So, I’ve seen some odd-ended forum posts and some instagram posts about solventless tepene extraction that doesn’t involve steam distillation.
Are people using roto-vaps or something? I know you can make rosin and separate terps that way, the pictures I see are usually perfectly clear though?
What type of wizardry is this?
Probably sparged with inert gas in a hard vaccum, cold trapped to collect the essence.
There are three methods known to me to remove terps that I use. Two involve solvents in both a standard phase and reverse phase modes. The third is to pull a deep vacuum and raise the boiling flask temp to about 165C on the heating mantle and distill the terps out. Pressure will vary based on crude terpene content percentage in the crude but generally vacuum is pulled to 350 microns at first and as the terps deplete will pull down to ultimately one micron. At that point distillation is ceased or the cannabinoids begin to come across.
Unless steam is employed for relatively low temp distillation of organic compounds then distillation under reduced pressure is the only other way I know of to,pull the terps out.
All the stuff I’m mentioning is apparently testing at 0 ppm cannabinoids. Is that possible with SPD?
They’re also absolutely clear.
I was previously told that you can decarb in an oven and collect the terps on the other end with a cold trap.
Looking into eutectic extraction, specifically freeze drying and removing volatiles through temperature manipulation under vacuum.
That seems plausible, the stuff I read in regards to it requires a solvent though.
I was wondering if it wasn’t some post-processing of CO2 crude oil, seeing as how CO2 is often still regarded as solventless… somehow.
I used to have to ‘de-water’ CO2 extract at Care By Design/Absolute Xtracts. We used a cheap Chinese wiped film and I dialed it in to recover a terp and water fraction as the yield. Solvent free terps and hydrosol.
Did you ever have these tested? Was there cannabinoid content? How was the color/lack of?
Ph washing?
Edit: Sorry I saw this pic in the sun the first time and thought that was a sep funnel.
How did you get the layers settled like that? Just time? Temp?
Inert gas stripping probably. basically a steam distillation but without steam
You can only do that using the raw plant material, correct?
I’m under the impression based on the scale people are working, that, that method wouldn’t yield enough to be used by these companies.
It’s definitely commercial scale.
I use it to strip ethanolic extract and terpenes come with the ethanol so its not just for raw material. Im pretty sure this technique scales easily but have never done huge scale myself so i cant say for sure
HotGasVacuumEP_1385595_B1.pdf (797.2 KB)
Ah, well once again, the implication is that they are separated “solventless” so I’m not sure this could be it.
It’s always mentioned that it’s a “new process,” I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes by uncovering secrets, I’m just interested in the upmost preservation of terpenes, however possible.
I’m not sure how much more solvent less u get then inert gas stripping
I use it on ethanolic extract when I extract with ethanol but usually it’s done like steam distillation
You specified that it was in EtOH solution, that’s using a solvent.
Inert gas through plant matter doesn’t work on a large enough scale to be what I’m referencing.
Beyond that, it’s specified that steam distillation is not the process being used.
Trying to think outside the box, however, I can’t conceive how someone is separating terps from CO2 extract that doesn’t have even the slightest hue of color.
How about inert gas stripping the CO2 extract? Lol
I was under the impression that wouldn’t work? Would it?
