Terpenator Solvent: Iso-butane vs N-butane

Too long of a soak, IMO, and your solvent may be a bit too warm.

Was this product hand or machine trimmed? Was it harvested early or late in the harvest window?

You should distill everything especially the ecogreen. I've heard a lot of people used it successfully but a lot of bad reports lately...

Were you using room temp or warm solvent on that soak?

Zdub7k said:

harvested mid window, not many amber trichs, hand trimmed, and it was just brought to my attention that ecogreen is known to sell poor quality butane, is this true? Also I was under the impression that an lp tank of butane didnt need to be distilled like canned butane, do I need to be distilling the butane from ecogreen before running it thru material?

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Until further notice, EcoGreen needs to be distilled. We're not sure how much Mystery Oil is in the current lot, and the original lot's residue had an off odor.

Zdub7k said:

Hey guys Im just getting into the CLS's and got a passive (hot and cold transfer) unit...I bought a blend tank from ecogreen of 70%n-butane and 30% N-Propane, and have done two runs, both of which yielded dark stable oil....This is my first time running N-butane or any butane that isnt from a can for that matter. Is the N-butane picking up the dark color? Or am I soaking the material too long? I soaked the material column for 30 mins the first run and 15 mins the second run. Both products were the same dark color and the second run yielded about 2/3 what the first did. This has me thinking its the solvent and not the soak times or the 120F hot water bath I use to recover and warm butane tank for the initial soaking. everything has been done in a garage at about 1 F temps. what am I doing wrong here to end up with such dark oil? I was going for nice light shatter. I havent ran the dewaxing column yet as I want to get my tech down first. the trim is high quality 2 weeks old...please help

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A couple of thoughts.

n-Butane extracts more longer chain molecules than n-Propane, so going from a mix to straight butane will darken the mix.

If you start with a mix in a passive system, and use the burp technique to void the trapped atmosphere, you also burp off some of the propane.

If you are getting dark extracts with a 70/30 blend, my first question would be, did you predistill it before using it?

Soaking will pick up more of the longer chained molecules like chlorophyll, anthro cyanins, and plant waxes, all of which will darken the extract.

Less at lower temperatures. What temperature are you extracting at?

Heat will darken the extract too. How hot are you running your hot bath during recovery.

I'm still saying too long of a soak with unchilled solvent is probably the cause vs contaminated butane...

Zdub7k said:

well im outside in michigan so the temps are 0F lately and next time i run it im going to dry ice the sleeve and recovery vessel. the water bath was at 120, next time im going to run 60 F, and no I didnt distill the solvent before hand. I thought only canned tane needed distilling. after reading all the people trashing ecogreen im giong to just tap some cans.

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120F is too hot. We run with no heat during most of the extraction on smaller units and 85F max to keep the ice off the lower tank on the larger units.

All of the butane I've run so far had some residuals in it, as has everything Skyhighler has tested. All that it takes to have piles of residuals at ppm concentration, is enough millions of parts.

We automatically distill everything first.

I've been doing extractions in Colorado's legal realm for approximately 6 months now, and have experience with ETS, Emotek, Tamisium, and Bhogart. The machine I use at work on a daily basis is a 2-lb ETS model, capable of holding pressures of up to 300psi. I have run iso-propane (what I use most often), iso-butane, and a mixture of both. I really like running at higher pressures, as that means the temperature inside the vessel is colder without having to pre-freeze the column. When I use iso-butane alone, I've found that deep freezing the column first really helps with pulling good colors.

Questions though: 1) Why am I yielding less with propane exctractions? It seems like my average yield with propane is in the 10-15% range, where butane hits 15-20%. I saw you mentioned the greater surface area of buane, meaning it would pull more. I suppose that makes sense, maybe there's my answer.
2)I'm purging propane runs in the oven at around 85degreesF, but it seems like butane runs always taste better. Is iso-butane better at pulling terps than propane? I figure the lower purge temp is glorious for terp retention, but I'm wondering if perhaps propane just grabs fewer terps from the get-go.

It should be said that my favorite products have come from a mix of roughly 20% iso-butane and 80% iso-propane. Having enough propane to keep the pressure high to keep the extraction cold, but enough iso-butane to maybe grab flavor? Still trying to figure this out, sorry if the post is a bit rambling. My best test result has been a concentrate that's 97.9% THCA. A bit of an outlier indeed, but the results are typically in the high 80's to low 90's.

My concentrates typically come out bright yellow and reek all kinds of good (sellable at a dispensary), but they are lacking flavor IMO

Could someone please explain why iso-butane with a lower boiling point is harder to extract than n-butane with a higher boiling point. Just not grasping the physics on this one.

blackbart1720 said:

Could someone please explain why iso-butane with a lower boiling point is harder to extract than n-butane with a higher boiling point. Just not grasping the physics on this one.

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I'd guess it's not the purging, but the recollection requires lower temps And/or higher pressures in recirc systems.

blackbart1720 said:

Could someone please explain why iso-butane with a lower boiling point is harder to extract than n-butane with a higher boiling point. Just not grasping the physics on this one.

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It's harder to recondense into liquid due to lower condensation point. Easier to evaporate than N-butane, though.

Breakover said:

It's harder to recondense into liquid due to lower condensation point. Easier to evaporate than N-butane, though.

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What BO said.

Breakover said:

It's harder to recondense into liquid due to lower condensation point. Easier to evaporate than N-butane, though.

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Do you know what temp is to recondense?

Sriley28 said:

Do you know what temp is to recondense?

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-11.7C/10.9F