Please help w dark bho from closed loop

I am using a closed loop system to run outdoor trim from last harvest in October, the trim is well sorted and stored sealed in a plastic bag.

My wax keeps coming out very dark and I'm not sure why. The first muffin I pull looks nice and golden as seen here http://m.imgur.com/8k94dZu

The oven is set to -29.9 and 115 degrees and after the muffin drops I end up w very dark wax like this
http://m.imgur.com/O8mToHx

Any ideas to help me get a lighter end result would be much appreciated!

Trying lower the temps a little? Try at 105f for a bit? Other than that, I can only think of the age of the material.

Lower temps could help but could also most likely be due to your material. The older it is the more cbn it has, also how long are you running your solvent through? Many many factors could play a roll.

That is actually a relatively dark muffin, as colors go, and the color suggest anthrocyanin plant pigments, which is about a C-30 molecule. One of the properties of anthrocyanins, is that they exhibit the Beers/Lambert effect, which says you can take a thin film, such as you are seeing in the expanded muffin bubble walls, and it will be light colored and almost transparent, and yet two layers of the same may be almost opaque.

Their color changes with Ph and darkens with age.

As far as minimizing the effects on old trim, you might try extracting at subzero temperatures, and using a Butane/Propane mix, so as to extract less of the molecules heavier than the C-21 cannabinoids.

Thanks for the info, I sourced better sorted material but it is still old from last October and was able to make some slightly lighter extract. http://m.imgur.com/a/xNQbl
But it is still quite dark.

When you say extract at subzero, I keep my butane in a freezer until immediately before the extraction, is that good?

I have been running about 15 lbs of butane straight through the material.

The best result I was able to create was by leaving a vaccum and bringing the heat down to room temp and essentially freezing the muffin in place as shown in the first pic. Leaving bubbles in the extract.

I wanted to try propane butane mix but I'm u nsure if their are any other safety considerations. I am using a best value vac 5lb system. http://www.bestvaluevacs.com/cls5lb-trs21-kit.html

I've run trim and nugs that literally sat around for over four years in tubs and managed to get some great shatter and wax from it.

My advice is:

to dehydrate the hell out of your material before running it.

Use 99.5 or 99.9 n- butane "1300 bucks Canadian for a hundred pound tank, so probably cheaper elsewhere"

Don't overrun or overheat your solvent when using a closed loop. 110f water bath max.

Use a dewaxing sleeve and put stainless ball bearings in your reducer.

Mix your dry ice with iso for a much colder dewax.

And when you vac your product take it out and have it between two parchment pieces and use a rolling pin on it too stretch it out and thin it out/ get rid of any co2 bubbles

And if all else fails... Winterize your wax/boho after all that

Oh and start your vac at a low temp like 98 and max out at 113ish

Best of luck

any methods you would recommend for dehydrating a large amount of trim?

TJM what would be the purpose of the ball bearings?

Fadedawg - I ordered some propane but some posts I read say it creates a darker product and dissolves more undesirables?

Was both material and gas frozen?

gtir said:

Thanks for the info, I sourced better sorted material but it is still old from last October and was able to make some slightly lighter extract. http://m.imgur.com/a/xNQbl
But it is still quite dark.

When you say extract at subzero, I keep my butane in a freezer until immediately before the extraction, is that good?

I have been running about 15 lbs of butane straight through the material.

The best result I was able to create was by leaving a vacuum and bringing the heat down to room temp and essentially freezing the muffin in place as shown in the first pic. Leaving bubbles in the extract.

I wanted to try propane butane mix but I'm u nsure if their are any other safety considerations. I am using a best value vac 5lb system. http://www.bestvaluevacs.com/cls5lb-trs21-kit.html

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The size of your base determines the pressure rating of your system. A 12" 13MPH high pressure clamp is rated at 150 psi at 70F and 100 psi at 250F.

For a certified blessed by the Pope installation, ASME says 6" and under is piping, which must meet 350psi for LPG, and over is a pressure vessel, which must meet 3X its maximum operating pressure.

Attached is a chart showing butane/propane mixes pressure at temperature.

We use butane/propane mixes up to 50/50, extracting at -50C or so, where it does two things. One is to keep the mixture thin enough to still push through the system with an auxiliary hot vapor tank, and the other is that as a C-3 sized molecule, it actually is more selective than the larger C-4 butane molecule when it comes to extracting the molecules larger than our C-21 targets, at those low temperatures.

Included in those larger about C-30 sized molecules, are chlorophyll, anthrocyanin plant pigments, and plant waxes, so it lightens our subzero extractions, rather than darkening them.

We keep our storage tank around 31F and use a counter flow heat exchanger at the point of injection to chill the LPG mixture, which saves trying to move a tank of jello through a skinny dip tube. We use liquid N2 on the coolant side, but CO2 could also be used, as could a -40C subzero chiller.

You can also use a 1/2" X 50' stainless coil in an alcohol dry ice bath, and just take it out of the bath when you aren't injecting, so the LPG doesn't get so thick it clogs the coil by the time you are ready to use it again.

We use 3/4" tank valves, to maximize flow at low temperatures.

But if you are using butane as well as propane wouldn't you just end up extracting all the same stuff anyway? Why not use just propane?

fadedawg- why would keeping the solvent colder make it thinner?

gtir said:

But if you are using butane as well as propane wouldn't you just end up extracting all the same stuff anyway? Why not use just propane?

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Propane doesn't extract the longer chain flavonoids as well.

gtir said:

fadedawg- why would keeping the solvent colder make it thinner?

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Because the viscosity of LPG gas increases as the temperature drops. At -30/40C, n-Butane gets too thick to pump using push pull.

@Fadedawg do you use n propane? I ve done several runs with n butane but i didnt get it much lower than about minus 20 to 30 C max and it did go much slower than canned gas.
Have you tried other propane to butane ratios?

KLITE said:

@Fadedawg do you use n propane? I ve done several runs with n butane but i didnt get it much lower than about minus 20 to 30 C max and it did go much slower than canned gas.
Have you tried other propane to butane ratios?

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I started out with canned gas, which is a propane/butane blend, and have tried 70/30 and 50/50% blends with good success. We typically use 50/50% for -40C and below.

I started out with canned gas, which is a propane/butane blend, and have tried 70/30 and 50/50% blends with good success. We typically use 50/50% for -40C and below.

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Do you get your gases at an aircontioning supplier too? Its where i gotta go here in catalunya.
A quick question, to propperly dewax an extract in closed loop, it is not enough to simply use a dry ice column around the material, right? Ideally butane would sit in the dewax column without any plant material for a while before passing though filters in order to reach those temps and solidify non desirables?
Is there even any benefit in making the material that cold if already frozen and minus 20 to 30 c gas gonna pass through it?
How does the 70 butane to 30 propane comapare to the 5050? Too slow?

So I have ordered some propane and am going to start with %100 propane and see what my results are. Would the process in my closed loop be any different than with butane? Are their any other safety concerns?

New
So I have ordered some propane and am going to start with %100 propane and see what my results are. Would the process in my closed loop be any different than with butane? Are their any other safety concerns?

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Same process, only propane has an even lower boiling point hence it evaporates faster, and will be less dense at same temps as butane. Just keep your clamp tight and makle sure your gaskets are very clean.

KLITE said:

Do you get your gases at an aircontioning supplier too? Its where i gotta go here in catalunya.
A quick question, to propperly dewax an extract in closed loop, it is not enough to simply use a dry ice column around the material, right? Ideally butane would sit in the dewax column without any plant material for a while before passing though filters in order to reach those temps and solidify non desirables?
Is there even any benefit in making the material that cold if already frozen and minus 20 to 30 c gas gonna pass through it?
How does the 70 butane to 30 propane comapare to the 5050? Too slow?

Click to expand...

No, I get my Praxair 99.5% Instrument grade n-Butane and Propane mixes from Apis Labs in Eugene, OR, who by the way does ship via Old Dominion. [email protected] should connect you.

The 70/30 actually works pretty good at -30/40C, but we are using a counterflow heat exchanger with liquid N2, so sometimes go even lower by plan or accident and the 50/50 flows better.

We are extracting about C-10 through about C-30 molecules, and primarily targeting the C-10 through C-21 ones, though some of the ~C-30 are flavonoids.

Different molecules dissolve at different rates, with the longer chain molecules the slowest. Extracting frozen with -30C LPG, further slows down the extraction rate, more for the longer chain than the short chains, so that the extraction has low levels of the longer chains. So low that most folks don't bother to further dewax it.

In addition, Propane picks up less of the longer chain molecules than does butane.

If you do want to further inline dewax it, it needs to have some resident time at low temperature, for the waxes to precipitate out of solution, so that they can be removed by filtration.

gtir said:

So I have ordered some propane and am going to start with %100 propane and see what my results are. Would the process in my closed loop be any different than with butane? Are their any other safety concerns?

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Way more pressure. What system do you have?