vertigo0007
Member
Opaque yellow, not clear in any way, beyond cloudy. The oil that seperates is clear orange/red.
Well what do you know? I had a guy show me a quick video of a unit he is involved with using. It was a video of that first picture spewinf the extract out the tube into a jar. Its being made on a machine that supposedly is in a state inspected lab. Any idea what type of lab would have this machine amd allow its use for cannabis? I was thinking a struggling 'micro-brew' coffee company, or maybe a flavor extract company. Its a yellow goo that seperates an orange red oil as it sits. It smells and tastes like raisins and tests at 50%ish. It smells like ethanol extract i tried once, but looks completely different. Oh and it sparks and pops like hell when you put a flame to it. Is that the carrier solvent they claim they dont use and the local lab claims its certified free of? Give the some truth Lord Wolf
I've also been building an SFE chamber. The chamber itself is finished and I have pressure tested it far into super critical phase, but now I'm running into the problem of separating the non-polar compounds out from the CO2. I've hit a wall as far as what this separator should look like, and how it should function.
My process:
1) Fill the chamber with plant matter.
2) Fill chamber with liquid CO2 at 1800 PSI at room temp.
3) Using strap heaters around the chamber, raise temp above 31 Deg Celsius.
4) Allow to stay in super critical phase for a minimum of 4 hours.
5) Allow temp to drop back down below super critical and back into liquid state.
6) Separate CO2 from non-polar compounds.... but how???
We deigned, simulated, machined, welded, and heat treated a structure from scratch, it's made of 6061 Aluminum heat treated back to T-6 after welding. The structure holds around 2 pounds of material and we've heat tested it to 95C and 2700 PSI, but we rate it for 3000 PSI and it's true yield strength is around 5400 PSI .The problem I've run into is that I have no idea how to separate the final material from the CO2. What were you planning?
-Max
Are you speaking of separating the plant material from the CO2, or constituets in the CO2 extract?
hi Gray Wolf, for some ideas about multiple chambers you should have a look at this page: http://probase-technologies.blogspot.com / which is based on the patents of a guy named Peter Wilde.. I'm not suggesting using 134 but thinking perhaps the design might be of value..
Grey Wolf, you got it right. Im trying to build a separator that goes in after the SFE chamber. But what I've tried so far has shown little promise. I have a pressure regulator on the bottom of the chamber and I vent at a very low pressure allowing the supercritical CO2 to phase change to a gas at the regulator. Once the phase change has occurred the extract is no longer in solution and we have to use the mechanical factor of CO2 gas pushing through a tube to get the extract out to the separator. But when the extract falls out of solution we can expect it to be in very small groupings, making it very hard to collect. I worry that even though I'm regulating at very low pressure and therefore very low velocity (through the tube), I may incur some loss if i just shoot it into a beaker. Because it's essentially blowing minuscule bits of THC dust which may just escape into the surrounding environment.
So to clarify your separator; you want to create a secondary low pressure chamber that you vent gaseous CO2 into, then let the extract settle to the bottom do to gravity and then slowly vent the CO2 out of the secondary chamber, and then do this over and over until you have a pile of material at the bottom? I like this idea I think this might be what Im looking for. Also what are your feelings on utilizing water in the separator as opposed to just gravity, I thought it might make sense to fill the separator with water (RODI for cleanliness sake) and have the CO2 bubble through. Because it is polar the THC wont dissolve but it might help as far as a medium that the extract can sit in, as opposed to just an empty chamber where you might accidentally blow your extract out during separator venting. (I feel I might not be explaining this water idea perfectly, I can send you more info to clarify this part if you like.)
The other problem that Im seeing with my soak chamber is that we technically depressurize the chamber at the exact rate of CO2 leaving the chamber. Because supercritical CO2 is technically a gas, it behaves as such in terms of holding pressure. so as we vent the chamber the pressure drop is directly correlated to how much CO2 we lose. This means that our pressure drops very quickly and we risk dropping out of supercritical phase and into gaseous phase which in-turn means that we lose the solubility of supercritical CO2 and possibly leave some extract behind. This is as opposed to when CO2 is in a liquid state, it can hold pressure for a very long period of degassing because the liquid CO2 boils to gaseous form to fill the space, maintaining an equal pressure until almost empty. What I'm thinking of doing to counteract this problem is switching to a "semi flow chamber" Where we initially fill with liquid CO2 then go into supercritical phase via temp increase. Then soak, then discharge right up until the point where the CO2 would fall out of supercritical. Then refill the chamber from the tank, adjust the temp and let it soak again and again. So we constantly maintain supercritical state and guarantee all removal of extract based on the quantity of times we refill the chamber.
Any help or ideas would be much appreciated and thanks for showing interest so quickly everybody. I can post a few pics if you'd like to see the chamber?
-Max
In my opinion and burgeoning experience it is not necessary to transfer the solution as a supercritical gas. It would certainly be faster as far as collection of the oil goes because you have the increased solubility ergo more moles solutes per moles solvent.
At any rate it seems that just by making the batch go supercritical, a good portion of the covet-eds are removed from the plant material . When the chamber is depressurized and the CO2 recondenses at least the oils were in solution outside of the plant material itself, leaving them behind in the container for the liquid co2 to carry out as opposed to still being locked in the plant parts.
When I used to attempt spraying the final filtered liquid solution into room temperature atmosphere and a glass jar I noticed, while s***ting my pants because of the sputtering, that the CO2 does not purge completely out of the bright yellow oil/wax immediately. It remains runny for a few moments. I imagine under enough pressure to keep co2 a liquid, the consistency of the semi dissolved oils is such that it mostly runs with the liquid co2 during transfer to another tank via siphon tube. Nonetheless, I have found my greatest success by performing supercritical (1300-1500psi) extractions in one tank outfitted with a siphon and allowing the co2 to recondense. Using ice/warm water I push the liquid to a collection tank. Then I distill the CO2 across the same high pressure line from the collection tank which has no siphon back into the extraction tank. Again, using opposing temps. I won't lie, this process is time consuming, but the parts can be sourced relatively cheap and it WORKS. So there is the tradeoff.
I use standard CO2 cylinders for these lower pressures. I'm looking at some medical gas cylinders currently that have higher operating pressures 2200-3000psi range from what I have seen.