Entry-level CO2 Extraction

[Gray Wolf]

That is basically the same conclusion I've come to as well. After running 2 25lb tanks at 1800psi (~3 hours each), the end result was a only a few grams of golden goo. The taste was rich and dabbed smooth, but would've been able to produce a couple ounces of BHO for the cost in CO2 that was used.

TBH, instead of tinkering with it more, I'm going to sell or repurpose the unit and go back to butane.

Here are a couple pictures of what came out. After a few days, most of the excess water dried out and the waxier chunks became more translucent.

View Image View Image View Image

Yeah, what I've found as well. SCFE CO2 extraction is more expensive than hydrocarbon extraction, and while it can produce a good product, I have yet to see a superior product.

Some of the research with compound extractions and co solvents may turn that around but a persons actions are usually a direction reflection of their perspective and you will note that though I have experimented with and could be designing and building CO2 systems, I continue to experiment with more elaborate hydrocarbon systems.

If and when we get the Apeks's lab unit offered to us pro bono for trials, we will pick up where we left off with JYN's SCFE CO2 scuba tank system.

To test my theories, requires a greater fluid exchange rate than you can achieve in a passive system like either the scuba or the Joe Blow, so I need a system with pumps.

Sort of like the difference between a passive and active butane CLS.

 

[HUGE]

Tag

 

[apollojmr]

Thanks for the thread!

 

[RHH]

IMHO, you are "giving up" too soon. R&D takes time. You might find some good info playing around with it more. You can use SCFE for all sorts of things...including polishing extracts. I wouldn't put your new toy away just yet.

 

[Scalawag]

This might not be the right place for this question, but being that the OP is finding this process to be financial unsustainable, it begs the question: Why CO2? Does it become more efficient as it scales up? Is there a demand in the industry because it's "solventless"?

Seems like there's a lot of energy being invested in a process mainly designed to ease the minds of needlessly worried people. No offense intended. But we all know that butane extraction is safe *when performed correctly* and it's proven itself to be both cost effective (when recovering) and able to yield high quality products. I've yet to be blown away by CO2 oil, it's main appeal seems to be it's use in vape pens, which BHO can also be diluted to work with...

Totally open to be schooled here, so forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass.

 

[420somewhere]

Subscribed

 

[Calimed]

Thanks RHH, I still have the unit, and who knows, might tinker with it more. Perhaps with a bit higher pressure the yields could be better. I'd really love for it to work, but unless I can produce an oz of oil from $20-40 bucks worth of co2, it's going to be tough to justify. In order to raise the pressure up beyond 1800, I would need to manually close off the extraction tube, and heat it up to 2500-4000psi, extract until the pressure drops a bit, then repeat...which adds a ton of time to the entire process. With BHO, that 8oz. of plant material could be blasted and purged in a fraction of the time it takes to just extract it with this CO2 machine. The company also has since disappeared...

How would you recommend polishing an extract with this system?

In my opinion Scalawag, it's mostly political. But after reading about a couple busts with the big boy CO2 machines... making BHO with a CLS seems like the better investment for the money and time involved.

 

[RHH]

This might not be the right place for this question, but being that the OP is finding this process to be financial unsustainable, it begs the question: Why CO2? Does it become more efficient as it scales up? Is there a demand in the industry because it's "solventless"?

Seems like there's a lot of energy being invested in a process mainly designed to ease the minds of needlessly worried people. No offense intended. But we all know that butane extraction is safe *when performed correctly* and it's proven itself to be both cost effective (when recovering) and able to yield high quality products. I've yet to be blown away by CO2 oil, it's main appeal seems to be it's use in vape pens, which BHO can also be diluted to work with...

Totally open to be schooled here, so forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass.

Imagine you are a food processor. After your material is wetted with solvent you need to recover the solvent. Note you need a desolventizer toaster. What do you do recover the solvent? You need a distillation tower. With SCFE you can " flash off" the solvent by reducing the pressure. Plus co2 is much cheaper than hexane. Less environmental regulations to deal with. SCFE is more environmentally friendly. And, of course, consumers are becoming more conscious of solvents being used in their fish oils, etc. all make SCFE plants more appealing.

Balancing operating costs with product yields and throughput is an economics issue. A lot has been written about it.

Calimed, unfortunately I haven't read much into it and I'm not sure what, if any, fractionation you can achieve with your setup. I have seen some journal articles covering the topic in passing. Search on Google Scholar. I'll post them here when I come across them again. I was mostly curious about using SCFE for deterpification... which is anathema around here.

 

[stoned-trout]

always wondered about the co2 extract...thanks for sharing...

 

[Gray Wolf]

This might not be the right place for this question, but being that the OP is finding this process to be financial unsustainable, it begs the question: Why CO2? Does it become more efficient as it scales up? Is there a demand in the industry because it's "solventless"?

Seems like there's a lot of energy being invested in a process mainly designed to ease the minds of needlessly worried people. No offense intended. But we all know that butane extraction is safe *when performed correctly* and it's proven itself to be both cost effective (when recovering) and able to yield high quality products. I've yet to be blown away by CO2 oil, it's main appeal seems to be it's use in vape pens, which BHO can also be diluted to work with...

Totally open to be schooled here, so forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass.

SCFE CO2 is still in its infancy with cannabis, because it is so expensive and little work has been done with it until recently, or at least none that was shared.

Relatively speaking, C02 isn't really that good a solvent, so it takes volumes of it to accomplish our ends. You can extract small volumes with passive systems, but it is inefficient, time consuming, and costly.

A system with pumps allows you to run higher C02 exchange rates, and allows you to come up to pressure faster, so as to not extract over the whole pressure curve.

What CO2 is capable of, is fractionating out those things we covet, from those we abhor. Patrick at Eden Labs is experimenting with fractionation, and shared some impressive samples with us at the Seattle Cup.

Perhaps one of the most interesting that he shared, was a CO2 fraction with the cannabinoid content in the high 90 percentile, to which he had added back some of the terpenes. Not "gaugus" by current beauty standards, but with superb aromatics, excellent flavor, and impressive head effects. I would love to have a pound or so for those moments when I covet "good head."

Notable was the absence of waxes without winterizing, because they were removed as a separate fraction.

We have yet to receive our loaner Apeks test unit to follow up our tests using the loaner JYN scuba unit, so I am vicariously watching Patricks experiments with bait on mah breath. Hee, hee, hee................

 

[krunchbubble]

This might not be the right place for this question, but being that the OP is finding this process to be financial unsustainable, it begs the question: Why CO2? Does it become more efficient as it scales up? Is there a demand in the industry because it's "solventless"?

Seems like there's a lot of energy being invested in a process mainly designed to ease the minds of needlessly worried people. No offense intended. But we all know that butane extraction is safe *when performed correctly* and it's proven itself to be both cost effective (when recovering) and able to yield high quality products. I've yet to be blown away by CO2 oil, it's main appeal seems to be it's use in vape pens, which BHO can also be diluted to work with...

Totally open to be schooled here, so forgive me if I'm talking out of my ass.

MANY clubs is Nor Cal will not carry BHO extracted with butane because of the practices to make it...ie using an Appion...

Alot of people are trying to switch over to running co2 now, and the results I see are mediocre at best....

Sub 50% THC, runny as fuck, hard to dab, just overall shitty product is what ive seen in the clubs. Shit cant get me high at all....

 

[RHH]

SCFE CO2 is still in its infancy with cannabis, because it is so expensive and little work has been done with it until recently, or at least none that was shared.

Relatively speaking, C02 isn't really that good a solvent, so it takes volumes of it to accomplish our ends. You can extract small volumes with passive systems, but it is inefficient, time consuming, and costly.

A system with pumps allows you to run higher C02 exchange rates, and allows you to come up to pressure faster, so as to not extract over the whole pressure curve.

What CO2 is capable of, is fractionating out those things we covet, from those we abhor. Patrick at Eden Labs is experimenting with fractionation, and shared some impressive samples with us at the Seattle Cup.

Perhaps one of the most interesting that he shared, was a CO2 fraction with the cannabinoid content in the high 90 percentile, to which he had added back some of the terpenes. Not "gaugus" by current beauty standards, but with superb aromatics, excellent flavor, and impressive head effects. I would love to have a pound or so for those moments when I covet "good head."

Notable was the absence of waxes without winterizing, because they were removed as a separate fraction.

We have yet to receive our loaner Apeks test unit to follow up our tests using the loaner JYN scuba unit, so I am vicariously watching Patricks experiments with bait on mah breath. Hee, hee, hee................

You hit the nail on the head. One problem that I see is that a lot of the extractors for sale are not hitting anywhere near as high of pressures as they reach in industry. The potential for solvent co-injection also isn't really well explored in this industry. Most people buy a 100k system and want to make product. Not read journals for weeks on end and carry out deliberate research. When your extractor is limited to 1500psi (or 5000psi if you are willing to spend an extra 30k for no tangible benefit) and cosolvent injection isn't available... well, it's hard to research much of anything.

We are definitely at a turning point these days. A lot of us have figured out how to consistently extract high THC fractions using distillation / chromatography / ion resin exchange. Even seen some weird stuff going on with filters. Our industry is in its formative years =]

/rant

 

[leroy_jenkins]

We have been running an Apeks 1500-1L for several weeks now and have been yielding about 10% on good material. It is always terpene rich and very potent. What we have found is at this pressure range, running is 1250-1300 psi at the extractor and 380-450 psi at the separator, we are unable to pull any waxes or lipids. As such, we have only been able to finish as a sap. We are told that a crumble and shatter are possible but that the technique is proprietary.

Our only lab test so far came back at ~78% THC, ~1% split between the other cannabinoids. We had not asked for a moisture analysis and the terpene profile abilities of our lab is a week or 2 out yet, but we assume that there is a moisture content in that sample because we had not put it under vacuum/heat.

I would like to also mention to you Grey Wolf that I will be coming up to see Carla on Thursday and that I would like to bring you a sample and invite you to our lab to play with our Apeks as we aren't terribly far away.

 

[Scalawag]

MANY clubs is Nor Cal will not carry BHO extracted with butane because of the practices to make it...ie using an Appion...

Alot of people are trying to switch over to running co2 now, and the results I see are mediocre at best....

Sub 50% THC, runny as fuck, hard to dab, just overall shitty product is what ive seen in the clubs. Shit cant get me high at all....

Ugh, that's so frustrating.

The clubs say this is "for the patients" and for "clean meds" but what good as ever come from restricting choice? How is that in the best interest of the patients? How is that a good business move?

Imagine if when gluten-free stuff became more popular, gluten-rich stuff was completely restricted. It just seems like knee-jerk logic in order to build trust. "See? We're the only guys looking out for you!"

Thereby creating the fallacy argument that butane is inherently unsafe by design.

I dunno, I'm obviously a bit biased in this regard.

 

[Scalawag]

What CO2 is capable of, is fractionating out those things we covet, from those we abhor. Patrick at Eden Labs is experimenting with fractionation, and shared some impressive samples with us at the Seattle Cup.

Perhaps one of the most interesting that he shared, was a CO2 fraction with the cannabinoid content in the high 90 percentile, to which he had added back some of the terpenes. Not "gaugus" by current beauty standards, but with superb aromatics, excellent flavor, and impressive head effects. I would love to have a pound or so for those moments when I covet "good head."

This is the best answer I've heard on the subject. No surprise it came from you GW. Thanks for giving me some more perspective.

I know added terpenes are also a point of controversy right now. It's kind of funny how there's ALWAYS something - but hey, it keeps everyone honest.

Here's wishing you good luck on your quest for some good head.

 

[One Presence]

What CO2 is capable of, is fractionating out those things we covet, from those we abhor. Patrick at Eden Labs is experimenting with fractionation, and shared some impressive samples with us at the Seattle Cup.

Perhaps one of the most interesting that he shared, was a CO2 fraction with the cannabinoid content in the high 90 percentile, to which he had added back some of the terpenes. Not "gaugus" by current beauty standards, but with superb aromatics, excellent flavor, and impressive head effects.

Notable was the absence of waxes without winterizing, because they were removed as a separate fraction.

Hey Grey Wolf, did Patrick share with you any of the parameters in which he was getting these results or do you have any idea if he is open to sharing his research...with or without a fee?

 

[Gray Wolf]

We have been running an Apeks 1500-1L for several weeks now and have been yielding about 10% on good material. It is always terpene rich and very potent. What we have found is at this pressure range, running is 1250-1300 psi at the extractor and 380-450 psi at the separator, we are unable to pull any waxes or lipids. As such, we have only been able to finish as a sap. We are told that a crumble and shatter are possible but that the technique is proprietary.

Our only lab test so far came back at ~78% THC, ~1% split between the other cannabinoids. We had not asked for a moisture analysis and the terpene profile abilities of our lab is a week or 2 out yet, but we assume that there is a moisture content in that sample because we had not put it under vacuum/heat.

I would like to also mention to you Grey Wolf that I will be coming up to see Carla on Thursday and that I would like to bring you a sample and invite you to our lab to play with our Apeks as we aren't terribly far away.

What time Thursday will you be at Carla's?

 

[Gray Wolf]

Hey Grey Wolf, did Patrick share with you any of the parameters in which he was getting these results or do you have any idea if he is open to sharing his research...with or without a fee?

Patrick answered my questions but was also tending a booth, so we were limited in time. He invited me to visit at a later date for show and tell, and I definitely plan to follow up.

As for Patrick sharing, the easiest way to find out is ask him. He is a Skunk Pharm Research alumni, and has always been reasonably open with me, but we have also developed a relationship over several years.

 

[leroy_jenkins]

What time Thursday will you be at Carla's?

I told her I'd be up right around noon.

 

[RHH]

We have been running an Apeks 1500-1L for several weeks now and have been yielding about 10% on good material. It is always terpene rich and very potent. What we have found is at this pressure range, running is 1250-1300 psi at the extractor and 380-450 psi at the separator, we are unable to pull any waxes or lipids. As such, we have only been able to finish as a sap. We are told that a crumble and shatter are possible but that the technique is proprietary.

Our only lab test so far came back at ~78% THC, ~1% split between the other cannabinoids. We had not asked for a moisture analysis and the terpene profile abilities of our lab is a week or 2 out yet, but we assume that there is a moisture content in that sample because we had not put it under vacuum/heat.

I would like to also mention to you Grey Wolf that I will be coming up to see Carla on Thursday and that I would like to bring you a sample and invite you to our lab to play with our Apeks as we aren't terribly far away.

Quick question--how long does the entire run take? The quoted figures from Apex is 8 hours.