Extraction Soxhlet time!

[BII]

The flask I was using had a flat bottom, otherwise I would have used a mantle or bath. An erlenmeyer is the exact WORST shape to heat in, safety wise. In glass, anything flat is a potential weak spot, corners decrease the evenness of the heat. Again, it’s like saying it’s dangerous to ride a motorcycle. Sure, but that’s what they’re made for, and the risk is minimal as long as you’re careful. Mr. Soxhlet wouldn’t have gained immortal fame if his apparatus didn’t work.
As to inertness: glass (borosilicate) is VERY inert. Hydroflouric acid and hot strong base solutions are pretty much the only thing that will degrade/ react with it. Want more? Use fused silica. Nothing but silicon and oxygen, and I can guarantee silicon is not leaching out. Plastic is used for many reasons, superior inertness over glass is NOT one of them. All of which is completely irrelevant in this case. Just hydrocarbons (6-10 C) and cannabis. Hardly an aggressive or reactive solution. Definitely no boron coming through .
Can glass break? Of course. Yet it’s used by chemists throughout the world consistently. Must be some reason....

We are getting into differences in viewpoints, terminology, chemical vs. biopharma/cell culture industry perspectives, etc. I presume we can mostly agree that high quality/purity glass, stainless steel, diamond and maybe graphite, some plastics (the best being PTFE/Tefon and PFA), sapphire/ruby/corundum, certain ceramics and other materials can all be considered highly inert, in their own ways.

 

[olbobcat]

I would guess it works very well for ethanol. I dunno about various hydrocarbons, or any other solvent. I know you can remove chlorophyll, but at my scale it wouldn't pay, imo alcohol is just too polar. I want the minimum chlorophyll, sugar, protein and all that other gunk. Even very high proof ethanol contains enough water (which unfortunately forms an azeotrope that will follow through distillation) that it dissolves a Significant amount of extra gunk. Yuk. I stumbled upon VM&P Naptha years ago in an attempt to wash the chlorophyll out with water in a seperatory funnel. Didn't work at all, which was a bit weird as Ive washed chlorophyll out of butter a lot of times. But the end result was much cleaner than with alcohol. Way less disgusting tasting. Any commercial extraction company that uses ethanol then processes the hell out of it (winterizing to remove fats and wax, chromatography to adsorb chlorophyll, then usually short path or wiped film distillation). Otherwise its unnecessarily gross. If you've already got the apparatus, I'd highly suggest you try hexane, or something like it. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I just use That 96% Polish spirit. Once I do a run it is even stronger. I could buy crap vodka for$5.99 for 1.75 and distill it. If you want it to be pure and taste good I would tumble it all and press the kief. Even better do a proper bubble hash run. I do this most often and would then process the scrap trim and the bags in alcohol. Though you will pull some out on the scrap trim it is not worth the time. The bags are worth it though. I have never had anyone complain about the edibles or tinctures or oils I make from my crude. Me not being a chemist, but having worked with chemicals for 40 years, I feel that I have to go pure on this one.

 

[Jovinn]

Yeah, lots of people use ethanol. While hexane’s not as good as butane, it’s a lot easier to handle and still much cleaner. But if it works for you and you’re happy with the result, alcohol certainly gets the job done.

 

[Jovinn]

We are getting into differences in viewpoints, terminology, chemical vs. biopharma/cell culture industry perspectives, etc. I presume we can mostly agree that high quality/purity glass, stainless steel, diamond and maybe graphite, some plastics (the best being PTFE/Tefon and PFA), sapphire/ruby/corundum, certain ceramics and other materials can all be considered highly inert, in their own ways.

I concur. And it’s not super relevant anyway, as nothing is leaching out of any reasonable material with the solvents we would use. Not to mention it’s really an everything sausage sort of extract, very crude. If a few molecules of silicon were to get in, I wouldn’t mind that much. I just think that if glass wasn’t very appropriate for the task, chemists wouldn’t have been using for a pretty long time, up to the present day. Even with our modern technology, borosilicate labware is standard world wide. Ultimately it comes down to accessibility. I could get someone to make something out of metal, or buy the whole setup from amazon for under $100. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

[Orion]

Just curious, do you have a rough idea of when alcohol is saturated with cannabis stuff? Wanted to make a strong alcohol extraction for oral consumption, but I feel like I'll wind up using more material than the alcohol can hold.

 

[Jovinn]

Alcohol can hold a lot, you almost definitely will not saturate your alcohol. You’re going to have to deal with significant absorption into the plant material, and likely a large volume of solvent. That’s really the beauty of this extractor. You can use a liter to extract an ounce or ten pounds, it’s continuously recycled. But just as a guess, I’d say a liter of alcohol could easily dissolve 100 grams of gunk. Probably way more.

 

[Orion]

Yeah that'd be like 3g/ounce of alcohol I think. Sounds like a good place to start. Thanks

 

[Jovinn]

An ounce is a shot. Easily dissolve 3 grams in there, especially if you warm it up.

 

[Jovinn]

Also, cannabis extracts dissolve more like honey than salt. It’s not going to precipitate or crystallize out even at extreme concentration, just get more and more viscous. At a certain point you’re really using the alcohol to thin the oil, rather than dissolve the oil in the alcohol. But they should be miscible in pretty much any ratio.

 

[Bill.de.Cat]

I just ran mine till I was out of indica trim and larf....500ml flask 90% full of 420 extractor alcohol, about 4 oz of T&L, run each fill up till it is fairly light green in the dump tube, refill and go again.....running sativa's now and want to try a batch for daytime as current batch will put me to sleep after about 1.5 hours.....as for delivery method, I use store bought Keebler pecan sandies cookies....2 eye droppers and let it dry over night...instant edibles..