Is anyone talking about steam distillation? or oil fractitioning? let's talk stills

Heres a list of terps and how they affect you... I hope this is helpful to further your research @eugeneoregon

dabbindylan said:

Heres a list of terps and how they affect you... I hope this is helpful to further your research @eugeneoregon

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I respect your opinion and willingness to help, but I question the benefits listed. I have seen this list and others like it as I have studied every scrap of literature out there, including any referenced footnotes. This list of known benefits simply does not match what the MSDS sheets list as known effects of exposure to the various terps. Moreover, my own experience as well as others with anxiety disorders points to pinene as a trigger for PTSD symptoms (not a relief) as well as longer term symptoms with chronic exposure. This list absolutely precludes the consideration of individual disorders and symptomology but even worse - all prescribed medications that I ever took ALL included a comprehensive list of known side effects to exposure alomg with the benefits. This list does not. All medicines prescribed to me carry warnings and precautions along with highly specific dosage information. This list does not. Since nobody makes a list like this without a reason, and since it leaves off key elements otherwise included in a list of medical properties, I have concluded that the reason for a list like this is something other than conveying good medical insight. That leaves marketing as the reason.

These known benefits are oft touted, however as you can see in the picture you posted there are no references to any actual peer reviewed study that the evidence is gleened from. In fact, the handful of studies that are verifiable and peer reviewed are at best simply studies of other peoples anecdotal reports (a sort of scholastic cop out when a researcher can't figure out what to do next) and conflict with accepted medical standards.

I appreciate the info, but this information is uncorraborated and it is intellectually challenging for me to take peer reviewed and corraborated information from widely available MSDS sheets of Volitile Organic Compounds (terps) which are believed to cause climate change and toss those aside simply because those substances are present in something that I otherwise enjoy and use. This list is questionable as authentic medical fact for me simply because it completely dismisses known scientific facts that indicate acute exposure is highly uncomfortable and not recommended and that chronic exposure is documented and known to be adverse to human health. Personally, when I vape meds that have heavy terp content for more than two days I develope a throat tickle and am constantly coughing lightly from it.

Nearly all persons suffering prolonged exposure to pinene become sensitized and exhibit allergy symptoms upon exposure. This is not just marijuanna users - wood workers who are exposed to the pinene through the use of terpuntine (which is predominantly pinene) very quickly become sensitized and must use gloves and a respirator.

I will also point out that within the 420 industry enormous effort and expense is being undertaken to fractionally distill the product. There is but a single reason to do this - remove the terpenes. Short path distillation is not done to dewax. It is done to remove the industrial solvents called terpenes. I must conclude that such enormous expense would be wasted effort if in fact the MSDS sheets on the substances were produced in error and the terps genuinely offered the theraputic benefits listed.

In my opinion terps can be looked at like ozone. If you go onto sites that sell ozone generators you will see loads of claims about the health benefits of ozone. However, if you actually buy an ozone generator and run it just a TINY bit too high on adjustable models you will quickly discover the risks as your body will retaliate in much the same way it does when exposed to airborne terps. The honest truth is that these lists were generated as marketing tools for an impure product. Terpenes have become a health risk in my opinion simply because we are now able to concentrate them like never before, but even worse, we often no longer use flame to use the product. When smoking dope, the flame introduces a source of combustion. Terps are highly flamable and thc is not. When combusting the product to produce the smoke (an aerosol with thc vapor entrained) most of the combustable terps are instantly ignited as they combust and do not present the health problems we are seeing now. The flame moderated for us humans the ill effects of the terpenes by burning most of them up.

With vaporized medicine nothing at all oxidizes or combusts. So a double whammy effect compared to smoking takes place; first the terps are HIGHLY concentrated by extraction, then we vaporize them and inhale without combustion. The net result is people in droves are now being exposed more than ever to high concentrations of terpenes. It will take ten years AFTER the federal government dismantles prohibition before any substantial peer reviewed study could be published (it takes a long time to write a grant and get it through). The real problem they will have with writing such a grant paper to study is ethics. It is considered unethical to conduct a study with known harmful effects on humans by using human test subjects, and it will pretty tough to sell a study on substances which are already well understood and are already known to be detrimental to human healh when inhaled or upon skin exposure. After all, the primary purpose of terps in the plant is self defense - nature intended them to be caustic.

So the issue of ingesting terps is a personal matter. Pure THC that I have produced is frankly not all that recreational. It provides trememdous pain relief and relief from PTSD symptoms, but those seeking the "rush" are often disappointed that pure thc withoit terpene present takes a few minutes to really begin impacting. Not much giggle value. I do believe that you are an honest person, but I have yet to see verifiable and peer reviewed work that confirms this list in contrast to the MSDS sheets widely available.

Ironically, when terps are removed people gripe about lack of flavor or whatever. That's how fucking stupid the average weed consumer is. Terps are commonly available CHEAP. If anyone wants pinene they can get a liter of it at the hardware store for about $10, it's called turpentine. And limonene they can get from orange peels with a microwave essential oil distiller. To remove most terps the answer is simple leaving out to dry, in a thin layer on pure paper type parchment, because they are much more volatile than cannabinoids. It's like drying paint. A few days and it's done.

BobCajun said:

Ironically, when terps are removed people gripe about lack of flavor or whatever. That's how fucking stupid the average weed consumer is. Terps are commonly available CHEAP. If anyone wants pinene they can get a liter of it at the hardware store for about $10, it's called turpentine. And limonene they can get from orange peels with a microwave essential oil distiller. To remove most terps the answer is simple leaving out to dry, in a thin layer on pure paper type parchment, because they are much more volatile than cannabinoids. It's like drying paint. A few days and it's done.

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I beieve all men are created equally smart or stupid and I am no exception; I have the scars on my body and metal holding my bones together to prove it!

Your point about evaporating the terps is right on. This is actually a hazard now that two independent growers have confided in me has impacted them. One of them grows a strain he calls Lemon Kush, and reports when he dries it inside his home that his eyes swell up badly and he gets snot nose. yuck. My other friend, a major dispensary supplier, confided that he breaks into random episodes of sneezing and snotting and itching when near some areas of his greenhouse. I worked in various lumber operations here in Oregon, and pine trees of course are full of it. Sensitization is a huge problem mitigated by reducing contact. Natures self defenses are tough to ignore.

About evaporation let me offer pure speculation. I have seen ads from producers that produce a purified product in which they photographed their product coated onto large glass spheres. I think they call hem Dragon Balls. Naughty, but it is absolutely a beautiful picture. The art however has much more than marketing value. I have distilled enough for personal reasons using 1) cryogenic sublimator, 2) short path distillation apparatus under vacuum, and 3) steam distillation. In each case there is residual terps that are undesirable. I speculate the practical reason for coating the glass spheres with distilled extract is to give the product as much surface area as possible in a compact form to allow for evaporation. Nothing can evaporate unless it is exposed to air and the glass spheres do this in a grand artistic fashion in an easy to store form. I believe these folks needed a way to "air out" the extract so as to allow a more complete evaporation of the residual terps. This is nothing more than a hunch but it seems likely to me.

Terps are essential in a concentrate to get full benefits. The reason that distills should have terps removed is because as you said most terps will volatile before thc.. The terps that voltile around the same temp as thc are azatropic and undesirable. I thought maybe thats why u were doing the steam co distill to remove these remaining azatropes. Certain terps and flavanoids are not desirable too much of any 1 thing is bad. Except cannabinoids

Did you say this works with plant material directly, like in the second flask in the water? Couldn't you make a bigger one from a pressure cooker and some stainless steel tubing?

dabbindylan said:

Terps are essential in a concentrate to get full benefits. The reason that distills should have terps removed is because as you said most terps will volatile before thc.. The terps that voltile around the same temp as thc are azatropic and undesirable. I thought maybe thats why u were doing the steam co distill to remove these remaining azatropes. Certain terps and flavanoids are not desirable too much of any 1 thing is bad. Except cannabinoids

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I also like the vapor to burn just a bit. I have even added a few drops of limonene from Amazon into a gram just to see the effect. It was actually ok, but not orgasmic lolz. Sort of like candy without being sweet but it got in the way of the high.

It is possible that the steam is either breaking an azeotrope of forming one. Without a much more sophisticated mind and equipment I would be sprinkling faeiry dust to say I knew what was going on at that level. I has long expected thc and alpha-pinene formed an azeotrope but I am not that bright to know really how to determine this given the extraordinarily small amounts I can afford to buy each month. Here is a much lengthier video I did today that illustrates better the small amounts I am dealing with. The end product definately has nice terp content but a tiny fraction of what was there to start. I just vaped some and am reminded once again how potent this stuff gets. I only showed step one, distillation, in the vid but a couple more steps using an aluminum oxide column in a buchner funnel in a sort of vacuum flash chromatography and wow is it potent. Still a tiny bit high in terp but still able to vape full and dense lungfulls. Deep inhalation of a fog like thc vapor provides relief that morphine can't touch.

I wonder what if you used glycerol to dissolve the extract instead of methanol. It's steam distillable but since its regular BP is 290 C it would steam distill at a higher temp than THC would. So in theory you could steam distill until pure glycerol starts going over, at which point all cannabinoids would have already gone over. To separate glycerol from the THC you would dilute with water, if more is necessary than the steam supplied. I mentioned glycerol because it's easy to get as "glycerin" at pharmacies. Can't really purge it so you would have to wash it out. Not toxic anyway though.

BobCajun said:

I wonder what if you used glycerol to dissolve the extract instead of methanol. It's steam distillable but since its regular BP is 290 C it would steam distill at a higher temp than THC would. So in theory you could steam distill until pure glycerol starts going over, at which point all cannabinoids would have already gone over. To separate glycerol from the THC you would dilute with water, if more is necessary than the steam supplied. I mentioned glycerol because it's easy to get as "glycerin" at pharmacies. Can't really purge it so you would have to wash it out. Not toxic anyway though.

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I have not tried this with any other carrier although I firmly believe that any solvent that disolves the extract into a form that can run through an addition funnel would work fine.

However, I use methanol for another part of the seperation that involves a form of chromatography generally referred to as Dry Column Vacuum Chromatography (DCVC). Methanol is an important tool in that art because essentially it is a chromatography technique that has a continuously changing solvent system.

I go from extremely polar to very polar solvents that are drawn through a buchner funnel that is loaded with Aluminum Oxide (alumina). The extract goes on top of the alumina and the solvent carries it through the alumina based on how well or not the solvent keeps it in solution. Similar to flash chromatography but some KEY differences that would take a video to show. One key difference is the ability to process large quantities of extract with relatively little solvent. Flash Chromatography can achieve the same result generally but use enormous amounts of solvent to do it, so recovery takes a bit longer.

In DCVC it does not take much solvent comparatively. My solvent strategy currently relies on going from very polar to non polar in a linear gradient. Methanol is the most polar solvent next to water on the solvent polarity charts. It works absolute magic on this stuff in the right ratio. Isopropyl alcohol I have also used but it is much more non polar and the result were much trickier to deal with. Plus isopropyl alcohol forms an azeotrope wih water so distilling it cannot recover pure alcohol without breaking the azeotrope with salt. I have done this many times but anything at all that adds to the process adds hassle lolz.

99.95% pure methanol can be bought on amazon for about $28 per gallon if you look under remote control vehicle racing fuel. It is as a practical matter pure methanol just like sprint cars run. Unlike gasoline there no additives - the tiny impurities present are water, and if you leave the lid off of the methanol it will soak up water and further dilute (which makes it more polar). A gallon goes a LONG way for my hobby use hehe.

eugeneoregon said:

I have not tried this with any other carrier although I firmly believe that any solvent that disolves the extract into a form that can run through an addition funnel would work fine.

However, I use methanol for another part of the seperation that involves a form of chromatography generally referred to as Dry Column Vacuum Chromatography (DCVC). Methanol is an important tool in that art because essentially it is a chromatography technique that has a continuously changing solvent system.

I go from extremely polar to very polar solvents that are drawn through a buchner funnel that is loaded with Aluminum Oxide (alumina). The extract goes on top of the alumina and the solvent carries it through the alumina based on how well or not the solvent keeps it in solution. Similar to flash chromatography but some KEY differences that would take a video to show. One key difference is the ability to process large quantities of extract with relatively little solvent. Flash Chromatography can achieve the same result generally but use enormous amounts of solvent to do it, so recovery takes a bit longer.

In DCVC it does not take much solvent comparatively. My solvent strategy currently relies on going from very polar to non polar in a linear gradient. Methanol is the most polar solvent next to water on the solvent polarity charts. It works absolute magic on this stuff in the right ratio. Isopropyl alcohol I have also used but it is much more non polar and the result were much trickier to deal with. Plus isopropyl alcohol forms an azeotrope wih water so distilling it cannot recover pure alcohol without breaking the azeotrope with salt. I have done this many times but anything at all that adds to the process adds hassle lolz.

99.95% pure methanol can be bought on amazon for about $28 per gallon if you look under remote control vehicle racing fuel. It is as a practical matter pure methanol just like sprint cars run. Unlike gasoline there no additives - the tiny impurities present are water, and if you leave the lid off of the methanol it will soak up water and further dilute (which makes it more polar). A gallon goes a LONG way for my hobby use hehe.

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I was actually reading about DCVC recently. Looks useful. About methanol, my only gripe with it is the toxicity. If you breathe the vapor it has harmful effects, and how could you completely avoid it? It metabolizes to formaldehyde, if I recall. Nasty stuff. I'll make do with isopropanol myself, which metabolizes to acetone, itself not particularly toxic. Easy to get USP 99%, the other 1% being water. I do recognize the effectiveness of methanol as a solvent though, if you have a fume hood or very good ventilation.

@eugeneoregon ur system is more suited for a metal still...not glass...this seems down right dangerous in the fasion ur doing. I guess not as scary as open blasting bho but idk...id definitely try ur setup with ethanol minus the steam injection rather add vaccum an cow receiver

dabbindylan said:

@eugeneoregon ur system is more suited for a metal still...not glass...this seems down right dangerous in the fasion ur doing. I guess not as scary as open blasting bho but idk...id definitely try ur setup with ethanol minus the steam injection rather add vaccum an cow receiver

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open blasting really isn't that dangerous imho...a little common sense goes a long way when doin a open blast

Hi Eugene

I had a question and you seemed more knowledgeable then most so would like to ask you a question or run through something with you.

Currently am employing an extraction method using IPA, soaking the plant matter, then filtering off the liquid. Followed by boiling off the IPA in a rice cooker leaving behind the extract which I decarboxylate for a further 30-45 minutes. The quality of the outcome is always good but obviously it has alot of plant matter and other components (pinene, turpenes etc) in it making it hard to judge purity and strength, considering this is being used to help treat a cancer patient I believe this to be important.

I like your method of distillation and am interested but I'm trying to look at a way to simplify the procedure to make it more '1 pot' sort of method. I understand the process you are following and ideally would be the way to go, but for the sake of simplicity I was thinking of the following.

Using a pressure cooker I was thinking of boiling the plant directly, after being ground up. Then using copper pipe directly connected to the pressure cooker which will transfer the heat quite well down the copper pipe so help with with condensing back into a liquid.

Im curious if you think it would be effective without doing an alcohol extraction first, I believe it would take longer. Also since not using a steam injection into the boiling flask would also take longer but still be effective? What do you believe is a viable method of seperating the water and oil from the end product?

Im posting this on behalf of my mate who I assist and am just trying to come up with a viable solution to make what he's already doing more 'measurable'

Thanks for any input or suggestions and your time.

Over complicating for no reason...you want simplicity...soak in 151 ethanol (everclear) and the filter with coffee filters, then reduce the etoh probably to half volume then freeze and filter again or evaporate all the etoh and dissolve in a minimum amount of etoh n freezing would be better, bing bang boom, done

eagerbeaver82 said:

Hi Eugene

I had a question and you seemed more knowledgeable then most so would like to ask you a question or run through something with you.

Currently am employing an extraction method using IPA, soaking the plant matter, then filtering off the liquid. Followed by boiling off the IPA in a rice cooker leaving behind the extract which I decarboxylate for a further 30-45 minutes. The quality of the outcome is always good but obviously it has alot of plant matter and other components (pinene, turpenes etc) in it making it hard to judge purity and strength, considering this is being used to help treat a cancer patient I believe this to be important.

I like your method of distillation and am interested but I'm trying to look at a way to simplify the procedure to make it more '1 pot' sort of method. I understand the process you are following and ideally would be the way to go, but for the sake of simplicity I was thinking of the following.

Using a pressure cooker I was thinking of boiling the plant directly, after being ground up. Then using copper pipe directly connected to the pressure cooker which will transfer the heat quite well down the copper pipe so help with with condensing back into a liquid.

Im curious if you think it would be effective without doing an alcohol extraction first, I believe it would take longer. Also since not using a steam injection into the boiling flask would also take longer but still be effective? What do you believe is a viable method of seperating the water and oil from the end product?

Im posting this on behalf of my mate who I assist and am just trying to come up with a viable solution to make what he's already doing more 'measurable'

Thanks for any input or suggestions and your time.

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I know you were asking Eugene but if I may make a suggestion, I wouldn't "soak" the material, because then you'll get a lot of plant oils rather than just resin. There's a slight amount of THC in the leaf oil but not enough to be worth picking up all the useless gunk with it. The cleanest and most potent product will be from when you don't crush the material at all, and don't even completely dry it out first, just leave it in a leathery state so it's still flexible and therefore won't break up when handled. Then you put the material in something with a hole in the bottom with a filter over it, like a blender with the bottom removed, and just pour the alcohol through. Or you could use a closed bottom container and just swish the alcohol around in the material by tilting and moving the container around. The idea is to use minimal agitation of the actual material. The remaining material I would simply throw away, because whatever may still be in it is not worth going after. It's only worth flushing down a toilet.

Also, if you're giving it to a cancer victim I would make sure it never gets heated above 60 C so the THCA doesn't decarboxylate into THC. Reason being that THC actually interferes with cancer treatment making it less effective and generally suppresses the immune system. I don't know if THCA also does that but I think it's just THC itself. Point being that THC is the last thing you should give a person with cancer, unless of course you have a life insurance policy on them. Unfortunately there's a lot of disinformation around which gives some people the idea that THC cures cancer. Simply not the case. It's the wrong plant for treating cancer. The right ones would be Rosemary and hops. Research them yourself and you'll see that there's much more evidence for those plants being anticancer than Cannabis. Obviously an immunosuppressant would be inappropriate for treating cancer. Good for treating certain autoimmune diseases but not cancer.

Imho the holistic rout is not the way to go when talkin about something as serious as cancer...you want to help talk your friend into seeing a doctor n listening to what he thinks is best

I suspect that if one were to extract rosemary and hops and mix them together in hemp seed oil you would have a very powerful anti-cancer cocktail. Ironically, the seed oil is probably much more beneficial than THC would be, providing valuable EFAs. Hemp protein might also be helpful. So Cannabis may have value for fighting cancer after all.

Here is one more way to fraction the extract via vaporization. This method has a huge advantage over even steam distillation insofar as final rinse of the extract and purge in a vacuum is much less time consuming and simple when all I have to do is remove trace amounts of methanol. Water is a bugger to purge from extract as in the steam distillation. This method is also much faster in processing than steam distillation. The added benefit is being able to directly observe what is contained in a vaporizer vapor stream after solvent purge. You can see exactly what is being inhaled.

Anyone have a link to a proper chiller? Already sourced my Welch 1400 pump, glassware, mantle, probes, etc. Chiller is the last piece of the processing puzzle.

Chartreuse Spruce said:

Hi folks. This topic is something I am extremely interested in. It seems to me that this is the best method of extraction for use in curing disease especially the granddaddy of all disease...cancer. I am extremely interested in being proactive and preventing cancer from spreading rather than treating it later. So, I've gone on utube and googled for days trying to grasp the concept of the science of the pressure that creates the end result by distillation. Here's the thing though. Those stills, even homemade, or oil separators or distillers or whatever is the ultimate way of doing things because the end product is sooooo freakin' pure. But, simply making an alcohol based tincture, straining, and letting the alcohol evaporate, makes the same end product plus much clorophyll and other plant molecules. But ultimately the whole plant rather that pure like an essential oil made by distillation. Did I confuse? I like to use cannabis concentrate in everything from lotions to infused oils and butters. fyi...when it soaks in the skin for hours, the feel is amazing. In coconut oil, the color is the most glowing charetruse; it just looks magic. Anyway, does anyone else do anything like this?

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You were roughly 4 years ahead of the times.