So I’m upgrading my extraction equipment and want to see if anyone has experience with ultrasound assisted extraction? I have heard good things and thought I’d give it a shot. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
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Really depends on your temperature, agitation, and flow-over. But my cold ethanol gets 92-95% extract efficiency. Making it 99% might be worth it, but seems like it really hits diminishing returns for what else comes along for the ride when you unlock the last few %
Seems unlikely that it would be something worth scaling.
But super stoked to be proven wrong.
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Appreciate the input. I’ll update you with some info on how it goes.
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Take a look at these pictures, especially the post extraction pictures, and ask yourself if there is really any reason to use ultrasonic…
Target is in a ballon, already in solvent, and held up high for the taking.
You might get more complete extraction, but why would you want to grab all that other stuff?!?
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Don’t forget about energy cost on the scale up…
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Yep. Ethanol and Applied Ultrasound would extract the cannabinoids in a couple seconds. This sounds ideal but you have to be able to separate in seconds as well
Now we’re talking!!
I mean, maybe at -80 we can avoid the undesirables pickup…
Certainly worth a small scale experiment.
You really need to have your desired throughput calculated first. I haven’t (looked) seen something that would work on large scale.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist though!
95% extraction efficiency and a clean extract is always better then 99% extraction efficiency and a dirty extract.
Depends on desired end product and efficiency of your remediation techniques.
I do my extracts at -5c right now and can get beautiful distillate.
Lots of variables at play!
Trichs first. Then scream at them while spinning?
-40 is all you need for ethanol
Define “need”
Are we still talking about when we shred the cell walls with ultrasonic? I would assume there’s some other fun stuff coming out at that point.
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Nah, we only needs a little bit of the old ultrasonics…ballon shredding doses only (which seems easier if you collect mostly balloons first).
To avoid the extraction of undesirables. Ultrasound is not needed or even ideal at all is my point.
Extraction is as simple as cold and fast. Yes you can extract warm and remediate after, or avoid all that with a fast, cold extraction.
Chillers aren’t that expensive when compared to the products we sell.
It’s all a personal balance but we can all agree ultrasound is overkill
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agreeing with the conventional wisdom is no fun at all.
I certainly agree, and have long advocated, that screaming at ground whole plant in a vat seems like a waste of perfectly good cannabis.
Getting the trichs drunk and disoriented (ethanol, centrifuge), then whispering at them to get the task done in a matter of moments seems worth exploring…
I ended up playing with ultrasonic extraction using canola oil as a medium and had a little fun with that. I was only able to do a few runs (and never that cold) but it seemed to work out quite well.
I then dissolved the oil mix with ethanol and cleaned it up with some Buchner CRC tek, reclaimed solvent and tried to distill the cannabinoids from the canola oil azeotrope I guess? Can’t say it didn’t work…seemed to do quite well but I haven’t dabbled with it sense.
It’s definitely overkill with ethanol though.
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With ultrasonic into oil, that should be your end point imo. 250mg in 30ml oil, you can still get $10 wholesale on that…tell me where else you getting $40g for CBD?
Full spectrum…
No solvents (its a carrier🤫)
Edit: 
that you went to dabs with it!!
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Sign me up - I can have an endless supply for that return!
It works great for that. And I thought by using a high flash point oil (canola, grapeseed, etc. not peanut b/c potential allergies) that I could then refine and distill the good stuff if needed.
Extracting directly into oil was pretty tits. Wish I could play with them more. The oil & extraction too