banana buds builds a butane extraction and recovery system

[Rickys bong]

A couple of quick points:

200 deg F is quite hot and your system pressure will be in the 100psi range. The recovery pumps don't like head pressures that high. If the gas flow into the pump is that hot it'll be a lot hotter exiting the compressor head and seal life will be shortened.

Add a filter drier at the pump inlet, I've had issues with oil (cannabinoids) accumulating on the piston seals and causing seal failure. A filter won't impede flow much.

RB

 

[banana buds]

A couple of quick points:

200 deg F is quite hot and your system pressure will be in the 100psi range. The recovery pumps don't like head pressures that high. If the gas flow into the pump is that hot it'll be a lot hotter exiting the compressor head and seal life will be shortened.

Add a filter drier at the pump inlet, I've had issues with oil (cannabinoids) accumulating on the piston seals and causing seal failure. A filter won't impede flow much.

RB

absolutely and if the system pressure starts getting anywhere above 40psi or so, i can adjust accordingly. i believe that having the bath temps that hot will not translate into nearly that much of a jump when there is butane boiling away inside. we'll just have to play it by ear.

 

[Hydrosun]

absolutely and if the system pressure starts getting anywhere above 40psi or so, i can adjust accordingly. i believe that having the bath temps that hot will not translate into nearly that much of a jump when there is butane boiling away inside. we'll just have to play it by ear.

The results look AWESOME. What do you believe the other components of the output are? I bet some are exotic cannibinoids and other super yummi stuff I am still learning and BHO is still Greek to me.

On the physics of pressure and temperature PV=nRT. So if you know the pressure and the volume of gas being used it should be really easy to solve for T (however my way limited physics / chemistry / biology) is all over 20 years removed from a class room Is there a temp inside the system that would injure the BHO?

 

[Gray Wolf]

not sure as i didnt get a chance to weigh it! but i just got lab results back on a sample of it and here's how it tested:

• Δ9-THC Wt. % - 4.68%
• Δ9-THCA Wt. % - 67.47%
• CBD Wt. % - 1.02%
• CBDA Wt. % - 0.33%
• CBG Wt. % - 0.40%
• CBGA Wt. % - 0.72%
• Δ9-THCVA Wt. % - 0.44%
• CBN Wt. % - 0.19%

Good job! Nothing to feel bad about there!

 

[banana buds]

Good job! Nothing to feel bad about there!

thanks! have you guys done any testing on your stuff? i'm curious to compare numbers to someone running a similar system.

 

[Gray Wolf]

A couple of quick points:

200 deg F is quite hot and your system pressure will be in the 100psi range. The recovery pumps don't like head pressures that high. If the gas flow into the pump is that hot it'll be a lot hotter exiting the compressor head and seal life will be shortened.

Add a filter drier at the pump inlet, I've had issues with oil (cannabinoids) accumulating on the piston seals and causing seal failure. A filter won't impede flow much.

RB

The butane doesn't reach 200F. The hotter water on the outside of the pressure vessel simply transfers energy at a faster rate, until the boiling stops, as long as you can keep up with the gas generation rate.

IE: Heat transfer rate =Delta Temperature X surface area X K, where K is 1/R

My system pressure runs about 30psi max and I can get it to 75 psi by dumping our 48" column or two 24" column loads into a hot collection pot.

It doesn't stay at positive pressure for long, and most of the recovery cycle is below zero pressure, where the pump has to work harder.

Except for the first hard pump down, and the final cycle during full recovery, my system operates between -10hg and 30 psi. It doesn't even reach the 30 psi until the final cycles, when enough resin has been washed out of the material to make it less dense and allow more butane to flow through the column in the same amount of time.

Good idea on the filter dryer! I use one and have never had an issue. At my one and only rebuild, there was no evidence of any resin in the system.

 

[Gray Wolf]

thanks! have you guys done any testing on your stuff? i'm curious to compare numbers to someone running a similar system.

No, but hopefully soon we will at least have gas chromatograph results from our own unit. Unfortunately, not the nice breakdown with the carboxylic acids.

Last time I checked there weren't any local high pressure liquid chromatograph services for cannabis, but that may have changed. I decided to pick up a used GC, because of the usury prices the local GC service was charging and how many different tests we want to run.

 

[Flying High]

Thank you so much for this thread!!! I have learned so much from everyone in the past couple days...

I finally have my components paid for and inbound; so I am starting to get excited about the project...

I really like the overall looks of your system; and the trouble shooting help from everyone was very educational. I think I have a few too many gauges ordered for my system just like you, but I figure better safe than sorry. I also bought a new recovery tank for not much more than a $100 from Centurytool when I ordered my Appion and accessories.. The only item left to order is the gaskets with screen built in like Grey Wolf uses and I am set... I was tempted by the strainers on Glaciertanks.com; but in the end it didn't look like it would be anymore useful than GreyWolf's current technique which I intend to employ....

Awesome results and an inspiration...

 

[banana buds]

No, but hopefully soon we will at least have gas chromatograph results from our own unit. Unfortunately, not the nice breakdown with the carboxylic acids.

Last time I checked there weren't any local high pressure liquid chromatograph services for cannabis, but that may have changed. I decided to pick up a used GC, because of the usury prices the local GC service was charging and how many different tests we want to run.

i hear ya. i actually looked at GCs on ebay but the thing is this is more for the benefit of everyone else who will be consuming the stuff, so having it done by an independent lab is good. the guys that did ours are local, very nice to deal with so far, and only charged $50 for the cannabinoid testing. they also test terpenes! pricing goes down too if you are submitting a lot of stuff.

i'm excited to start testing things and especially with the terps it will be cool to start actually being able to quantify the relationship between the actives/terps and the effect produced.

another REALLY cool idea is having them test a sample of concrete and absolute that are part of the same batch - seeing what kind of change in chemical profile happens will be awesome both for me and for sharing with all you folks who are winterizing.

 

[Gray Wolf]

i hear ya. i actually looked at GCs on ebay but the thing is this is more for the benefit of everyone else who will be consuming the stuff, so having it done by an independent lab is good. the guys that did ours are local, very nice to deal with so far, and only charged $50 for the cannabinoid testing. they also test terpenes! pricing goes down too if you are submitting a lot of stuff.

i'm excited to start testing things and especially with the terps it will be cool to start actually being able to quantify the relationship between the actives/terps and the effect produced.

another REALLY cool idea is having them test a sample of concrete and absolute that are part of the same batch - seeing what kind of change in chemical profile happens will be awesome both for me and for sharing with all you folks who are winterizing.

Yeah, high on my list is to extract the same batch of material using several different polar and non polar processes, to compare the differences and see how the results vary.

 

[Double Kindness]

We have gotten our run time down to 1.5 hours per qp of plant matter. Some growers brought us some really crappy trim to turn into erl, I got back I think 20% from the plant matter into purged erl. I store my erl in glass jars, it seems after a few weeks some strains turn into earwax or budder consistency, but some strains, even doing pure bud runs, the erl is runny and won't even freeze into a solid, others turn out like shatter.

Your run times shouldn't be so long to move 5lb of butane. I was at the high times cannabis cup in Denver recently and there was an extractor there they were marketing getting 13-18% yields running 2 lbs of plant matter at a time, same run time as my machine, but really low yields, and a price tag of $19,000... no kidding!! To help pull the butane through the plant matter faster and recover back into the butane reclaim tank we hit it with a pretty good heat gun when the ss tube starts to frost and it does decrease the run time and recover the butane to run it through the material faster, the green is probably some water as well as the butane sitting on your plant matter that run a bit too long. I find it better to run the butane through quickly & several times, pulling the vacuum pretty hard o it so the butane doesn't soak in my plant matter overly long, and I just pull the tane through the material as many times as I want, usually 3 passes gets the majority of the trichomes. I guess I'll do another run again as I just got a new 200x usb microscope and getting the hang of using it. & will post more in my thread. Great job though, these things are not easy to build, design and dial in. Mine is very heavy and I can't use it by myself, which is why I have DM around to make sure I don't break my foot dropping a big metal tube on myself LOL.

 

[banana buds]

moving along on machine rebuild. picked up 50lb recovery tank for $96 from the local hvac supply, and a 3/8" x 60" charging line from the refrigeration supply house ($52).

ordering rest of parts from glacier tank and mcmaster today.

 

[Trichgnomes]

As oppose to flooding Gray Wolf's inbox, figured I would post this here, maybe it will help others too( not trying to hijack your thread though).

So for those of you using refrigerant recovery cylinders-- do you need a flaring tool to attach a fitting and line to the tank? Mine has a 1/4 in SAE. I would like to securely attach a male 1/4 in. NPT, so I can attach a nipple quick disconnect to my Teflon core line. I am not building a recovery system, just trying to store butane in the tank while not in my tami.

 

[banana buds]

As oppose to flooding Gray Wolf's inbox, figured I would post this here, maybe it will help others too( not trying to hijack your thread though).

So for those of you using refrigerant recovery cylinders-- do you need a flaring tool to attach a fitting and line to the tank? Mine has a 1/4 in SAE. I would like to securely attach a male 1/4 in. NPT, so I can attach a nipple quick disconnect to my Teflon core line. I am not building a recovery system, just trying to store butane in the tank while not in my tami.

the fittings on your reco tank should be 1/4" flared, which will hook up with a standard refrigerant charging line. if you can then adapt your tami to hook up to the other end, you should be good i think.

 

[Duckmang]

I use buna-n o-rings for all of the seams. While not impervious to swelling it is pretty minimal. I do keep a hand full of spares for the ones in contact with the BHO. The ones that only see butane do not swell.

A filter drier was recommended earlier and is probably a good idea but I don't use one. I've rebuilt my recovery pump once due to a noisey crankpin bearing and didn't notice any oil contamination to the seals or valves. That said, it would probably be better to have the insurance of the drier while dialing in a new system.

I think you are on the right track with using less butane. I built my own tank and its considerably smaller than the refrigerant recovery tanks. It only holds enough butane for one pass through the tube and less than 5 cans of Vector fills it from dead empty. Considering I can get 600g of material in the tube, you can see that it doesn't take a lot of solvent to get the job done.

 

[Duckmang]

double post

 

[banana buds]

column parts from glacier just landed, hardware bits from mcmaster arrived yesterday, and now waiting on gaskets to arrive from gvc. this 1-1/2" column sure looks small next to my original 4"!

 

[Gray Wolf]

column parts from glacier just landed, hardware bits from mcmaster arrived yesterday, and now waiting on gaskets to arrive from gvc. this 1-1/2" column sure looks small next to my original 4"!

It should be like driving a sports car compared to the original setup!

 

[banana buds]

It should be like driving a sports car compared to the original setup!

and you said you're packing 240g of material in your 1-1/2" x 24" column? doesn't seem like that's going to fit without some pretty seriously tight packing....

 

[Rickys bong]

I just want to clarify my point on water temp.

GW is obviously correct, but I have a system that has a lot of surface area in the tank that's heated and 200deg F would overwhelm the pumping capability.

However, there's another reason 200deg makes my butt pucker and that's pump failure. Now again I have a system with a water jacket and can't remove the hot water from the pressure pot like the OP's system.

But... If the pump fails and you need to shut it off the tank may sit in the water bath for a while. The Appion pumps are the best I've found so far but when seals fail they usually leak to atmosphere. Which means closing all the bloody valves quick.

And nothing makes my blood pressure rise faster than a large volume of butane being heated and watching the pressure gauge going up, and up... and up...

Anyways... For safety I just think the water temp should be kept to a lower value (under 140 deg) in case the pump fails and you forget your pot of butane in the water pot. Those paint pressure pots probably don't have a great safety factor.

I've had the Promax pumps fail twice and one of the Appion pumps have a large seal failure (read big leak) but at least it made enough noise to let me know something was wrong. So If I can add anything useful, pay attention to the noise level and recovery rates. If you hear a hiss, or a change in noise level and the recovery rates slowing, Pay fucking attention.

Pressure test the pump every 10 runs or so. I do this by closing the outlet valve and pressurizing the inlet with 30-40 psi. This is done from a separate valve on the inlet line so the pump inlet valve can remain open.
If your pressure drops quickly you have a seal problem.

I run two Appion pumps and like them a lot but they are a bit light duty for this application.

But until I can afford a bad ass puppy like this: http://www.bauer-kompressoren.de/en.../mitteldruck/oellos_baureihe_15/d51/index.php

I'll have to rebuild the little farkers once in a while.

Peace RB