Just upgraded our chiller. Things a beast. Holds -40F all day long. Seeing massive yield reductions in licensed material from farms we’ve worked with consistently for… a long time.
Running 6x48 columns with a 8-1 solvent ratio. Approximately
12.5p per column. Packed with ironfist.
Has anyone experienced massive yield losses when running at much colder temps?
‘Colder is better’ seems to be the motto. But The only variable to change as of late is colder solvent going in.
Now I know warmer solvent strips more bs. But these are post mild crc yields. So a lot of that bs is/has been caught in the filters. And shouldn’t drastically influence the number. I’m talking ~12% post crc yields down to 4-6%.
What is your solvent residence time in the column? At -40, you can soak the material for 10 minutes. For that column, I’d flush 50lbs of gas, soak for 8-10 minutes, then flush the rest through.
From a chemistry point of view, colder solvents generally take up less solute (THC, CBD, etc). The trade off here was written up rather well by @Photon_noir in this post. Granted the post was made in the context of ethanol extraction but chemically, similar principles apply to butane/propane extractions.
Another thing to consider is that if you are running at very cold temperatures and your material is of decent/good quality, this should negate the necessity for CRC. Invariably CRC will lead to a reduction in yield.
Consider increasing your soak times on your extractions. Since you didn’t post what they presently are, consider increasing the duration by 15%-30%. You should most certainly see an increase in yield without a large increase in undesirables.
Also consider not CRC’ing the material and examine its characteristics. Is it as dark/color ridden as before? Is it necessary?
Thanks ally it takes about 15 min to flood our full solvent load, and another 5-10 to nitro push. It all out. We try and run fairly rapid fire.
We adjust crc levels/media ratios significantly depending on the material, however have found that a very light crc in almost all material helps us make a consistent product/streamlines things for us in a good way.
Haven’t been weighing the material in and out. I have been noticing at the cooler solvent temps our solvent losses are greater which is concerning in regards to possible solvent(but mostly yield being left behind in the columns)
I’ve got the technicians running st -10F TGIF a run or two today to see the yield/color contrast. Will post an update.
I dont grind my material up and I dont like to stuff it super tight, find it easier for solvent to flow through and higher yeilds compared to most people.
I cant get more than 3.75-4lbs in my 4x48 colunm, unless i use an iron rod to bang down on the material, the most ive made fit is 4lbs 10oz and i had one hell of a time trying to recover and continue to let solvent flow. It stalled fairly quickly and not having any nitro, I was stuck for a good minute doing everything i could read about that would help. Next time im not even going to pack it, im just going to dump in material till it fills up and just run it, and see if i can notice a difference in yield, flow rate and recovery. Thank you for your input, much appreciated! Thanks to everyone on this post that has chimed in and contributed!
does bidirectional with a liquid soak resolve that? I let the gas go to atmosphere till it squirts out the top so its fully liquid in the column. And the column is chilled for an hour plus on dry ice after being frozen for days so is shouldnt change to gas with my pants sock of dry ice on it. Im not having issues but curious. I only soak it a few mins or as long as I get distracted, then go down through the column.
I wasnt aware of how uneven it can soak by packing loosely. I am interested in a packing rod, what do they go for? do you have a link?
Thank you for you reply btw
