Cheap Pressure Extractor

Using pressure, you can extract plant material using much less solvent than other methods and get higher yields. Here's a handy manual pressure extractor which is under $20. You put your material in, wrapped in polyester or nylon mesh, sit the unit in a bowl of solvent (preferably subzero butane), let sit as long as desired and squeeze the solvent out. The crushing of trichome heads will expel more resin like a rosin press. Using the Oil Buddy, you can optimize your medicinal herbal extraction operations like never before. Testing showed that "blasting" BHO leaves about 7% THC in the waste material.

Come to think of it, if you used alcohol you could use a spray bottle to spray just enough on the material to completely wet it. That way you use minimum solvent. The solvent would be enough to allow the resin to flow at room temperature, thereby avoiding all heat. It could be called solvent assisted rosin pressing. In fact maybe butane could be sprayed on right from the can.

image source

have you tried this or are you hypothesizing?

Hypothesizing. But how could it fail? If pressing rosin doesn't press out chlorophyll then probably neither would a potato ricer. Anyway, I'll pick one up and see if it's any help. Pressing seems like an obvious improvement, at least if yield is a priority. It will be easier than pushing a bottle into a measuring cup, which is what I do now. This will keep things nice and neat, plant material well contained. No coffee filtering either. Guess you could put 1 or 2 in there though in addition to the mesh. Squeeze filtering is much faster and more thorough than gravity.

We use a potato ricer for pressing oil and glycerine extracts, but haven't tried it for rosin.

https://skunkpharmresearch.com/extracting-with-oils-and-fats/

Fadedawg said:

We use a potato ricer for pressing oil and glycerine extracts, but haven't tried it for rosin.

https://skunkpharmresearch.com/extracting-with-oils-and-fats/

Click to expand...

Seems like an obvious item to use, when you see one. I didn't mean you could press rosin the normal way with it though, unless you stuck it in an oven and then used heatproof gloves. What I meant was to add just enough solvent to soften the resin up enough to be pressable at room temperature.

Should be able to use much less solvent if you're going to be squeezing it. The solubility of THC in ethanol is reportedly 1:1, so in theory you would wouldn't need much as long as it's enough to squeeze out. You'd probably have to do 2 or 3 sqeezings to get it all, but it would still be very little solvent. The less solvent, the less heavy metal residue etc, assuming there is any in the solvent. Logically you would want to use as little solvent as possible to get all of the product.

High pressure extraction is a real thing. They use tiny amounts of solvent and get higher extraction yields than other methods. The potato ricer would be a medium pressure extraction. Somebody who has a 20 ton rosin press might be able to rig something up though. You would need some kind of metal crush-proof pan to sit the ricer on to catch the solvent. I bet you could squeeze it almost completely dry of resin that way. Doubt if a ricer could take 20 tons but maybe a few at least. Would chlorophyll squeeze out? Maybe. Use cured material I guess.

Nice thinking

gwpharms said:

Nice thinking

Click to expand...

Thanks, very nice of you. I'm surprised nobody thought of squeezing the solvent out, maybe they think it would make a dirtier product and maybe it will. Can always clean it up later with carbon though. Who wants to wait around for a big pan of solvent to dry out? Just using a bottle and measuring cup to press the solvent out allowed me to extract 100 g of trim with no more than 200-250 mls of solvent, usually 250 but I put quite a lot on the first squeeze. I've gone back and soaked the used material overnight to see if I could get more but it was only a very small amount and it was dark green and low potency. Three squeezings get probably 95% of the resin, and I use a lot less on the last two squeezes than the first one. I'm sure it could be done with only 200.

I got one of those around the house here somewhere and will have to try it for my next cocobudder run. When I extract with solvents, ehanol, naphtha, butane etc I distill it to recover my solvents for reuse. Butane included so it can be used more than once to get more mileage out of it. Need a decent pressure vessel to store the butane between runs as the thermos didn't work so well.

OldMedUser said:

I got one of those around the house here somewhere and will have to try it for my next cocobudder run. When I extract with solvents, ehanol, naphtha, butane etc I distill it to recover my solvents for reuse. Butane included so it can be used more than once to get more mileage out of it. Need a decent pressure vessel to store the butane between runs as the thermos didn't work so well.

Click to expand...

I like the systems I've seen where there's no pump involved, just ice on one side and a heater on the other. You can make it go back and forth all you want. For other solvents like ethanol a vacuum distiller would be good. You can just use the hand vacuum pumps that are quite inexpensive.

BTW the potato ricer I picked up has a 1-piece cup. The ones with the removable inserts in the bottom look like they'd be troublesome. The inserts would probably move around too much and cause mishaps or something. They might be fine though, I'm just speculating. The 1-piece cups just seem sturdier. The one I got is actually just like the one in the picture I posted earlier. Haven't used it yet but the time will come. The way I make extract it will save me a lot of aggravation. Trying to press a bottle into a measuring cup and press the solvent out while holding the cup almost upside down is not convenient at all. Chunks drop out too.

How are you going to heat the item up?

Where do you think the rosin will flow?

How much pressure do you actually think one is capable of with their hands?

Are you a big ass body builder with mad strength?

How would you put the flower in the press with the parchment.

How would you get the rosin out of the press if it leaks out.


Not trying to bust your balls or anything. Just keeping it real.

Lol

That's where the solvent comes in. Solvents make things thinner, in which case they flow easier, even without heat. You spray the material with alcohol to dissolve the trichome membranes and thin the rosin. No parchment is involved. It just drips out into a pan below.

My bad, thought you wanted solventless, not a chem extraction

DemonTrich said:

My bad, thought you wanted solventless, not a chem extraction

Click to expand...

This is a "minimal solvent" extraction. That's the reason for the pressing.

I don't quite understand how minimal. Are you using only a few drops of solventless, letting it work into your medium, then pressing? Why not do a solventless press, then all the left over bud/kief/baggies, toss Into a jar of etoh or iso. I do that as I'm a cheap ass and want every last drop of sweetness.

Also, garlic presses will hold up a lot better than the above press in your 1st post. A garlic press is built strong, the above looks weak and fragile. You will probably tweak the shit out of it after a couple pressings.

DemonTrich said:

I don't quite understand how minimal. Are you using only a few drops of solventless, letting it work into your medium, then pressing? Why not do a solventless press, then all the left over bud/kief/baggies, toss Into a jar of etoh or iso. I do that as I'm a cheap ass and want every last drop of sweetness.

Click to expand...

Because then heat is required and high pressure. I'm not saying my idea will definitely work. I haven't tried it yet. It will need testing to find optimal conditions.

No high pressure needed to do ISO or ethanol extractions. Not that much heat either as both boil at less than the bp of water.

One thing I do see that makes your process real inefficient is with minimal solvent most of the resin is going to stay in the plant material and would need further processing to extract that. Those hydraulic rosin presses can really press with 100s of times more psi than you can get with that press. For small amounts a garlic press would be better by far.

That press of yours would be great for squeezing all the butter or coconut oil out of plant material that's wrapped in cheesecloth or something similar. I've just been pressing mine down in the wire seive with a big serving spoon and that doesn't work so great but I toss the leftovers in my pancake batter or bake it in something else like banana bread so I get every last drop eventually anyways.

I don't use heat when evaping etoh or iso. Fan only. Unless it's winter, then into a griddle at 170* with hot pads between my glass and the griddle, plus a fan.

OldMedUser said:

No high pressure needed to do ISO or ethanol extractions. Not that much heat either as both boil at less than the bp of water.

One thing I do see that makes your process real inefficient is with minimal solvent most of the resin is going to stay in the plant material and would need further processing to extract that. Those hydraulic rosin presses can really press with 100s of times more psi than you can get with that press. For small amounts a garlic press would be better by far.

That press of yours would be great for squeezing all the butter or coconut oil out of plant material that's wrapped in cheesecloth or something similar. I've just been pressing mine down in the wire seive with a big serving spoon and that doesn't work so great but I toss the leftovers in my pancake batter or bake it in something else like banana bread so I get every last drop eventually anyways.

Click to expand...

Maybe. I don't know how much alcohol is required to dissolve the resin. Obviously if I get usually low yields I'll increase the amount of alcohol. You may be right though, because the solubility of THC/THCA in ethanol is reported by Cayman Chemicals as 3.5%, in which case you would need about 600 mls to extract 100 g of weed with 20% THC. However, I have extracted with less than half that, in 3 portions, and got essentially all of the THC, because hardly any was extracted when I soaked the material for 24 hours after that to make sure. It might be because I heated it in the microwave though. You can google microwave assisted extraction. Apparently it does make a big difference. I put the measuring cup with the material and solvent in until it boils. So I'll have to experiment and see just how little solvent I can use.