The Generic Terpenators Operating Manual

Gray Wolf said:

I recommend that you vent the water and change the after pump drier filter every new start-up. Rotate them with another filter drier and vacuum bake them out under full vacuum and 250F in the interim.

I'm not a fan of "recoverous interruptus", both because of the lost butane and open containers exposure to atmosphere.

Yes, pumping oxygen containing atmosphere into your storage tank is unsafe. You might minimize that by warming the butane up enough to build pressure, and then burping away the atmosphere before attempting to recover it with the pump.

Burp your tank afterwards, to vent any you missed.

A 3 X 36" spool has an internal capacity of around 233 cubic inches, which holds about 5 lbs of butane.

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hobb3s93 said:

sorry, just saw this gw.

i know ive asked this before but do i need to chill my tank before letting it sit upside down?

ok i havent changed my filter dryer yet i havent ran much thru it but im sure im due for some new ones. ive only been running it on the "in" side of the recovery pump, but i think ill put one one the "out" aswell.

recoverous interruptus hahah ya it makes me nervous for those reasons aswell , figured i would run it by icmag first.

i woudnt plan on doing it often, mainly for small (nug) runs and such. figured it a cheaper option than the inline method considering i already have a funnel/flask and water aspirator. also i think i woudint have to buy much dry ice.

thats a really good suggestion about using solvent to build pressure and burp without using the pump. i have been injecting my solvent from the top so im not using my "liquid" valve , so i could easily burp from there

i have been burping my tank before and after every run after yours and other peoples advice.

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medman225 said:

hey gw... wanted to say thank you so much for the wealth of info here... thank u for referring me.... I respect the hell out of ya

now some questions anyone can chime in on....

first off, I have some questions on storage and prep of material.

obviously the newer the better(unless its been frozen I hear).... and it needs to be cured and dried well and needs to be vac sealed for protection from oxygen/atmosphere and kept in the dark...

Some moisture is necessary to keep the material from turning to dust, and to bind the water soluble chlorophyll binding proteins, water solubles, and chlorophyll in place when frozen.

We strip off the fan leaves, cut the plant at the base, and hang upside down in a cool dark ventilated space, until the small twigs snap, or around 5/7 days. At that point they retain enough moisture to hold things in place, and high levels of monoterpenes, so as to have good aroma and flavor.

Drier and you will start to lose aromatics and flavor, as the monoterpenes are high vapor pressure, or fragile substances like alcohols, ethers, ketones, aldehydes, esters, and carboxylic acids.

If we are going to make decarboxylated oils out of it, we then put it in a 200F ventilated oven on cookie sheet, until just frangible when rolled between the finger and thumb.

We then scrub that through a 10 mesh strainer to size it and take out the stems and seeds.

We pack that at about 4.1 gms/cubic inch for extraction and run the recovery pot bath at 200F.

If we want aromatic carboxylic acid products, we cut the buds into about ½” chunks and pack closer to 3.8 gms/cubic inch, and run the recovery pot bath at <85F.


now I used to always put my buds in the freezer in sealed mason jars or vac sealed before extraction when I used to straight open blast... and ive got to say... it seems to me, that the freezer seems to act like a really humid area...

Humidity in the freezer should be zero, because all water vapor has turned to ice.

If the plant is vacuum sealed, there shouldn’t be any from the included atmosphere, so it all has to come from the plant material.

if the buds are simply in ur tube for instance in the freezer I think the buds might b retaining some of that moisture... and even wen its in some kind of sealed thing... there is still condensation that seems to occur no matter whats its in that the buds sit on.... even if u wrap it in a paper towel before going into the mason jar I feel like it could absorb the moisture that will occur on the inside from condensation(and even if its kept cool enough to do that... the outside is going to be frosted over just a tad... and that will immediately melt and cause condensation once its taken out of the freezer.

..
again I realize were talking about amounts of water most people don't mind or don't care enough to bother with... hence why u hear oil makers saying any given sample must be under " " amount of water.

..... but the more and more runs ive done with pre frozen buds... any water at all seems to mess with the extract....

and once its in its never coming out goes the old saying....

now I realize many wont mind to do all this... but I am all about the most perfect stuff I can make...

so I got a dehydrator for the buds I run to make sure its completely out without decarbing with a lot of heat(which seems counter productive for my purposes)...
but even still, how should they be stored?

i suppose with my dry ice sleeve and my recovery cylinder sitting in a dry ice/alcohol bath, you wouldn't neccesarily even need to freeze the starting material.... tho yall know better than me...

You still need to freeze the starting material for best results. The chilled butane will keep it that way.

maybe the freezing is important for storage as well as making extracting easier... but i just feel like im literally letting frost cover my trichomes til the frost is absorbed into the trichome.

also... i know people have spoke of using a strainer... now im not sure if that's for like shake/trim to assure there aren't stems... but at the same time i have to ask what kind of strainer are u guys using that isn't grinding the material down to a powder to get thru... and if it needs to be grinded before hand,


lol how do u get the stems out without grinding them down? otherwise i don't see how the material is small enough to get thru the strainer/filter yet the stems stay?

if im trying to get all leave vein stems out i have to rip the remaining leaf off right?
now as for packing the column when it comes to straight high quality buds....

greywolf what do u do? small buds? do u remove all the stem there is(kinda hard everything would almost be shake after total destemming or atleast small as fuck buds with a lot of loose material)....

ive been told before that the more full buds u put in the better as this ensures you pull less chlorophyll...

now gw is that true or will subzero temps leave those behind like a lot of the lipids and fats?

It is true that if you extract frozen material at subzero temperatures, you will extract less of the longer chained, heavier molecular weight molecules like plant pigments, chlorophyll, and plant waxes.


and if it is true... aren't u sacrificing having huge stems in your extraction material to get less chlorophyll(a single solvent Buchner funnel dewax could take care of filtering out any chlorophyll anyway correct?)

The chlorophyll molecules and mycelles are too small to filter out by conventional means, but can be by thin film molecular distillation techniques.

A Buchner funnel, with attendant membrane filters, mostly take out debris and coagulated plant waxes.


and finally... if im going to keep my extract in butane to filter through a Buchner funnel and not recover all of it... what do i do to return to system to normal pressure so i can open the top lid?

I don’t recommend the practice, as it exposes you to flammable hazards, but if you stick your collection vessel in a subzero bath, the pressure will drop low enough to vent off the excess and allow you to remove the lid.

also... wat if i wanted to let it sit in the recovery pot with no atmosphere while the fats and lipids are solidifying so as not to expose it to oxygen any longer than necessary

No problem with letting it sit in the recovery pot as long as you monitor temperatures and pressures. It should only present issues if the recovery pot is heated, as pressure is low at subzero temperatures.

... do i just leave it at negative pressure, turn off my recovery pump, and close the correct valves?

If you shut down and valve off your recovery pump, the boiling butane will decay the vacuum level, unless it is too cold to boil or sublimate. I don't see that as presenting any problems, but don't expect to maintain vacuum.

thanks in advance for anyone and everyones help in this thread and in answering my questions... again big props again as always Gwolf...

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flatslabs said:

What pump? What temp is the collection pot? Is your column freezing up? What type of cycle are you running? Are you using a scale... too many variables

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fcjohnny said:

Anyone know why my recovery pump won't pump down to -22hg on the final dump? I've done 3 runs so far with my mkiii from terpp and the end product has come out very dark. When I open tube blast the same material it comes out very light and yellow. Not exactly sure where I'm screwing up in the process.

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fcjohnny said:

Anyone know why my recovery pump won't pump down to -22hg on the final dump? I've done 3 runs so far with my mkiii from terpp and the end product has come out very dark. When I open tube blast the same material it comes out very light and yellow. Not exactly sure where I'm screwing up in the process.

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Gray Wolf said:

What will it pump down to?

Probably the longer soak time, is responsible for the color change.

Are you using the same brand of butane?

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fcjohnny said:

After the first initial wash when I attempt to recover it will pump down to -10hg no problem. After the 2nd wash the pump will only pump down to around -9hg and start to lose some pressure it seems like. So before it loses more, I'll go ahead and do the dump and try to let it recover to -22hg. The pump will only go down to around -9hg and start to lose pressure again. When that happens I shut off the recovery valve and vac everything down for the 5 min hard vac at the end. When I shut valve #1 it doesn't want to hold a vac at the end so I have to keep the vac pump running to hold -30hg... I'm going to pressure test and vac test everything again.

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Gray Wolf said:

Are you running any heat on the recovery pot?

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Gray Wolf said:

What altitude are you at?

The last time always takes longer because it has more resin for the butane to escape from and an open dump valve, which is boiling the butane in the column as well, but it should pull down.

If it won't at sea level, with a 100F collection pot, I suspect a leak or the pump.

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fcjohnny said:

I'm the bay area. I will be attempting everything again in the coming days. Hopefully I can use my buddies go pro camera so we can we where I am screwing up.. :]


I've gone ahead and done anything pressure testing, vac testing etc... after reassembling my machine today.

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medman225 said:

lol greywolf thank you for all the answers... im sorry for the long winded post bro lol but still thank you for taking the time to answer... they have given me good insight.

so, as u said, some water retention during cure is necessary, or it will crumble to dust... so if that's the case, then you are ok with the water in the starting material at time of extraction? you would freeze the material, column, and butane, and as long as were going super cold the ice wont be soluble in the freezing butane?

also, if I were to let it cure w/ some water retention and freeze for a good while, then I dehydrate and then freeze again maybe a day or two before extraction, do you see this as counterproductive and making a darker product without those lighter monoterpenes we want?? ... is it indeed that you will need that water as ice during the extraction to be able to extract the terpenes you said would be lost with no water retention?

ps: so do u winterize normally instead of Buchner funnel? or neither?

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