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Terpenation at Terpene Station

P

prune

Active member
Veteran
mr. durden said:
honestly, i think a lot of people are over thinking the whole blasting process. i've done top down single blasts,bottom up single blasts, and multiple cycles using the machine as it came designed. if you are running super cold, as with dry ice, it quickly becomes a moot point on purity of product. if you freeze your column, you should be able to get waxes extracted to stick to the bottom of the spool and you pour off the good stuff. I can't emphasize enough that negative temps will make the biggest difference after good starting material.
Click to expand...

Very interesting, i had wondered if chilling the butane/oil solution low enough would enable "winterizing" without the addition of any alcohol.
 
M

mr. durden

Member
prune said:
Very interesting, i had wondered if chilling the butane/oil solution low enough would enable "winterizing" without the addition of any alcohol.
Click to expand...

you could still winterize and get waxes and what not out, just not as much as you would if you chilled things with ice.

where we are located, a good portion of the people are recreational smokers and you lose flavor winterizing.
 
M

mr. durden

Member
RegisPhilburn1 said:
How much butane do you think you are using to pour off? Do you have to refill/cantap often?
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i try to keep it about an 1"-1.5". i use to be so anal about not wasting butane, but it becomes an issue of time and wear on your equipment. I can save 15-20 min per tube x 9-12 tubes in a day, assuming i'm not running the second system too. i want to get to a point where i can blast 12-16 tubes every other day as it becomes an issue of purging space even with a couple ovens :/

we pay about 8.50 a lb for 99.8, so it's cheap for us. i haven't actually tracked how often i'll refill our tanks as we have a couple now so that we can clean/dry out them monthly. but normally i'll throw 15 or so lbs in at a time.
 
N

nakadashi

Member
FatherEarth said:
Cotton balls? That could be your problem. I tried using a cotton disc for a filter and it slowed down my runs tremendously. When I pulled the cotton disc out afterwards its was full of fine material and oil. Toss the cotton balls and get your filters right.

Try this when loading your tubes:

*Always put your filters between the mesh screens and your material.

1st
Put on your mesh screen and solid end cap, and tighten.

Now take 2 or 3 coffee filters and open them up flat over the open end of the tube. Now take two fingers and push into the hole. Then take your packing rod and push it to the bottom taking care to tamp it evenly around the edges and repeat with a second set of filters. I always place my the end that was packed up that way the loose end is down so when you dump #3 it doesnt get stuck in the material. See if that helps and report back if you would please. Thanks.

With Respect,

FE
Click to expand...
I used the filter packing technique you recommended and am pleased to report that it indeed did speed up overall timesboth filling and recovering). However at -10"hg on final dump, liquid butane is still visible on the bottom of the sight glass. The issue may be that my gauge is not calibrated. As I don't have a gauge to calibrate it against, I will just be running the recovery pump a bit longer than recommended. Around -13"hg is when all the liquid butane disappears from the sight glass. I figure at that point there shouldn't be much left in the column anyhow!
 
C

co2extractor

Member
Wow that's a complex apperatus you have going on there. What was the build cost and costs to run a batch? Butane has reations w copper, brass, etc and your fittings should be made from stainless steel. 304, 303, 316L are perhaps the best. The use of isobutane is way more reccommended than N-butane by far. Bernzomatic and Ronson are isobutanes and are way cleaner since n-butane leaves at least one unburned carbon molecule behind. Its the reason lighters malfunction and clog w cheap tane. It is a sin however to soley perform a butane extraction on bud as its only able to dissolve a portion if the available cannabinoids, neglecting turps and other valuable constituents that improve yield and potenccy. GrayWolf, the Hemp Husbandry is outdated. Even more outdated is reefermadnessteachingmuseum.org and there is a paper on cannabinol and the process to obtain this way pure potent product we have never had the pleasure of trying. Its a little beyond my understanding at the moment.
 
M

mr. durden

Member
oh, cause co2 extraction is less complex or cheaper? everyone i know who has tried co2 extracted products felt it was an inferior product. go start your own thread on the benefits of co2 rather than trolling on this one... dickhead
 
M

mr. durden

Member
RegisPhilburn1 said:
Thanks, short contact time is the reason i would like to try the bottom up shower, i figure that the soak method has alot more contact time than a short shower, but i might be mistaken.

So if im getting this right, basically just log the amount of time it takes for the first flood to reach the top 10s for example, and then instead of closing valves 4 and 2 just leave them open for double your recorded time 20s, and then dump when at 10hg?
Click to expand...

you really aren't going to notice a difference between a product that soaked and one that wasn't. doing 3 runs with over 10lbs of butane in your tank and running dry ice should give you about an 8-15 sec blast before you start reclaiming and then start your second cycle.

i can be done with a 3 cycle run and dumping in under 5 min... the dump is what takes the longest to recycle. although i've never open blasted, i can't imagine if you are running dry ice and freezing your butane cans that you would finish quicker... not including the last reclaim.

and yes, that is what i sometimes do on super fresh indoor material. but mostly i stick to three cycles doing it like GW recommends. the only thing i don't do is the 5 min hard purge cause i leave an inch or so of butane in my base so i can pour my material off.

i think people are getting too caught up on top or bottom blasting and not focusing on the important things... like what you do before you pack a tube or how you purge after pouring off.

here in cali, we easily get 20-25/g wholesale on good stuff... how you finish your product, in my opinion is huge. well, that and making sure you have low water content in your material and making sure everything is CLEAN and that you don't get ANY water into the system like when you are taking the top off the base.

mistakes are what leads to clouding and ultimately waxing. i laugh that people often prefer wax/crumble to shatter when the former is an inferior product in terms of the process.
 
N

nakadashi

Member
RegisPhilburn1 said:
At what level on the pressure guage did you isolate the column? I usually dont untill 10hg.
+1 for safety goggles hehe
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What happened was I was performing a column switch, so I closed the vent valve and dump valve when the system was reading -10"hg. I had to take a 10 min phone call and when I came back I forgot that the column was isolated from the system, so the compound gauge was not showing the elevated pressure in the tube....so unscrewing the top 1.5" tri clamp caused a tube of weed to explode upwards.

+1 for safety goggles indeed, wish I had been wearing my respirator too..
 
L

Lebniis

Member
Durden, I tried your method of pouring. I like it! A lot easier/ cleaner than scraping. But doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of this unit to reclaim the butane? I went through 10 lbs of butane after 3 lbs of trim. Not the biggest deal because this was just an experiment. I also used dry ice on my refrigerant tank, and was getting clear butane after the first pass. I did one pass on all columns for the whole 3 lbs. I let the collection vessel freeze up entirely, and I got the best shatter I have ever made with this machine. I did not freeze the columns. I would like to try freezing the columns with dry ice instead of having the dry ice on the refrigerant tank just to see any difference.
 
M

mr. durden

Member
Lebniis said:
Durden, I tried your method of pouring. I like it! A lot easier/ cleaner than scraping. But doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose of this unit to reclaim the butane? I went through 10 lbs of butane after 3 lbs of trim. Not the biggest deal because this was just an experiment. I also used dry ice on my refrigerant tank, and was getting clear butane after the first pass. I did one pass on all columns for the whole 3 lbs. I let the collection vessel freeze up entirely, and I got the best shatter I have ever made with this machine. I did not freeze the columns. I would like to try freezing the columns with dry ice instead of having the dry ice on the refrigerant tank just to see any difference.
Click to expand...

you are absolutely right about the waste, and i still have resistance to the waste. my partner use to open blast so it isn't an issue to him. ultimately, pouring off helps to keep from manipulating the oil as much as possible until it is purged sufficiently. so i've adapted to how my partner likes to finish, and it shows in the end product.

in a nut shell, scraping the product out can mess with the bonds. sorta like whipping oil. not that it will, but there is that potential. we try to handle our oil as little as possible until it is purged sufficiently. that means letting it sit on heat for 2 hours, then vac'ing up to maybe -15 and holding it there for an hour or so before full vac'ing for 3 hours. by the time we put our oil under full vac, it isn't puffing up much at all.

if you are purging in a pot, which we don't do much anymore, a big muffin means you have a portion of the oil at one temp and parts of it at another, which would be the stuff muffing out. these variations in temp can lead to imperfections in the final product.

back to your questions... 10lbs of butane seems like a LOT to be wasting. i don't know how much an inch or so of butane is at the bottom of the spool, but it can't add up that quickly :/ then again, i could be wrong. load up more butane in your tank so that you aren't having to refill as much. in fact, more butane when running dry ice leads to shorter fill times for the column as it takes less time to build pressure.

here is why i't recommend using dry ice on both the column before installing it and the tank... you won't get condensation as much which means you have less chance of water dripping into your spool when you take the top off. even after you wipe it all down. i tend to use a heat gun to warm the column after i've dumped just to speed up the recovery process and to see how much butane is left in the bottom spool.

now remember, the heat gun is a serious ignition source, so make sure you aren't leaking :/ i've also noticed i can have my gauge read -15hg and still have several inches of freezing cold butane in the bottom spool.

so doing one pass, your total run time must have been pretty short. under 15 min i'd imagine from start to pour. just make sure you tighten down the connections at the recovery tank and check often. the cold will loosen them if they aren't tight enough. you are using a stainless braided hose from the tank to the IIIa, correct?

super cold butane is MUCH safer as it will leak in liquid form rather than gaseous. my buddy saw his friend run a lighter over dry ice frozen butane that had puddled after a blast and there are no fumes coming off it to ignite. now i'd never do something like that as it is insane. kinda like you being able to touch a powered up bus bar if you aren't grounded. in theory you should be safe, but nobody wants to test it.

so i got a couple gauges via century tool. 3 at 27 bucks with 12 dollars in shipping. i usually just google the model to find the best pricing.
 
L

Lebniis

Member
I am basically running a bhogart that I built myself before bhogart existed. I based it off the terpenator design. Top fed. Ball valve for the column.

Thanks for the response.

I do not feel comfortable using a heat gun around the setup so I wasn't able to tell where the puddle was at the bottom. The first pour was significantly deep (3-4") which was most of my butane loss. The following pours were about 2". Poured into a pyrex, then scraped onto parchment.

Can you discuss what you are pouring into? Are you pouring into something that is directly being placed into the vacuum oven you are using?

Can you link me to a stainless steel line? I'm not using one. Also have a sight glass in which probably should come out if I will be running dry ice.

Pretty awesome how the waxes get stuck to the bottom of the spool and don't entirely pour out.
 
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