BHO - dissolve in ethanol to speed butane evap

[Redrum92]

Is there any danger (besides the obvious, inherent flammability of both substances) to combining alcohol with small amounts of butane?

Without a really good vacuum pump, which I do not have at the moment, obviously it takes a super long time to evaporate all the butane from wax because it gets trapped in little bubbles by the increasingly hard/viscous substance

So my question is: would dissolving the wax/BHO in ethanol and whipping/mixing that help speed up butane evaporation by "releasing" it more easily in the liquid medium?

Edit for context: I am using the BHO/wax to make my own carts because I can't make distillate, and wax doesn't vaporize in carts well without being cleaned up with ethanol. So, I will be using ethanol anyway, and don't mind trace amounts of it being left as much as I would with butane, as I'm not aware of it being toxic in those levels.

 

[Sub24ox7]

You will then have ethanol that you will have to purge which is even harder to purge than butane.

 

[Redrum92]

You will then have ethanol that you will have to purge which is even harder to purge than butane.

Good point. I plan on "winterizing" it anyway, which I definitely should have included in the OP. This is just for personal use. I am trying to make my own carts, and don't have means to make distillate. If you don't clean up the BHO with ethanol, it doesn't vaporize cleanly.

If there is a better route, I'm definitely open to suggestions. I've done this once before, and it worked surprisingly well, and had no noticeable ethanol taste/smell.

It definitely takes a while to evaporate the ethanol. Have done it before, and it usually takes a week or so to have to few noticeable traces left, and I don't mind having .1% ethanol left as much as I would mind with butane. As far as I know, vaporizing small amounts of ethanol isn't particularly toxic

 

[Sub24ox7]

In my experience it’s hard to completely remove ethanol without also removing the terps. If you’re doing a thin film evaporation I’ve never done that(might work) But I’ve used a rotovap.
If you would chill your column with dry ice+isopropyl dewax you won’t need to winterize. Vacuum purge it and then decarb under pressure you will get a runny resin to fill your cart with. Use fresh frozen weed for live terpy resin.

I think the best carts now are live hash rosin carts. Fresh frozen bubble hash freeze dried and then rosin pressed.

 

[dogzter]

Without a vacuum pump all your doing is further contamination.

 

[CharlesU Farley]

In my experience it’s hard to completely remove ethanol without also removing the terps. If you’re doing a thin film evaporation I’ve never done that(might work) But I’ve used a rotovap.
If you would chill your column with dry ice+isopropyl dewax you won’t need to winterize. Vacuum purge it and then decarb under pressure you will get a runny resin to fill your cart with. Use fresh frozen weed for live terpy resin.

I think the best carts now are live hash rosin carts. Fresh frozen bubble hash freeze dried and then rosin pressed.

I never could understand why all of the BHO I made was more snap and pull consistency rather than shatter. I use the dry ice / isopropyl column to dewax but I could never get that real hard, shatter like consistency.

Then the absolute guru of BHO, Gray Wolf, let me in on the fact that if you decarb cannabis _before_ extraction, you'll _never_ be able to get shatter.

I use the BHO for making an alcohol tincture, just in case I get trapped in a hospital, can't take my edibles in a normal way, etc. That way, my wife can drop the tincture in my mouth if I'm on a ventilator and can't have any other way to consume cannabis.

My wife still vapes, and it's a whole lot easier for her to deal with shatter consistency than it is snap and pull, or more likely for me, glue.

 

[Redrum92]

Without a vacuum pump all your doing is further contamination.

I don't mind trace amounts of ethanol, that's why I was heading that direction over isopropyl or butane (or pretty much any other solvent, and I don't have access to distillate/co2 equipment)

This is just for hobby/personal use. If you know of any reason vaporizing trace amounts of ethanol would be more detrimental than your average "cart" or nicotine "e-juice", I would truly be interested in hearing

 

[Redrum92]

In my experience it’s hard to completely remove ethanol without also removing the terps. If you’re doing a thin film evaporation I’ve never done that(might work) But I’ve used a rotovap.
If you would chill your column with dry ice+isopropyl dewax you won’t need to winterize. Vacuum purge it and then decarb under pressure you will get a runny resin to fill your cart with. Use fresh frozen weed for live terpy resin.

I think the best carts now are live hash rosin carts. Fresh frozen bubble hash freeze dried and then rosin pressed.

Only doing a thin film evaporation in the most broad sense of the term, working with very basic equipment. So, yeah, it definitely doesn't get anywhere near 100% evaporation.

I do chill my column actually, so I'm hoping for pretty clean outcome just on that basis alone, but I was assuming there would be some undesirable plant substances left in there

Does rosin not also need to be cleaned at all for carts? I've heard people struggle to get them working consistently with rosin

 

[Sub24ox7]

If your column is like -60f and you chill your butane to about -30f there will be no undiserables in your extract. Rosin made pressed from fresh frozen made bubble hash freeze dried and pressed is clean. I’m not 100% on how to make it for carts but there is a method and it’s probably similar to preparing live resin bho for carts.

 

[Gray Wolf]

Winterizing BHO with ethanol will remove the residual butane.

Removing the Ethanol will also then strip some of the terpenes and it is harder to remove than butane.

As noted, extracting with -50C butane will minimize the pickup of longer chain molecules and negate the need to winterize.

The best method that I've found for removing the residual butane is a vacuum chamber or oven and is what I use even after subzero extraction to limit pickup of non-target molecules. It is also useful for purging QWET and QWISO.

 

[Redrum92]

Winterizing BHO with ethanol will remove the residual butane.

Removing the Ethanol will also then strip some of the terpenes and it is harder to remove than butane.

As noted, extracting with -50C butane will minimize the pickup of longer chain molecules and negate the need to winterize.

The best method that I've found for removing the residual butane is a vacuum chamber or oven and is what I use even after subzero extraction to limit pickup of non-target molecules. It is also useful for purging QWET and QWISO.

If your column is like -60f and you chill your butane to about -30f there will be no undiserables in your extract. Rosin made pressed from fresh frozen made bubble hash freeze dried and pressed is clean. I’m not 100% on how to make it for carts but there is a method and it’s probably similar to preparing live resin bho for carts.

Thanks for all the info!