Double Kindness bho recovery unit

Tr33 said:

nice DK.
something I look forward to making soon.

do you run all your waste products, stems...etc?

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Not sure what DK is using, but we extract all the leaf and bud material with butane, but use cheaper alcohol on the stems because the yield is so low.

Not sure about DKs cycle time, but my system takes half a day to cycle. I added heat to the collection pot and have scored a refrigeration unit to add a recovery tank chiller, so as to speed it up some on that end. Even with recovery, the low oil yield for the time spent would be an issue for much volume.

As an aside, we also run buds, sweet trim, and fan leaves separately. The fan leaves detract from the flavor and potency of the trim and buds.

jump117 said:

Hey foaf ! Hey Gray Wolf ! Hey Double Kindness !

What temperature is liquid butane during extraction?

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Thank you!

s13sr20det said:

fyi doublekindness is a lady. a very sexy lady

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Hee, hee, hee, she get extra points for being a sexy lady with a fine mind from me. I admire that in a woman!

My appologies, as ladies on the technical forum are in the minority and the name is only a clue.

Probably should have figured out that anyone twice as kind as even the best of us roughnecks, pretty much had to be a lady.

While DK is sharing the pictures of the process, I actually built the unit. I don't have a running total of what it took to build it. Most of the pieces were made by hand. Some of which was very tedious. The most expensive part would be the recovery pump which I scored for free thanks to a good friend. The unit is VERY stout and weighs an estimated 70LBS.

I think that some people are missing the point on of the price of butane. With a vent to atmosphere extractor, you put your few cans through it and your wad is spent. This setup holds about 3.5 cans in its tank. When I run that through once it's about even with a vent to atmosphere setup. However as I cycle the system I can put that 3.5 cans through the material as many times as I choose. Say I cycle it 3 times then that is the equivalant of blowing 10.5 cans into the atmosphere. What's the point? You may ask... well here we put high grade material, often whole plants minus the fan leaves and stems, into the extractor and are quite determined to get as much return of oil as possible. That is where the vapor recovery system really shines.

Another point worth mentioning is the fact that the recovery system pulls a vacuum on the extractor as it reclaims the butane vapor. That vacuum allows the butane to boil out of the oil easier and requires less of a purge on the finished oil. The vacuum also allows the butane to boil into vapor at a lower temperature and considering how cold the unit gets during the process, that is a plus. I noted that GW is incorporating a heater into his setup, I simply use a heat gun to knock the frost off and assist the last bit of liquid to boil off.

The cycle time starts at about an hour for one cycle. With 2 or 3 cycles it can go over two hours. A lot of the time spent is pulling the vacuum on extractor after the cycle. Cycle times can be shortened considerably if you dont spend as much time pulling the vacuum. The flip side is that there will be a lot more purging necessary and more loss of butane in the oil.

Like I alluded to before, we don't run fan leaves and stems. Our focus is on making the best oils around and the best oils aren't made from the trash. An average QP will fill our extraction tube approximately 80-85% and can yield from 10G to almost 30G depending on the quality of material being extracted.


To answer someone's previous question, butane boils at 31 degrees F at atmospheric pressure.

Duckmang said:

While DK is sharing the pictures of the process, I actually built the unit.

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Good job! I like your cycle time.

We will have to see what my new time is with the new pump, now that I've gutted all my schrader connections and replaced the checks with full port ball valves, but I could be happy with an hour.

The hawiian thai was a trim run, I helped a friend out in the last 3 weeks of flowering and trimming, so I get to keep the prime trim, and I toss the rest. From a qp of the hawiian thai trim I got back about an oz of nicely purged oil, roughly 28g.

The copper ring around the screen (fine wire mesh, the bottom screen out of the pollinator grinder, screen costs about $4 each, the copper ring alllows for smaller runs, as you can push the screen up to however much material you have.

I don't use the other extractors Duckmang has made me over the years, but like the point was on making this recovery unit is that I go through an amazing amount of material, between my breeding projects, after the buds are molested for all the seeds, those buds get turned into oil.

Sometimes it's trim, I will usually put everything with visible trichomes into the trim pile, but not all runs are trim runs, and each run is different with a different outcome.

I love the efficiency of this machine. It would cost probably 8k to make another one, the vacuum pump being the most pricey part. DM is very handy and mechanically gifted, what he doesn't tell you is that I was on his case for a while "motivating" him to get it built, and I'm so glad it's done and works so well. There is a finite number of runs we can do with the current machine setup, so some money is being put aside for another one and they're not cheap or easy to come by. So give him props for the design and making of the machine. It does kind of takes 2 people to do a run, at least with me. The parts are heavy and made of metal.

DM does the heavy lifting and is my mad scientist, he's grown to be one of the best growers I know at least in coco. I'm more the ideas, breeding projects, I'm a notorious strain and pheno whore, a total strain junkie, he reins me in so things don't get too out of control, and if he can't fix it it's broken, and I've seen him break out some mad skills over the years with his tinkering. We did have a lot of failures along the way, some of what we had gotten to build the unit with was not appropriate for our purposes. At first it was going to be a propane extractor recovery unit, and we tossed around some other solvents before settling back with butane.

HMK's vapor swing is how I enjoy our oil, mine are very like the pictures on the first page of the thread. HMK was kind enough to send me 2, and neither fit any of my current bongs, so I went with both the swings to pick out the perfect bong for the swing, I'm going through propane on my plumbers torch heating up the ti pad. I'm very glad I have a piece dedicated to smoking only oil out of, and I use BHO in my candies and edibles.

One of my signature tags is step by step lollipop making with bho, because even with the vapor swing, smoking nothing but oil does make my throat sore, and I'm a heavy medicator. DM says my superpower is I can smoke everyone under the table one by one and might just get mildly stoned 7 everyone is asleep.

I couldn't get to my email account yesterday to respond to the posts and questions, TY DM for explaining the more technical things. I do love the short run and recovery time, for a decent run of a qp, and I got I think 31g on 1 run and it took 2 hours from the time we (2 person job just holding it and loading it) load it to the time we've purged well enough to smoke, which is awesome that we only lose between 1/4-1/2 a can per qp of material we run, it's better for the environment and my wallet. People that know me well know I'm notoriously cheap, and everywhere I can save money at I'll take it, and it not only uses less butane to atmosphere, it takes less time and labor to do the actual run.

I have a pretty wide selection of hash oil smoking devices, and HMK's vapor swing is by far the best I've used. I was putting oil on my buds in a glass pipe bowl and slowly melt the bho through the buds, let it get hard and then smoke, but I found I really wasted a lot of oil that way, and investing in a good oil smoker is important, it really stretches out your stash of erl.

Running the extractor though, isn't as easy as just running cans of butane through a regular bho extractor, there's a bunch of valves, gauges, vacuum pumps, it took a while to dial it in completely to it's current running efficiency. And it's turns trim & unsaleable buds due to heavily seeded breeding projects, I'll turn that into bho all day long, and that's what we did most of last weekend was do run after run. DM jokes I need an erl-o-dex to keep all my oils filed and separated... but we need a lot of things to keep everything going. Since we have so much, I'll probably end up wholesaling a lot to a few dispensaries I have relationships with. Right now I'm spread pretty thin with getting the seed packaging together and web site to launch my seed line. You'll have to dig through other forums to find out what all I'm working on.

And while it may have taken over a year to finally get it from idea, to experiment to finished product that works better than I had hoped was well worth the wait, in what I save in butane cost, and less labor intensive. So if anyone deserves props it's Duckmang for making and designing it and not giving up on it even when we ran into roadblocks, it's finally done and works badass.

Aw shucks, now I'm blushing.

I built the unit with schrader valves on both ends but ended up taking out the top one after the first run. Figured it would help keep the liquid from evaporating so fast as it expands into the extractor. I like to keep one in the lower vapor port though. Lets me swap out hoses with vacuum or pressure in the unit. If the unit is running a little low on Butane I can disconnect the extractor and put my charging hose on the vac pump's low side.

awesome unit, im am very impressed!

walt cunningham said:

awesome unit, im am very impressed!

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Ohmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

F**king AWESOME!!!!!!!

F**king AWESOME!!!!!!!

Man, very nice! Props Duckmang and DoubleKindness!!

I know exactly why someone would build one of these: I just ran through 75 cans of butane making BHO for friends. One of these would've saved mucho dinero! Although, with shipping and everything, I only paid 3.59 a can, nowhere near the 8.50 a can the OP pays!

A tip, try Lucienne 4x butane. It's made in London, and seems to give me a MUCH cleaner tasting oil than Vector 5x(most of Vectors butane is produce in Korea, but some actually comes from London, which is good stuff in comparison to the Korean sourced...UK sourced butane seems to be a LOT cleaner than Korean, IMHO). I've made numerous runs with Vector, Lucienne, and other cheaper brands, Lucienne gives the tastiest cleanest oil I and many others have ever had, and I've made MUCH oil!

Give it a shot, another positive about it is it's price, usually a lot cheaper than Vector. I know you two aren't losing much, and therefore it's not that expensive, but it would bring down your costs even further. A penny saved is a penny earned!

Losing a half a can isn't shit, thats pretty sweet. So how much $$$ are you two gonna offer these to the MMJ community?

I'd try to source the vacuum pump myself, the machined/welded stuff is what I'd need. I'd definitely be down to buy a copy of it minus the vac pump, put me on the waiting list! Always glad to buy a fellow Coloradoan's crafts!! (I'd try to build one myself, but I'm not a welder nor a machinist. Its worth it to find someone with talents like that, such as Duckmang...)

Peace...

You folks have done an absolutely spectacular job of presentation and explanation in this thread. Not to mention the design and construction.

K+ to you both. You gave me a couple of ideas for a recovery system I have been working on.

Stunning margin of safety for such a device. Wall of the can of butane looks fifty times thinner.

Thanks, I tend not to under-do anything. One of my first attempts at making a unit used a cast aluminum chamber. Imagine my surprise when I leak checked it in a tub of water and found that the casting was porous and leaking through the aluminum. Decided then and there that my next attempt would not have similar issues.

Duckmang said:

Thanks, I tend not to under-do anything. One of my first attempts at making a unit used a cast aluminum chamber. Imagine my surprise when I leak checked it in a tub of water and found that the casting was porous and leaking through the aluminum. Decided then and there that my next attempt would not have similar issues.

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Smart man! When dealing with such things, overkill is good!

Beautiful TEK and creation-thank you for sharing!

impressive!

Double Kindness said:

More pictures of the recovery unit and the haul I got from 1 run. 28g of nicely purged hawiian thai bho, it has a very solid consistancy. But other batches I have run have turned out differently, and I did a breeding project recently, so all the plants are just de-seeded and the material run through the new extractor unit.

One of the runs, which was shishkaberry x ak-47 1 was very runny, no matter how long I purged, and the hawiian thai was very foamy before the purge, so the end product will only be as good as what you put in.

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looking at this thread makes me feel like a fiend, my mouth just wont stop watering... lucky man.

Thought I'd update this thread. The recovery pump I've been using developed a rattle and I pulled it apart before it failed completely. The roller bearing on the crankpin had gotten notchy causing the noise. The piston seal is pretty much shot, too. I took all of the pieces to a local seal supplier and sourced every seal needed, 11 total I believe. 16$ for enough seals to rebuild it twice, not bad, but I still need to order in the bearing for the crankpin. I got two of everything b/c I believe that the pump essentially runs oil-less while recovering butane vapor and as such will have a shortened lifespan. I plan to log the runtimes after the rebuild to establish a life expectancy of the recovery pump.

Duckmang said:

Thought I'd update this thread. The recovery pump I've been using developed a rattle and I pulled it apart before it failed completely. The roller bearing on the crankpin had gotten notchy causing the noise. The piston seal is pretty much shot, too. I took all of the pieces to a local seal supplier and sourced every seal needed, 11 total I believe. 16$ for enough seals to rebuild it twice, not bad, but I still need to order in the bearing for the crankpin. I got two of everything b/c I believe that the pump essentially runs oil-less while recovering butane vapor and as such will have a shortened lifespan. I plan to log the runtimes after the rebuild to establish a life expectancy of the recovery pump.

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I just resealed my two cylinder Appion recovery pump and replaced the poppet valves as well, because as you note, running dry shortens the seals lives. My pump has a completely isolated and ventilated bearings, which so far have stayed lubricated and smooth.

It will be a regular replacement item for my process, but I did find that I could reduce the time running dry and speed up the process by adding more heat to the recovery tank, so most of the butane was boiled off before the recovery pump was able to pull a vacuum.

Instead of being painfully slow, the time under vacuum was reduced by two thirds, reducing the wear and tear on the pump.

At our lower fall temperatures and higher humidity, the system hit -22" vacuum, while there was still ice on the outside of the column, so I will next wrap the column with heat tape, so as to speed up that part of the process.

There seem to be two basic pump designs on the market. Totally sealed like the Promax and the Appion type design which has the crank bearings isolated from the gas being pumped.

Each has advantages, the Promax won't leak any gas but the butane can thin out the grease in the bearings and cause them to fail. (had that happen)

The Appion I like but the gauges on it are crap.

Gray Wolf, you might want to put better gauges on your pump primarily on the input side so you can pressurize the inlet side and watch for a pressure drop. That will let you know if the piston ring is bad. It's also fun to replace... You have to keep track of the shims under the cylinders too.

I haven't found anything else for oil-less pumps that'll pump butane for under $1k though. We'll just have to put up with a bit more maintenance...

RB