So you're thinking "just use a tube and butane dipshit", that's OK this is just stuff lying around the house for me. The gear is common and basic, and the whole procedure here is as simple as it gets. I wanted to show this all somewhere because glass is not necessarily expensive, and petroleum ether is simpler for me to recycle than lower boiling solvents. I did this because the Borg attacked post-frost a couple weeks from harvest, and because the toluene and petroleum ether extractions I've done lately were for THCA. Those THCA yields were disappointing; the chemistry literature says decarboxylate for total cannabinoid yield, at least when using nonpolar solvent. The decarboxylation conditions for this experiment were ideal for yield: buds were air-dried for a week and put in a preheated 225F oven for 2 hours. They would have yielded more than 4 grams of oil if they were better buds. The herb was never weighed.
This is a 24/40-55/50 Soxhlet apparatus packed full with the same shredded non-sticky buds earlier this weekend. A small amount of green material came out in the first couple mls., it should have been discarded but this is not easy with this apparatus because it empties rapidly once it starts. Otherwise the RBF contents would be yellow instead of yellow-green.
The strongly boiling solvent in the RBF goes through the Soxhlet's sidearm as vapor and is then mostly condensed immediately, around the outside bottom of the condenser here just above the doobage. Some ice in the condenser water is not unwise since this will be going on for a while and this solvent is pretty volatile. As the body fills, the level in the tube goes over the top of the bend and the ensuing vacuum from the falling column of solvent sucks the whole thing dry, every 10-15 minutes, and in the picture. Whoosh until the yellow is all gone.
Here is a fritted glass Buchner-type funnel and vacuum filtering flask. The solvent is not really this dark. A fritted funnel with a ground glass joint and vacuum barb, along with an RBF, is the best setup for this. Most commonly seen is bored-out rubber stoppers instead of this black rubber whatsit, around a real Buchner's stem (with filter paper and washed sand or diatomaceous earth on top when you only want the filtrate like here), and the vacuum flask shown.
Vacuum distillation with a faucet aspirator would require good cooling for recovering this b.p. of solvent. An HVAC pump would probably require a dry ice condenser to not kill the pump by fouling its oil, not to mention that I'd rather not find out how dangerous using flammables in HVAC systems not rated for them is. I could use the rotavap but they don't last forever. Simple distillation is simple, and the solvent came off at 65C. The only apparatus change from the picture for vacuum distillation is the vacuum and a capillary tube instead of a thermometer.
The RBF contents were poured on the watch glass at upper left before it boiled down too thick. Flask washings of small portions of Everclear were put on two others. These are here inside the vacuum desiccator. The lid is 2 pieces, the top part with the barb can turn and seal the inside by cutting off the port. The vacuum inside is max aspirator pull, it's a good vacuum with the low tap water temperature now. The petroleum ether was boiling off really good for couple minutes, but couldn't be seen in the closeups I took. The ethanol was gone after a couple hours but I repurged twice anyways. The oil only climbs the glass when I try to smoke it in Pyrex tubing. I usually mixed extracts with shake anyways.
Everything used for this could be bought for $200-250 before shipping, at non-competitive auctions.
