Hi As the tittle suggest I am trying to distill cannabis terpenes, I have come across some information about using nitrogen, I was hoping some users could point me to some educational material to read on how to do nitrogen distillation.
I am hoping to do this under vacuum so to not degrade the terpenes at higher temps
Thank you
Here’s a vid. I’ve wanted to try the same.
There’s plenty of information in the essential oil literature. How much are you trying to make? From what? That pretty much limits your options.
You can buy a $169k unit from a company in Oregon that captures 50% of the available terpenes (this is a little off since there are non-terpene elements to cannabis oil essential oils). I consider this an unacceptably low yield. Also, the tech might be patented.
What solvent are they using? I havent been able to find out exactly what their solvent is in the Tandem system.
Ask them leading questions. Sometimes the things you want to know, they consider selling points.
I am hoping to make say 5ML atleast from nugs/leaf freshly frozen after harvest
I went to vist them at IndoExpo here in PDX last weekend. Sales guy told me it gets around 50% yield in 2-4hrs (i may be off on exact time, but it was too long) I smelled the terpene sample he had, my instant reaction was " are these steam distilled hemp" Sales guy said they were not, and actually from “marijuana” . Def missing some key back notes, which sales guy said "could be extracted with increased run time LOL! Either way I doubt this system is capable of making the cut were looking for unless it can take run with some LPG! Nothing I would wanna buy, especially for over 200K$. But, I will say this - The system looks pretty snazy! (jazz hands)
I think you could build your own for much less. Their system is too small to make anything worth doing with biomass.
The only thing that gives me pause about spending money to do this is that you’re telling me it smelled like steam-still. Our results were actually better smelling than steam-still. If so, I’m glad I didn’t waste too much time messing with it.
I agree. they only had 1 sample for me to smell. You saying youve applied a similar technique and got better than steam distilled ? Probly alota variables in flower contributing here I assume.
The tandem doesnt use a solvent. heat and vac. simple as that.
@drjackhughes
@dabtown dylan built a efficient solventless/ steamless terp extractor, and then it was taken and made into the tandem by the shady owners of Lucid. Theres plenty of upgrades that could be done with it, but its essentially a well built version of the same ultra-quality terp extractor that several of us have been running with cannabis for 6 years at this point.
Theres a very good chance that they were great terpenes, but the thing that most terp makers dont understand is that, especially with extraction of fresh material, theres some ultra-light compounds that need to diffuse out of the terpenes before it cures and ages to its max integrity.
I go through a 2 week slow gas exchange process to allow this process to happen, but a lot of the best terps wont smell that killer right out of the machine, unless the flower was well cured.
Even then, ive found that any cannabis essential oil smells 1000% better (subjective) and truer to the profile after a 4 month cure. 6 months stored at room temp not under nitrogen, the sample starts to sour up, ime
Oh wow, the dude at the booth was telling me about warm N2, maybe we were not really communicating LOL He was trying to deal with multiple folks at once.
The ultra-light compounds needing to diffuse out of the mix from fresher material is interesting. I have definitely seen how some profiles get better with some cure time (especially with an XJ13 I have) also have a jar that has soured of some fruity profile from a mixed batch of flower (but its been so long since it was processed and ive been thinking it was “off” to begin with and i had forgotten).
sure, nitrogen can definitely help carry, and some is ideal, but i wouldnt call it a solvent, its just a carrier. plus nitrogen has such a tiny heat capacity that to get it to carry that heat throughout the system, youd have to superheat it was past appropriate terp temps.
Thats how i remember, I could be wrong
I separated those “ultra-light compounds” from the good smelling oil. The good terp oil condensed on a ice water cold finger and the ultra-lights skipped over to a dry-ice iso cold trap.
Steam with vacuum. not nitrogen
Yields are lower than steam still but when you count undesirables in the steam still you may prefer this method.
I cant help but to be partial to cold LPG currently, always open to better tech
so nothing concrete to extract terps,
Did you ever try the clear Terpenes I made last year? I really need to make more to send samples out to people
it’s atmospheric steam still at a small scale. The material is hot and wet when it’s done. So you need to dry it before you proceed.
Advantage is that it’s quick, customizable but I personally didn’t like the results. They smelled worse than usual atmospheric steam still. If you have $50k to fool around with go for it. I’d demo it first.
There’s also French system that’s 65k Euro that has ultrasound and vacuum.
