Hi all, I have been doing some research planning for a lab setup to legally produce some extracts up in Canada. The basic outline of my process would be:
-a bucket Tek type extraction technique with ethanol and dry ice
-filtration using Buchner funnels and filter media
-utilizing a rotovap to recover 90ish percent of the ethanol
-now the last step I have planned is the final purge of ethanol which is either going to be a vacuum chamber or a vacuum oven
I am looking to get some of your opinions on which vacuum option I should go for with my last step. This will be a very small scale lab setup, about 4 to 5 lbs of dry flower per day would be extracted. So I’m wondering if it would be worth it to spend the extra money on a vacuum oven or would I be able to get by with just a vacuum chamber.
Also just wanted to thank all the contributors to this site, it has been a valuable resource to have.
Let me preface this by saying I’ve never tried finishing an ethanol extract in an oven. I distill THC after rotovap.
BUT, if I were going to, I would want it as thin as possible to retain as much terps as possible. I think having shelves is going to be helpful for this. I imagine you would pour from rotovap into pyrex pans, then into oven. I would want them to be very shallow.
Budget options:
I think you could build a shelf system in a vac pot. I have seen this done nicely.
There’s got to be a ton of used 0.9 or 1.9cu vacuum ovens for sale. Personally, I would start there…
Thanks! I’ll look to see if I can score a used vacuum oven for cheap. The main reason I wasn’t planning on any sort of distillation after the rotovap was to try to retain some terpenes and try to have the full entourage effect in my final product.
Wow, just started reading a bit more into these shakers, had never heard of them up until now. Are you using this just to add in some agitation while venting to atmosphere?
I also found a pretty interesting article on using these for the actual extraction process of faba beans, thought I’d share it if anyone needs some light reading. It just makes me think how much more we would know about cannabis if these kind of studies were performed on extraction techniques.
So once it’s the right consistency, it goes on a waving shaking incubator. You get a slab that is just about as even as possible. The constant motion allows for above average evaporation. The solvent removal is the bottle neck right now. We need creative solutions. Most of the electronic lab equipment is no problem. The controlled glassware on the other hand is a pain.
Have you tried blowing nitrogen to remove solvent? I’m just not sure how feasible nitrogen would be once you start to get into a large scale. I’m also guessing from your name you aren’t looking for anything with heat or vacuum.
I go back and forth between N2 and argon just depending on price and availability. I use room temp up to the 95-100°F bit naturally. Not in a vacuum oven. Something with almost no solvents and residual terps will beat itself to death in a vacuum chamber. Just zero flavor.
I see, I guess the only way I could think of to improve efficiency would be increasing the surface area of contact between ethanol and nitrogen/argon. So bubbling it through the ethanol like this would work.