Right?
Might require branding and distribution too…
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You got that right. I love developing products and finding new and creative ways to do all sorts of things plus managing operations. If I only had that same knack and passion for branding, sales and developing a distribution network then I’d be doing ok!
We utilize 4 ultrasonics in our large chilled reactor. We soak using ranges of 15-45 minutes @ -40C and the exiting material is a light gold. If my temp is any warmer (-30C and above), I see green in my material leaving the reactor.
I believe they are useful, but not absolutely necessary. Hope that anecdote helps!
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Have you gathered any data on improved extraction times or more thorough cannabinoid pulls?
Testing exiting biomass that was around 15-18% CBD yielded less than 3% remaining. 15 minutes is the sweet spot, never tried less. We wash (add EToH and soak for whatever time with ultrasonics / spinners), rinse (fill tank and drain EToH), and do another load. 30 minutes is overkill, but satisfies that primal urge that ‘there could be more’.
As with anything, there are a ton of variables (soak time, material quality, grind size, ultrasonics, etc). But keeping it as cold as possible seems to be the best bang for your doe.
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So that’s like an 80-83%ish extraction yield efficiency?
Have you tried a run without the ultrasonic assist to see what they ended up with? Sounds like there might be a lot of room to improve
No centrifuge or screw press is most of our loss. We’ve put effort into finding those parameters for the soak times, it’s fine for now. Things get tighter as we go.
Edit: We didn’t always use ultrasonics, I’m glad we do.
3% left after extraction is pretty high… Even putting that stuff through a screw press won’t bring that down super far.
Do you keep your press stuff separate from your soak tincture? Screw press stuff is so dirty you might as well attack the duck out of your stuff in your etho soak since the screw press add so much crap into the system might as well go to town
I had to edit my reply to make sense: we don’t squeeze our biomass at all for EToH, and the 3% (it’s not always that high, just the highest we’ve seen ever) is acceptable until we find ways to chip away at it efficiently.
Considering adding ultrasonic to cold ethanol extraction, down the road.
It might be a viable approach if you are doing fast cryogenic ethanol extraction in-line, if you have some sort of flow cell reactor that can operate at that temperature.
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Well, I’m not going to argue if you’re happy with everything
I appreciate all the input. I’m not to familiar with this ultrasound set up. I’m recently upscaling and I happen to know someone who had this extraction equipment built for himself. Since he had a situation and won’t be using it I bought the entire system and can’t find to many people with knowledge on it. Thanks guys.