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The Enabler BHO Extractor and Alcohol Fractionating Still

Gray Wolf

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While messing around with passive butane essential oils extraction and recovery, it occurred to me that with very few extra pieces, the new Skunk Pharm Research passive butane extraction and recovery system could also be used to turn 80 proof drinking alcohol into 190 proof, for those of ya'll who are unable to get 190 proof for essential oil extractions.

If we use the butane storage and recovery tank for the boiler, and the lid from the BHO recovery tank, we can install a 36" tall stainless sanitary spool for a refluxing column, packed with stainless steel pot scrubbers.

A sanitary cross at the top will provide ports for a thermometer, a refluxing condenser, and a product bleed. A product condenser on the product bleed port will condense the vapors bled off from the upper chamber, and the temperature of those vapors will tell you what they are.

Check with your personal attorney for his read on local laws, but by using the butane recovery tank, the volume of the boiler is under one gallon (.86), the taxes on the alcohol that you are condensing have been paid for, and it is used for extracting essential oils, not drinking.

In theory, the still could just as easily make 190 proof out of a ferment sugar wash, but that is illegal at least here locally, so we are not recommending it for that use where prohibited.

Here is a conceptual of how such a system might work, and here is a picture of what a 36" column with cross looks like. More when the parts come back from the welder and machine shop.

As with the passive extraction system, most parts are off the shelf.

Taken from:http://skunkpharmresearch.com/enabler-alcohol-fractionating-still/

Hee, hee, hee, ahwoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!1
 

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Weezard

Hawaiian Inebriatti
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Brilliant!
You lot are gonna cost me a fortune buying new toys.
Just bought a stainless steel super still.
(Say that ten times. :))

still.jpg

All I can get here is 151 proof.
Plan to triple distill, aiming at 190 proof from 151 Everclear.

The same still will recover the solvent as it boils off from the oil.
Plan to keep re-using the soilvent.

Mahalo nui,
Weezard
 

G.O. Joe

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There will be a lot of heat loss with a big chunk of steel, insulation is recommended, as one part of proper fractionation practice.
 

Gray Wolf

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Brilliant!
You lot are gonna cost me a fortune buying new toys.
Just bought a stainless steel super still.
(Say that ten times. :))

View attachment 172529

All I can get here is 151 proof.
Plan to triple distill, aiming at 190 proof from 151 Everclear.

The same still will recover the solvent as it boils off from the oil.
Plan to keep re-using the soilvent.

Mahalo nui,
Weezard

Purdy! Where did you find it and for how much?
 

Gray Wolf

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There will be a lot of heat loss with a big chunk of steel, insulation is recommended, as one part of proper fractionation practice.

Good point, and I plan to use steam pipe insulation on the column, but couldn't resist taking a purdy picture first.

I'm planning to use an existing glass Alhin condenser for refluxing and another existing Liebig for the product condenser, so the additional prototype costs are minimal. It would be easy however, to wrap copper reflux and product condensers.

With one meter of column below the refluxing condenser, I'm hoping that it will fractionate closely enough to redistill low octane drinking alcohol into 190 proof in a single pass.

Since I'm not planning to run mash or wash, I'm not planning to add any copper scrubbers in the mix to react with the sulphides, and so keeping the stainless clean, should be relatively easy.

PS: For ya'll in the parts of the world where it is legal, a meter of reflux column should also allow ya'll to distill off fermented mashes, beers, and washes, as well as wines, and you probably want to mix in a few copper pot scrubbers.

A meter of column should also be tall enough to easily fractionate off the methanol and ethyl acetate fore shots produced in those processes, as well as the heads and tails.
 
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krunchbubble

Dear Haters, I Have So Much More For You To Be Mad
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Wanted to feel like one of the cool boys....

This still has an "herbal essence extractor" built in, its the fatter part near the top, always wondered if i could stuff pot in there....



REALLY sorry if im way off topic here...:tiphat:
 

Gray Wolf

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SB7

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Krunchbubble that's the still I use to turn vodka into 93-95% Ethanol. I've switched to making my own mash ( birdwatchers sugar wash) as 1.75l of vodka ( regardless of the brand) costs 55$ thanks to heavy taxes and gov controlled distribution. I haven't gotten around to experimenting with Ethanol recovery yet, although I do have some ideas ;_)
FWIW I didn't have much success with using it as a herbal extractor, very low yield ,
besides I don't want to use heat for extraction , that's why I have a tamisium .
GW. great post as always, I await your every post with bated breath :)

Weezard That's a great looking still, what brand is it , where did you find it ? oh and IMHO I wouldn't re-distill anything over 40%ABV for safety reasons.
Which would mean that you'll need to cut the 151 down from 75% to 40% which would beg the question why not just buy cheaper 40% spirits in the first place. ( If you're already aware of this, then my apologies)
 

Gray Wolf

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Progress:
 

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gaiusmarius

me
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amazing work as ever Gray Wolf. just love the way you share info in detail. always coming up with new tricks and innovations.
 

Gray Wolf

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Enabler Configurations


Progress has been made. I picked up a dozen of the stainless pot scrubbers at Hongs Restaurant Supply for $5.99, and after I first pulled them apart, I rammed them firmly into the column, using a hard wood dowel.

They are held between the two combination Viton gasket/10 mesh screens at each end of the column, which I scored from brewerygaskets.com. I chose Viton because of its compatibility with hot ethanol.

I recommend this Cole Palmer site, for choosing alternate materials from what I have used here, should it be more readily available:

http://www.coleparmer.co.uk/Chemical-Resistance?referred_id=1033&mkwid=smji51NEu&pcrid=15195968645&gclid=CNfn8YSciLECFWYbQgodGUVoPw

The science behind the 1 meter column packed with stainless ribbon, is that the large surface area of the ribbon continually cools the rising vapors until the point that they cool to a liquid and rain back down the column.

Eventually the vapors will heat up the insulated column, and they will rise higher and higher in the column, until the column and its contents reach thermal equilibrium.

Because of this continuous refluxing action, when it reaches equilibrium, the lowest boiling point vapors will be at the top of the column, and the heavier vapors below them in the column.

Because I would like to do this in a 1 meter column, I have elected to install an Alhin refluxing condenser above the column. This refluxing condenser condenses everything that rises above the packing, so that a shorter column can be used.

There is a digital thermometer in the cross below the refluxing condenser, with the probe far enough back, so as to not be affected by the temperature of raining condensate. It tells which constituent is at the top of the column, by the temperature of the vapors.

Bleeding off the fractions:

There are a couple of standard ways to bleed off the fractions, with one called liquid control, and one called vapor control.

With liquid control, you capture some of the liquid raining down from the reflux condenser at the top of the column and bleed it off.

Instead of liquid control, I will be using two different vapor control techniques with this fractionating still. I will detail them below, but the principle with both liquid and vapor control, is that if you provide a means to extract the liquid or vapor at the top of the column at a slow enough rate, the column will continually reestablish equilibrium, and you can bleed off that constituent.

The rising temperature tells you that the next constituent, or an azeotrope of that constituent has reached the still head.

Providing a bleed path using vapor control:

You will notice that besides the Alhin reflux condenser at the top of the column, there are two Liebig product condensers that come into play, depending on where the vapor stream is coming from.

Path A is created by cracking the valve on one leg of the cross, which allows some of the vapors at the top of the reflux column to exit through the Liebig condenser, where it is cooled to a liquid.

This technique relies on the fact that water steam is lighter than air, at 0.6 its density, while ethanol vapors are 1.6 times as dense. That means that given an opportunity, that the steam will rise and the ethanol vapors will sink, until their concentration falls below about 41% by volume in the top of the column.

This is a handy feature if you are making ethanol from scratch, as you can strip the wash with the valve wide open, and the product will drop off as the critical temperature for tails is reached, making the separation easy.

Usually the first constituent to reach the head of the still will be the Ethyl Acetate, and Methanol, which are bled off and discarded, followed by their azeotropes with ethanol, called the heads.

After the heads, comes the purified ethanol, until it reaches about 41%, at which time the tails arrive, with fusil oils and other cogens.

The advantage of this type of vapor control, is that the temperature and flow of the incoming water to the condensers isn't as critical, and it is self regulating on shut off. The temperature will not only rise, but product through the Liebig condenser will dwindle.

Path B, provides even finer separation of the constituents, but does rely on regulating both the flow and temperature of the water to the Alhin refluxing condenser, because we will be using it as the control point.

The way we operate it, is to run it in full reflux mode until it reaches equilibrium, and then start cutting back the flow to the Alhin condenser. That will let the very lowest boiling point constituents to flow up and out the top of the Alhin, where it is directed through a Liebig product condenser and cooled into a liquid.

The advantage is very fine control, but it has to be monitored more closely and cooling water pressure, temperature, and flow are more critical.

You can also achieve the same effect by leaving the flow through the Alhin reflux condenser constant, and cranking up the boiler heat. Less system losses, the amount of heat added by the boiler, has to be removed by the reflux condenser to stay in balance. Increasing the heat will drive the vapors out the top of a finely balanced heat exchanger, just like reducing the cooling capacity.

Pot still:

For those applications where a simple pot still is just the ticket, with the Enabler's modular design, the head cross can easily be attached directly to the boiler itself, eliminating the column altogether. Hee, hee, hee, what could be sweeter?

GW
 

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BHO594

Member
damn people are lazy nowadays i knock runs out all day barrd the fuck out off syrup too..
plus open end tube extractors are way better,you get alot better returns and the oil from these new metal ones come out alot darker from the samples ive compared.

Krunch that rig looks pretty fancy,is that bottom container the Collector for your oil?
 

Gray Wolf

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damn people are lazy nowadays i knock runs out all day barrd the fuck out off syrup too..
plus open end tube extractors are way better,you get alot better returns and the oil from these new metal ones come out alot darker from the samples ive compared.

Krunch that rig looks pretty fancy,is that bottom container the Collector for your oil?

Ah think all three of our rigs are totally over the top for BHO extraction and we would would get much better BHO yields using a tube too! Not sure what us'n lazy rascals are thinking?
 
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opt1c

Active member
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lol... someone doesn't know what the word lazy means... too many bars and too much lean and you'll start to forget how to put together even the simplest sentences

gray wolf; your shit, as always, is fucking insane... keep doing what you're doing

:joint:
 

SB7

Member
Damn, Gray Wolf now that IS a Still.

"lazy" ??? mmmmh I don't see how any of this could be called being lazy.
For me , using a still is a necessity ,given the lack of access to the ethanol and the cost of the materials needed to manufacture ethanol.
When it comes to using a BHO recovery system, again, same rules apply, and why eject Butane into the atmosphere when you don't have to ? Yield better from a tube you blow butane through ? Then you must be the only one. I always get a better yield using my tamisium vs using my tube, ( and yes I've performed side by side with the same harvest) and I get to recover the butane and use it again and again and again... . I use ethanol to extract the BHO from the collection vessel but also to help with purging Butane. More importantly, I get to filter out all the waxes etc. that butane picks up on it's travels. That just makes the oil cleaner and that's not something I'll compromise on. I get far more bronchi/lung irritation from vaping straight tube BHO oil than ethanol filtered waxless BHO . I'm not the only one, I've experimented on the folks I hang with LOL and for me there is no question in my mind which is better for my sensitive lungs and that of med patients.
As for darker vs lighter, for me that has been strain dependent, ( not extraction method dependent) although , yes, heated or decarbed oil is generally darker than fresh frozen material run through a tube.
Lastly, for me this is the pursuit of knowledge and that is never a waste of time and certainly not being lazy.
For GW and a number of folks here, I sure it's also about production quantities/volume.
Having 10 people squirting cans of BHO through tubes all day really isn't going to cut it.
Of course you are free to use whatever method you'd like and there are many methods to use ...be it tube, thermos, recovery .QWISO,QWEOtH etc. , but calling people lazy because they want a better/cleaner more consistent extraction seems a little arrogant .. don't you think ? You don't see GW or JUMP saying that "tubers" are this or that , it's all good if you enjoy the results
JMHO
 

Gray Wolf

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Damn, Gray Wolf now that IS a Still.

For GW and a number of folks here, I sure it's also about production quantities/volume.

Hee, hee, hee, thank you! I've grown to believe that any thang worth doing, is worth over doing. More is better, and just too, too much, is only barely enough. Well almost enough.............

As far as focus, we focus on several production aspects. Our first and foremost is quality, but in quantities that meet our needs. Our question was how we could produce those quality meds, which include our own, as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.

We made some high quality oil using open columns, but weren't able to find anything that competes with butane recycle from a cost standpoint, at those quality levels.

In our case, those quantities are relatively low, but when we do run production, we want to get it all done in as short a time as possible, because our time is more productive doing other things and I for one, get bored damn easily.

Our primary garden is on a perpetual one week harvest cycle, so we like to run a week worth of material at a time, which we can process through the Mk I Terpenator in an hour, with our butane, electrical, and ice cost under four cents ($0.038) per gram.

We also process donations to cancer patients pro bono, and OMMP limits how much dry usable material we can have on hand at one time, so we have to move them fast to stay in compliance.

As far as yield, our record yield using a tube and a second run after a repack, was ~21.6% raw oleoresin.

Our average using the Mk I and three soak cycles, is ~23.5% Absolute Amber, with about a 8% loss at winterization, so about a ~25% original raw oleoresin yield.

At least the way we run open columns, we get a better yield using a closed system, that allows us to soak the material more.

As a bonus, recycling the butane is greener and more environmentally friendly.

Despite my misleading title, this thread is really about making high purity ethanol available to patients in areas where it currently is not. I threw in the butane thang, because I am multi-purposing components from the passive butane recovery system, to assemble the fractionating still, and was looking at the two systems as compliments of one another.

Even the manual Mk I Terpenator is beyond the resources of most MMJ patients, so here is a system that can be assembled from mostly off the shelf items, which will not only passively extract the oil, but produce the ethanol that is subsequently used to winterize it.

It is more about enabling patients to produce the cannabis medications that they need, which is why I named it the Enabler.
 

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