickly add your cannabis and start extracting all as quickly as possible so that your plant material stays frozen and you keep all the water and water soluble compounds locked up in ice crystals.

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Do you have to be EPA certified to run it? I’d imagine you would as r134a is ozone depleting as stated above

Nope. They just come in and bring a tank of automotive 134a and say there isn’t any residuals. But have nothing to back it up and say that you can go get it tested

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Who remembers oilmker420

But legally speaking I’m pretty sure it’s a federal regulation to be EPA certified to add, remove refrigerant/ hook up any vacuum lines or recovery pumps to any system containing ozone depleting chemicals…
I know cannabis is not federally approved per se but that EPA thing has a hefty 50000$ fine if not adhered to

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Fortunately they are long gone from here. Even though I tried before they showed up and within two days I wanted them gone. Their crude made the worst smelling hot dog water I’ve ever smelled. It over powered the terps in our carts our edibles tasted like old chicken ass. I hope they don’t continue with this industry. And extremely inefficient

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it depends how you froze it. if you managed to condense water (ice) around the trichomes, then you will have a hard time extracting. I know folks who toll process that will bring their freezers to your farm to make sure it’s done right.

I suspect drying your biomass properly before extracting with ethanol is the most economical solution at that scale, but I have no way of building that dataset yet.

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I’m laughing so hard like seriously. Who would use r-134A

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I’m laughing so hard cause I can picture someone just fucking plopping a mini tank of R-134A down on the table and saying “here you go,bitch! Have fucking fun!!”

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Literally. I didn’t touch that machine, they had some dude doing it. But he was straight up using 134a for his car

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