New Grower Looking for a better way to do extraction

[pop22]

Extracting the essence of the plant, no matter what the technique, is our goal. Every solvent based method has its downside such as contaminate residue in the oil, burnt matter in the oil due to long, slow, cooking ( such as in olive oil, etc ). Now I'm not saying these are not all useful, but I thought there had to be a better way. that led me to consider essential oils. How are they extracted. They have to be as pure as possible. So I looked into what processes they use, and it comes down to three. Two are CO2 based and one uses steam. The CO2 processes are expensive, requiring expensive equipment, out of the reach of the average person. That leaves steam. The equipment is reasonable in price and the process is simple and easy. I will be making my first oil using the olive oil solvent method, just because of economics, and its has no chemical residues to worry about. But When my grow experience and volume are at a point to justify the expense, I'm going to try the steam extraction. I'm posting a link to the equipment, and if anyone here jumps on this idea and tries it, I'd love to see a post on it.

http://www.floragenics.com/homeGrown.htm

 

[Chester]

I had an Isomizer back in the day ... it used Alcohol as the solvent ... Can't say how well it worked .... Basically like a coffee percolator ... I don't think water would work ... http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk...H0.Xisomizer&_nkw=isomizer&_sacat=0&_from=R40

 

[nomis]

I had an Isomizer back in the day ... it used Alcohol as the solvent ... Can't say how well it worked .... Basically like a coffee percolator ... I don't think water would work ... http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk...H0.Xisomizer&_nkw=isomizer&_sacat=0&_from=R40

The only people i knew with these contraptions were pretty wild and crazy guys back in the day...

 

[Chester]

I was always on the look out for Hot Babes with Big American Breasts ... aside from that the iso2 cost a lot of $$ back then but I can't recall if it was $150 or $500 ... I used it on some bagseed homegrown and wasn't impressed w/ the results used Rum or Vodka for the liquid ... wish I still had it to try now that my homegrown is a little better ...

- - - Updated - - -

Thinking back (ouch) to how we did it back then I'm sure that doing a few things right like keeping the temperature down and not running it till the extract was a gooey, sticky, black tar on the bottom of the cup would have made a difference ... I think the magic butter/oil machine probably does a better job more safely ...

 

[wwwillie]

Oh Wow, man!
Isomizer, there's a blast from my past. Ya, I was one of those way out crazy guys. I owned one of them. Extract the oils, extract the solvent, mmmmm, fun. My own little soxhlet apparatus.

 

[Muddy]

Do you know anyone who has actually tried this? I'm no chemist but I do know that trics are not water soluble. In a vaporizer, temps over something like 300 or 350 F are needed to vaporize them. So unless the steam were super heated beyond the 212 degree boiling point, I don't see how this would work. Isn't it more for vegetable matter?

 

[Root]

Pop, check out Skunk Pharm...http://skunkpharmresearch.com/

I know gray wolf from another site...they are very knowledgeable.

 

[pop22]

Do you know anyone who has actually tried this? I'm no chemist but I do know that trics are not water soluble. In a vaporizer, temps over something like 300 or 350 F are needed to vaporize them. So unless the steam were super heated beyond the 212 degree boiling point, I don't see how this would work. Isn't it more for vegetable matter?

Honestly, all I know about it is that, there are essential oils producers using this.

I've also emailed a custom parts machinist with my idea for CO2 extraction to see if he could/ would build the parts, so if in the future I can try this project, I'll post. But in the meantime, if his could be viable ten... 'm fishing for information

 

[pop22]

Pop, check out Skunk Pharm...http://skunkpharmresearch.com/

I know gray wolf from another site...they are very knowledgeable.

Thanks! Great information! Guess my ideas were just too simplistic lol

 

[sunkist]

Extracting the essence of the plant, no matter what the technique, is our goal. Every solvent based method has its downside such as contaminate residue in the oil...

This all depends on the solvent quality used. If your making medicine, you use USP grade... if you're making the weed-equivalent of dirty crank, you buy it at the hardware store as something that is supposed to be used for "not human consumption".

The sativex extraction uses CO2, but at may different temperatures as a gradient of extractions, followed by a decarboxylation step.

Even olive oil (if that's even really olive oil in your bottle of "pure olive oil" is an entirely different matter worth looking into) can have plenty of contaminants that are actually quite bad for you.

Do you know anyone who has actually tried this? I'm no chemist but I do know that trics are not water soluble. In a vaporizer, temps over something like 300 or 350 F are needed to vaporize them. So unless the steam were super heated beyond the 212 degree boiling point, I don't see how this would work. Isn't it more for vegetable matter?

The temp of steam in your average "proper" espresso machine that reaches the required 15 bar can get up to around 500 degrees F.