Purging is a pretty straight process. Using vacuum oven is most ideal, but a standard vacuum chamber and warming mat will work.
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Make sure to flip several times while vacing
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Keeping temperatures down has a lot to do with that. Freezing the butane the night before will assist keeping the undesirables out of your extraction. Freezing all equipment that comes in contact with the extraction , and freezing the material beforehand and loading quickly right before will all help with quality extract. @Rockdog62
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So just trying to dip my toe in carefully…
I did a test on some leaves. There is a small amount in there. So i ran a tube and i let it evaporate. Then i redissolved the oil in ethanol and ran it through my buchner with a 2 micron filter. There was a lot of debris that filtered out.
The resulting wash was very golden which is what I’m looking for. Have not evaporated the alcohol off yet, or tried to use any of it… just trying not to be wasteful in my learning.
I don’t figure that it yielded enough so I’m waiting till i can run more to go forward.
Without something thats stays liquid at room temp its hard to filter it to get solids out. But so far it seems to produce a much cleaner product.
Just ethanol it’s pretty impossible to keep it from going green without wasting a bunch. So im hoping that by using the alcohol as a liquefier for filtering it keeps the alcohol from pickling up the chlorophyll in the first place.
I’m fine with wasting a bottle or 2 of butane and can reclaim alcohol with a vacuum still of a sort. As long as there are no known chemical interactions with butane and ethanol lol. No visible reaction’s presented at this point.
Please pardon my ignorance. But really all I’m looking for is maximum bang for the buck and something somewhat simple that will give me ultra clean oil that i can vape and use in what ever else I’d like. Not looking to get ultra stoned. My wife cant smoke and also doesn’t like the weedy taste of the chlorophyll in my edibles …
Planning of getting a vac oven as soon as money allows.
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Butane and ethanol get along great. No worries there.
From your description it sounds like you had a great test run.
To assist you in the best way possible, would you be able to post a picture of your equipment?
Reason I’m asking is I’m trying to comprehend what extraction equipment you’re operating. Is it a splash and dash with no valve to keep everything in?
@Rockdog62
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Using your chosen method of ethanol winterization, I’d filter through the Buchner with activated alumina on top layer and double activated charcoal bottom layer. This would scrub all chlorophyll, toxins, fat, lipids, etc. It would leave you with an ultra clean and pure end product.
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Celite545 with activated charcoal would be another option. Celite has the alumnia in the premix. Check this out
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Hmm. Very interesting. Wonder what the yield lose is with the double carbon wash
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No loss of potency and minimal loss terps. The carbon just scrubbes out chlorophyll. The Celite does the polishing (chemicals and pesticides, the fats n lipids)
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Pretty stone age. Simple stainless cylinder with screened fittings and inlet for butane cans. No valve, pretty much just once through. Not doing much at any time. But $10k for closed loop isnt even in my orbit.
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Looks like a decent setup. Nothing wrong with a straight through blaster.
If you check better value vacs they have a good selection of extraction kits. This is the starter model for closed loop. Only missing the vacuum pump. 10k is for dispensary set ups, and significantly larger.
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Wow! Didn’t know that existed. When work picks up i may get that! So now to find the questions …
I guess you would need a big canister instead of the smaller cans that are for torches/food prep. How do you reclaim and repressurize ? Or is this just for containment?
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A larger container of butane would be needed, but things change, and someone might make fittings or a way to adapt using the smaller cans. Not really sure on that part.
As for as reclaim and pressurizing, dry ice is utilized for this. Butane will always collect and migrate to the coldest part in your system.
The rough order of operations would be to load extraction tube, vacuum the entire system, valve everything off, add butane to system, and when finished, you would reclaim back into original container utilizing dry ice to move the butane from one point to another.
The benefits to a closed system is reusing your butane, saving money. I’m sure you knew that. Lol.
Ask away if you have more questions, I’m a tag away.
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I fill the solvent spool with one of the fill adaptors that comes with your can. I use the fat one that fits the 1/4” JIC hole on top. I do it inside, on the scale, while frozen, since you gotta weigh out the solvent anyway. Tare the scale and add the solvent amount. Like filling a lighter, you might get a tiny bit of gas escape.
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I have another product with diatomaceous earth. Doubt it has the alumnia you talked about. But are you suggesting that i scrap the bho idea in favor of straight ethanol extraction?
I started there because it seemed the safest option. But found that without the means to get everything down near -40 degrees I’ll be dealing with really deep green or walking away from valuable oil. I don’t grow enough to be able to be wasteful
So far im not seeing the huge amount of green with butane, but then this is quite new to me. Have yet to try it on good buds. But I’m gearing up to try it!
My thought is use something much less polar than ethanol like butane, evaporate then melt into ethanol for filtering.
I don’t have access to extreme cold or dry ice. So gotta figure it out with what i can get.
I’d love to hear your process!!
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Some grocery stores sell dry ice. They keep it locked in a freezer usually near the customer service counter. I never knew that until I googled it.
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That’s what the Celite video shows. You run the BHO and winterize in ethanol for cleaning with the Celite. You could just do the ethanol, but it would pick up more chlorophyll and require more time filtering. Also I find that you don’t pick up a lot of the terps running ethanol only.
As @plumbdand said, check grocery stores and Walmart also carries it round here.
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I built mine so that I don’t have to use hoses except for the vac and reclaiming the solvent.
Everything just screws on and off with the JIC connections.
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Nice and simple set up
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BHO extraction thread - #490 by plumbdand I think I paid less than $300 originally then added a dewaxing column and a few minor things.
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