It’s taking forever to seperate and there is a huge center layer
Dump it into a seperate container and keep working on the top pentane layer. Dont wait on the emulsion layer, dump it into its own vessel and keep working on it there. Most of the time its full of junk anyways
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It takes forever for the Pentane to reach the top is the problem. I feel like alot of my Pentane is still in the emulsion layer.
I still can’t get my head wrapped around why yours took 10 minutes and mine is taking hours to seperate.
You can try adding a few drops/squirts of ethanol to quickly break an emulsion into distinct organic and aqueous phases.
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Also maybe try some salt (if you’re not using it already) to break the emulsion
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make sure its non iodine salt. but it works great for making it not foam up
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Washing with saturated brine is less prone to emulsions since it’s more dense than water by itself. Adding ethanol, just a little, decreases the surface tension breaking the emulsion. Depending on how clean the extract is, there could be some insoluble crud - waxes, etc. at the interface of the organic and aqueous layers that can be filtered off.
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Thanks for the input I’ll try adding a bit of ethanol.
Hello everyone. I am new here and new to extracting. I grew 900 CBG plants last year and now I’m using denatured ethanol with heptane to extract and make distillate. But I am having extremely low yields. My biomass tested out at almost 15%.
I tried doing room temp baths and -30° with dry ice baths. Filtered through celite and carbon
Then roto vap and finally short path. Using 40lbs I am only yielding 400-450ml do you have any suggestions?
How long was your initial “dunk”?
Did u wash the same material twice?
What are your dunk bags made out of?
You should notice a difference between room temp and -30 IME do you have any coas on those tests?
I forgot to add I start with 5 gallons of ethanol - and add around 1/2 gallon to a gallon between each 4lb wash to maintain approximately 5 gallons in the washing bucket. I do not change out the ethanol for each 4lb soak.
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How long are you dunking for?
Any agitation?
What kind of dunk bags?
Are you doing a second wash of that same bag?
I am using 75 micron nylon brew bags
75 micron nylon bags with 4lbs of bio mass
agitation yes, a lot!
20 minutes
no second wash
I use these with pretty good success. 250microns. The holes don’t have to be super small. You want just enough to keep the biomass in the bag and not in the ethanol
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I did not wash the same material twice. Only once. Should I soak it twice? I did it once for 20 minutes. I am not certain of the micron number for the tea bags. I believe they are nylon. What do you reccomend? I dont have any COAs for the distillate as I was holding off to see my final yields. From 20lbs of biomass I yielded 220ml of distillate. Typically which yields more, room temp or dry ice soaks?
Try a second wash with clean etOH. You want to have two dunks tanks ideally. Agitation in both 20 mins per should be fine. I like 15 personally
Maybe try a different micron size I’ve had good results with 220 micron and 160 micron bubble bags.
I’ve seen better cannabinoid content in room temp dunks than cold. How you wanna deal with the extra wax/chlorophyll is another story
Have you read through all the bucket tek stuff here yet?
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If you cryo wash, I do 40 min soaks and agitations. Zero issues.
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I do something similiar - I have old kegs that the top is off. I put the clean ethanol in and add dry ice. Once it hits -35 or 40 I add the biomass in 75micron bags. (ill try 220 next time) 20 minutes of agitation and then into a panda. I then filter it through a pressurized column of celite and carbon. I did a second wash yesterday and today I am filtering it. Tomorrow I will put it in the rotovap and see what happens. Even with the cold wash the ethanol is VERY GREEN.