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 The Lycaeum Forums » Integrate » The Alchemist's Den (Moderator: tryp2fun)Topic:
 A proposal for an extraction device

[foreward]

[EDIT: This was originally posted in a different thread, I have cleaned it up a bit since]

On a different forum I ran across a cock-eyed scheme to extract THC by sucking pot smoke through a solvent off a hot plate. From what I gathered, it was just a vacuum cleaner-powered bong that replaced water with isoprop and the lighter with a hot plate.

The idea was interesting enough, except that it wouldn't work. That is where this came from. Attached is a diagram of what I had in mind. The idea is to rapidly and completely cool the vapor so that it it no longer gaseous. Because the extract is not water soluble, it will separate and fall or rise to the bottom depending on the extract's mass.

The plant material is placed in the tube, which is heated to the desired vapor point. The vapor is pushed into an air stone and these bubbles find there way to a coil which is sufficiently cooled and filled with saline water.

After, the extract is removed from the saline and dried. Like I said, it's just a layman's idea, and I have no idea if it would actually work or not, either and might be just as stupid as the alcoholic vacuum bong.

The advantage is that there is are no dangerous solvents and you won't get any nasties like chlorophyl. Only select materials at a given vapor point.

[pylkko]

Wait, so this is like a soxhlet or steam distillation idea. There is no solvent? You just "burn" the plant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soxhlet_extractor

[foreward]

Yes, somewhat similar.

The idea is that the, say, cannabinoids, are vaporized from the plant and are then rapidly cooled in cold water (or saline). The cannabinoids would then condense and, not being water soluble, are easily isolated and then dried.

[pylkko]

What if the point at where the cannabinoids evap is higher than the point where the plant burns?

[foreward]

if that were the case, then wouldn't vaporizers not work?

I suppose if it were the case, you'd get some carbon in the system, which I'd imagine most of which would just be suspend in the water and discarded.

I suppose if you're really worried about carbon, you could use a nobel gas, like helium or nitrogen, instead of compressed air.

[pylkko]

Or a solvent, in which case it would be like soxhlet. Or is it that you want to avoid solvents?

You would then, I take, need to be able to control the heat very well. Boiling point of THC: 157 °C (315 °F)

[foreward]

Well. Yes, I suppose. I never claimed this was a brilliant new "invention". It's just after my "burning spoon" incident with acetone I'm interested in safer, solvent-free methods.

A lot of us don't have the facilities or know-how to safely handle volatile substances like hexane, butane and ether. Doing extractions without these materials is a huge bonus for many people who want to make extractions without the danger and notoriety of using solvents.

Also don't forget that most solvents will also take along all sorts of other stuff that might not be as desirable - thus where the original thread was going. By heating the plant to a specific point, only those fractions of that boiling point would be extracted.

Besides, helium and hydrogen are not solvents, and I am pretty sure that using nobel gas is unnecessary in most situations. The boiling point of THC is only a couple hundred degrees centigrade [edit: 157°, thanks u! i can never remember that]. There might be some combustion, but not much and most of the carbon will be suspended the water or exhausted in the form of CO and CO2.

So if you pushed a solvent through, then yeah, it'd be like a soxhlet. If you're using it like I am describing it, it's more like fractional distillation. But traditional fractional distillation wouldn't work here either, since the expected result would be waxy and solid - and you'd prob need to use a solvent to get all the crap out of the condenser.

If this would actually work, would it be as efficient as butane? Probably not. But it would be a lot safer, especially for larger runs.

[pylkko]

Well, if you put some plant in the oven at 157 it will probably not decompose immediately. How efficeint this would be in comparison to a butane run, I don't know. You can keep the butane runnig for as long as you get product. The butane method would probably be more selective. Everything under 157 would also be in your mixture, right? Unless you led that somwhere else first.

[foreward]

Hmm, I didn't think about that... but I am not so sure it would be terribly problematic. Just set the heat source at below your target, blow some air through for a few minutes, and then hook it up to the coil assembly and set it to your target temperature....

But, how much would there be at below 157°, would one risk getting rid of some goodies?

As for temp control, you could add a thermostat port to the "tube" that controls the hot plate or oven. Just make sure it is airtight.

[pylkko]

Kinda depends on what "goodies" are considered to be. That info is only for THC. You could just blow many factions into many dishes and not discard any. Timing would be very essential.

[foreward]

so then in your opinion this method should work? If so, why would timing be essential? Couldn't you just set the oven temp to one level, extract, set to a higher temp, extract, set to a yet a higher temp, extract? The plant won't get any hotter between runs...

[pylkko]

I don't know what kind of an "expert" I would be to evaluate this system...

But, lets say that at least in theory the idea that you could evaporate THC using a heat source on plant material and then collecting the THC in another place is pretty solid.

In practice, however, it's a whole different thing, I'd bet. You would have to be able to apply equal exact heat to all the plant material for a known length of time.  And I'm pretty sure that you would not get as much product out as with butane. Plant material would vary, so settings would have to be adjusted to that. It would help if the plant marterial was in as small parts as possible and moved on the heating surface. The faction might contain alot of other shit. But what does that matter as long as it's not overwhelming. I mean you can smoke the plant material already, so you could in theory just butn the plant and extract the stuff from the smoke. The container would be better kept closed and quite deep, so that the bubles have enough time to interact with the cold water, and the goodies don't fly off to the sky

[foreward]

The container would be better kept closed and quite deep, so that the bubles have enough time to interact with the cold water, and the goodies don't fly off to the sky

That's the idea. I picture a 15m copper coil, 6mm in diameter; both system flow and pressure would be regulated to maximize efficiency and prevent the thing from exploding (well, more likely just bursting apart). The system could be closed or open, it just depends on what is practical. And yes, the tube could rotate. Finally helium could be used in place of air to prevent combustion. This vehicle could be heated to the right temperature before it reaches the plant. There are probably a million things we could hypothesize about depending on what we expect from the device.

But I agree. This wasn't intended to be an analytical device. If the outside plant material gets hotter than the inside, so what?

[pylkko]

Yeah. The cannabinoids wont decompose or anything like that. But, it's gonna be hard to get the device to work so efficiently that it would win butane extraction which is easy, efficient and safe if done properly. Where would you collect the oil? In the coil?

[foreward]

yes, in the coil. remember, it's filled with water, so it should just be an issue of draining it out through a filter. Im not sure if this can replace butane. Certainly not on a small scale.

[pylkko]

Why filter?
And why coil? Why not just buble the the air into a glass of cold water?

[foreward]

I figure you'd filter to get the goodies out...

I originally design this with a column, but was afraid that the gas wouldn't cool enough by the time it reached the top unless your column was tall, then you'd have problems keeping it cold enough. With a long coil, you'd make that every bit of vapor is condensed. You could close the system completely, sure, but there are problems there, too.

[pylkko]

Yeah, that's what I suspected. But what if it does cool it enough and the oil get stuck in the stone or something?

Remember that the oil is not going to be miscible with water. It will make it's own layer, which you can separate with funnel or just collect with some pipette or something. If you collect a part of the water with the oil, you can evap it easy, because the boiling point of water is 100 and the oil around 160

[foreward]

If you collect a part of the water with the oil, you can evap it easy, because the boiling point of water is 100 and the oil around 160

Well, that's an interesting point, u! I always imagined the result to be pretty solid or waxy. Do you think that the result would be liquid?

As far as getting the stone gummed up, that is a problem and why you'd want to avoid combustion. The "tank" where the stone is located would be outside the ice bath, this is really just a vessel large enough to accommodate small stone that may not fit in the coil, this needn't be larger than maybe 25-50ml beaker. Being that bongs work at room temperature I don't think this will be too much of a problem in our hypothetical case of marijuana. The bubbles in a bong are larger, but system pressure could/would be greater.

[pylkko]

Yeah, you might be right actually. Depends on what ever gets extracted from the plant. Of course it depends also on oil temperature Filter then, of course. Duh, I feel dumb.