I understand it’s in inhalers, i looked at mine when i got back home yesterday,sure enough r134a is listed as the propellant. … It’s a propellant yes but people do not usually inhale the vapors set past 400°F.
That leads me to my next concern, what if someone doesn’t fully purge out the r134a? They’ll be inhaling deadly chemicals that are a bi-product of r134a
Indeed, big difference between inhalers and vaped extract…
Might get some completely unstudied fluorinated cannabinoids during the decomposition of left over r134a and subsequent reactions of HF with the extract vapor.
While it may not be ozone depleting, it is worth noting that the global warming potential of r134a is 1430 times higher than CO2…
But the lack of flamability is cool and all.
Again : Wikipedia:
Contact of 1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane with flames or hot surfaces in excess of 250 °C (482 °F) may cause vapor decomposition and the emission of toxic gases including hydrogen fluoride and carbonyl fluoride
And my jan 27 post shows they’re both toxic to humams in certain levels.
Yes, avoid heat or make solvent residue test to make sure no residual solvent in the extract. You can put the extracts in a roto to go under ppm limits, it is in a gas at room temperature at normal pressure
@cyclopath & @Dred_pirate … gotta say, I love you guys!! what an awesome exchange. Love the support!!
Seen here: http://www.linde-gas.com/en/products_and_supply/refrigerants/hfc_refrigerants/r134a/index.html
why cant you distill and recover the r134a?
Hi
I have read the entire thread found the actual information exchange to be accurate, comments on yield are accurate and uses in other industries is well documented. I have first hand experience with this platform and will offer some insight on the million dollar question “what is the residual solvent”.
There is a small amount of r134a left will always be 1000ppm or less. The more u extract in a continuous mode theoretically you should be able to recover 100%. I have real test data from both cannabis and hemp extraction. This issue can be resolved with post processing under vacuum without loss.
Continuous mode allows all of the collected oil to suspen r134a in gas phase and will be collected at the end.
I am typing on phone…keep in mind this system uses only r134a as solvent produces usable first pass Crude oil which is higher in terpenes than any other current process. I believe this to be the best representation of a full spectrum oil on the market. Garbage in garbage out that is how this system works. I believe it to be the best possible platform to represent genetics of flowers in oil. The market is evolving and if u are not thinking of ways to represent various strains bred for certain medicinal qualities in pure extracts that this system is beyond ur desire.
I am interested to continue discussion only on technical matters.
Thank you
What is the process time, how much material are you able to get through in a day, or per shift
You guys say that without decarb you get low yields but a more flavorful extract. Is this due to the fact that THCA isnt very soluble in r-134a until higher pressures are attained?
If so, I’m wondering how well cold R-134a works for an initial extraction if the goal was to remove the bulk of the delicate flavor components as well as the terpenes from the biomass before attempting to extract the cannabinoids.
Co2 and ethanol are full spectrum representations. Until I see documents proving your statement that terps are higher i will not believe you.
Do you have any terpene tests of an R-134a test result to compare terpenes to a hydrocarbon extraction or an ethanol extraction, jw?
Microcontroller based operation very simple to navigate. You have control over pressure, temp & cycle time. Machine uses dual input hoppers so it ping pong back and forth. 1 complete cycle is 1.5 hrs average. That is 3, 20 minutes passes plus soak time. Add 30 minutes to the last cycle for final recovery.
Various hopper sizes can be deployed however let’s look at the lab series as the system will correlate at scale.
2 1kg hoppers (2.2lbs)
Biomass is 10%
1 complete cycle of one hopper will yield approximately 80 to 100 grams which is 8 to 10%. This took 1.5hrs to collect. Please note that 20% biomass will yield double.
You can use fresh flower and just pull terpene oil first collect it then decarb biomass and get resin. Truly what goes in comes out.
I hope I am explaining it clearly the lab scale machine can process about 25 lbs or 12 cycles a day. You can get 1 liter a day easy
Thanks
Ps sorry for the delay the system locked me out as a new user.
been trying to find more info on these types of systems. This was a great thread. I dont have experience using one, but a colleague ran some of our material through a r134 system here locally, and I was so impressed with the full spectrum oil that he made. Hence why i am trying to find more info. As was previously mentioned, we saw the same results. non-decarb produced really low yields, but the terpenes were incredible. I think it was 41% CBD and 20% terps. debarbed before extraction (which wasnt done well) was almost double yield, but terps were down to 7%. I never ran a residual solvent test, but trying to get some more to run that.
Awhhhhh hahaha haha has someone decided to try making diamonds with r134a concentrate !!!
I’ve been tracking the HFC 134a also for at least a year. Only thing I will say is that there must be ZERO residual — the bad thing about 134a is that it is deathly toxic when combusted. Deathly. 
