sharing my extraction method no denautured solvents extract 85% thc and terpene

If you think co2 and butane are the best or even the only way to extract cannabis oils you have fallen for a trend or perhaps a conspiracy even, crated by big money corporations to sell co2 extractors and cans of butane by the case. Billions of dollars are on the table here, they want as much as They can get on the ground floor of this blossoming industry.
this is what they don't want you to know.

All this butane oil and co2 wax has just gotten out of control. People have forgotten what cannabis extracts are suppose to be and how they have been made for centuries without poisonous butane or expensive co2 extractors that only a few can afford. For a few hundred dollars in glass ware one can be equiped For a life time to extract all essential oils and make countless medications. I have used this method for 20 years now to extract cannabis and several other essential oils from numerous plants. I have executed this extraction numerous times in a lab. It is not my idea or invention, it has been used by organic chemist and pharmacists for over a century.
Everything used is food grade and can be eaten. Some of them can be found in the health food store. I have extensive tests on my finshed product and can account for 100% of its contents by volume. Of course I have regular test done showing 0 residual solvents. I consitantly get 20-22% returns from trim.Finished product contains 85% thc 8% cbc cbg cbd, 5% terpene oils and 2% simple sugars from cannabis.yeild oil percentage and terpene flavors will vary up to 3% depending on strain extracted.

whats the other 30% in your 70% THC BHO?

lets get started:
4-5 oz of trim. 1000ml absolute alcohol. In another post I can get into why ethyl alcohol is an ideal choice for extracting cannabinoids for several reasons.
Extraction body:
A soxhlet continuous extractor is used for the extraction. Plant material is held in desicant before running to decarb and remove residual h20. a drying tube is also afixed to keep out ambient moisture. My solvent of choice is 100% grain alchahol. Distilled myself from mash to azreotopic 96% and then dried to absolute using 3a molecular sieves.

Salt does not dry ethyl alchahol to 100%. A common myth perpetuated in this and about every other site.

The extractor runs continuous washing the sample with fresh distilled alcohol every 20 minutes over the course of 24-48 hours approximately, or until all oils have been extracted.

What's left in the sample jar contains fat wax and lipids and actually resembles crumble wax or shatter in look and texture. No essential oils are left. just the garbage. I have tested and analyzed the remains.
makes a fine mulch though.

Filtering. Activated carbon and cellite 545 diatomacious earth
The oil/alcohol suspension contain chlorphyl which is about the only down side to ethyl alcohol, but it is the easiest thing to remove!
Activated carbon from wood ash absorbs the color scent and taste of the chlorphyl instantly. Just add stir and filter through celite pad using a vacuum assisted buchner fritted funnel. The celite purpose here is 2 fold. To keep that carbon out of the pours of the frit and cellite 545 also removes any fatty compounds and lipids that may have found its way into the suspension. The resulting filtrate goes from dark green almost black to redish orange. Which will be the color of the finished product. (see my profile picture)

The term vacuum purged is thrown around alot these days and has created this misconception that these vacuum chambers and ovens that are now being sold in mass are magical appliances that whisk away all the poison with the turn of a knob and push of a button.DING! "poison is done"

I won't get into here the deep sciences behind vacuum assisted distillation and why it's done. Nor do I have room here to discuss all the myths and perpetuated mis information that's everywhere. (thank you internet) But I will say it again, it is a vacuum distillation or if you prefer, distillation under reduced pressure.

If you or your care taker claims their product is clean because it was vacuum purged for 8 days only means you or they have no idea what is going on or what you are doing during this process and likely do not have adequate controls or monitoring of your system. Read a chemistry book and turn off the you tube channel.

Solvent is removed and reclaimed by vacuum distillation at a range of 8 to 15 degrees Celsius and a consistent pressure of 29.8"hg. I have aquired several vacuum pumps over the years of different capabilities for specific applications but one kind i would not waste time or money on or even allow into my lab is an oil sealed pump.
Read about antseptic diaphragm vacuum pumps and water aspirator pumps if you want to know what a real lab vacuum pump really is.
A little pricey yes but one can get an aspirator that connects to their sink For less than $50 and has the same capabilities as a $400 oil sealed pump or even a $3000 oil sealed pump. No oil change motor failure no vacuum fluctuations and performance loss from the solvent condensing in your engine oil.
Diaphragm and aspirator pumps, read about them
Again here there is big money to be made here just like with all these trendy extraction tools.they don't want you to know about aspirators which have existed For 700 years.

Anyways..... For this task of removing solvent i use the good ol' brinkman recirculating dual head aspirator vacuum pump. It pulls almost a full 29.9"hg and any solvents that make it through are filtered safely into the water, not the pumps oil and into the working environment and people's bodies. It disgusts me to see people working a environment polluting oil pump in what they call their "lab"

The high vac the brinkman provides keeps my temps low, protects those wonderful cannabis flavors oils and sugars from decomposition allowing the finished product to have a full bouquet that is literally mouth watering when vaped. It takes me about 2 hours to complete this step of the process. Once the ethyl is gone and reclaimed I do like to raise temps to 30+ degrees Celsius under 29.8"hg for 2 more hours to carmalize the simple sugars and thicken the finished product. I also have an inert gas (nitrogen) bubble through the solution throughout the vac distillation. This keeps the "bumping" down, helps purge the solvent and further dry the product, and just because one should always have nitrogen in the system while under vacuum if only for safty, even though temps do not get that high in this process.

The vessel I use is a 12 liter ace glass reaction vessel with 3 neck lid setup with a liebig condenser and reclaim collection flask. Heat is provided by glas col mantle. I typically filter 6-8 soxhlet runs or 6000-8000ml filtered oil suspension into the pot and distill. Aprox yeild is about 20grams of finished oil per 1000ml of alcohol/oil suspension.
This can of course be done in smaller scales with smaller equipment.

Butane is a natural gas byproduct!!! It is POISON!!! It use to only be sold in small cans behind the counter at 7-11 next to the Zippo ligher fluid. Now to get in on this trend and make money anyone is slapping their label on a can and claiming it things like "food grade"
really!?!
Mmmmm taste great on crackers

And now there is "medical grade"!!
oh but I only hope the hospitals have enough to administer those life saving butane therapies.

And "Pure tane" seriously!?!


Common people open a book don't just think Google and you tube can teach you everything. That is the blind leading the ignorant.

This is real serious organic chemistry your attempting don't just follow the other lemmings over the cliff. Educate yourself
Thanks for reading.

You seem like a smart guy, good write-up. I can suggest a couple refinements though. I think you'll find that 50% ethanol is more selective than 100%, leaving behind the chlorophyll and some other stuff that's only soluble in high concentration ethanol while still dissolving most of the cannabinoids. It does dissolve some water solubles, due to the 50% water, but that's not a problem though because it gets left behind when you dilute the alcohol to less than 20% and the resin drops out and you pour off the water/alcohol. You can recover the ethanol from the solution if you want by distillation.

This precipitation by adding water is a common method used in extracting similar compounds, like those in hops and Rosemary. Yes, it means you have to dry the moisture from the precipitated extract, but how hard is that really? Put it in a sealed container with silica gel or some other desiccant I guess. Or do it slowly like curing buds. Whatever you find produces the best product. I would let the diluted solution sit for some time. It may take a while for all the resin to precipitate. You could do some testing to see how much is left in the solution as an emulsion. Probably not much though.

The fact that water solubles get washed out with the water makes this better than the regular solvent extractions followed by evaporation. Aflatoxins, for instance, are water soluble. BTW, you have to make sure not to use tap water because it usually contains alkaline minerals which will turn THCA into a water soluble salt and it'll get washed out. A slight amount of citric acid in the solution might be helpful though, just to be on the safe side of pH.

Good stuff thank you
I've considered using 150 proof for similar reasons but I just hate water in my rections . I even put the drying tube on so my absolute dosnt absorb moisture from the air when the sox flushes. But Water is easy to remove you are correct. But i also like to see the sample be totally stripped of its chlorophyll because when the siphon runs more clear I know I'm getting oil still. And I do enjoy watching the carbon work it's magic.

gwpharms said:

Good stuff thank you
I've considered using 150 proof for similar reasons but I just hate water in my rections . I even put the drying tube on so my absolute dosnt absorb moisture from the air when the sox flushes. But Water is easy to remove you are correct. But i also like to see the sample be totally stripped of its chlorophyll because when the siphon runs more clear I know I'm getting oil still. And I do enjoy watching the carbon work it's magic.

Click to expand...

From what I've read, you only need a small amount of carbon too, about 5% of the weight of the plant material you started with. A way that's used to remove chlorophyll from vegetable oils is to add a little phosphoric acid and heat it until the chlorophyll precipitates. With Cannabis the heat and acid would of course isomerize the delta 9 THC to delta 6, which is reportedly much weaker. If you started from hemp though it would actually be good because it would convert some of the CBD to delta 6 THC, which would be an improvement. Isomerizing good weed is a losing proposition though.

BTW, something you could try is using a column for the extraction, like they do with BHO. I read a post where a guy said using a column for his alcohol extractions increased yields significantly. The thinner the column the better the extraction, I would think, within reason.

I tried using 50% iso to extract some trimmings but it didn't go well. First the trimmings swelled up with water and got gooey and then when I diluted the solution nothing precipitated. I don't think it extracted much. It was a green color but nothing dropped out. Maybe the 50% alcohol thing only works with extracting carnosic acid from Rosemary. That's where I read about it. Maybe cannabinoids need higher percentage of alcohol. Anyway, so far the method doesn't look good.

Yeah I've found the 5% rule to work out perfect. I've experimentd with less and more but ended up back at 5-6%

A lot of words and no pictures makes for lots of mistakes if anyone tries just saying.....

Nice info and a lot of it with a few diagrams/pictures or flow chart it would be better.

Yeah I know I should have a power point or somthing. There is lots of good info out there on it just not in these types of forums. When you Google anything to do with cannbis with the word extract along with it pretty much all the results you see are about butane co2 and "vacuum purging" which is just what all the people making those things want you to see. I guess that's really the point of my rant here. There is literally 100 ways to make extracts and concentrates without butane or c02. Non polar super critical extraction is wrong for cannabis for So many reasons.
Butane is going to create a huge health crisis in the years to come if that continues. People who use it regularly today in their 20's and 30's will be suffering symptoms of dimensia by age 40 and mesothelioma by age 45. The clinical studies are being conducted now and have been for some time. Their findings are terrifying.

gwpharms said:

Yeah I've found the 5% rule to work out perfect. I've experimentd with less and more but ended up back at 5-6%

Click to expand...

I see, so Everclear then. Personally I still prefer acetone. Much faster evaporation than alcohol and more selective.

Awesome write up, thanks. I'd love to see some pictures of the lab, just from reading your post I imagine something like this...

Acetone is great if you're able to Source enough histological or at least reagent grade to be able to be able to do much with. At least not without looking like your cooking meth
Hardware store, or technical grade acetone is full of impurities that won't fully evap. Nail polish remover is very pure acetone but has diatonium benzoate added. Just a few parts per million will ruin anything

A friend whos studying pharmacy has mentioned those water aspirator pumps. Id be interested to try it, is it easy to find a fitting to fit the oven?

Aspirators are great. Very simple how they work. The principles of how it works were discovered by a guy name of venturri about 700 years ago. It connects to your sink. All fumes vapors and solvents get filtered by the water and go right down the drain. They cost from 20 to $50 about and can out perform most oil sealed pumps. Depending on water temp and speed one can pull a respectable vacuum.

What i use is a little higher end, it is a recirculating aspirator pump. 2 aspirator heads pull the vacuum powered by a high flow rate pump so it pulls about as close to a full vacuum as i would hope to get on planet earth. Cost about $800 though.
Read about them. Research on your own its facinating

Sorry my picture isnt great, kind of hard to get it all in one frame but since people asked i thought I'd show what a real vacuum purge setup might look like. The vessel is set up for simple distillation with a liebig condenser. The thing on the right is a fraction cutter distillation reciever. I can reclaim the solvent and collect it. The cutter allows me to pull out a fraction for analysis without breaking the vacuum. The pot sits in a heating mantel. I do need heat to keep temps above freezing under such a strong vacuum.


All the bells and whistles are not connected or shown here but you get the idea

I'll put some pictures of the soxhlet up maybe.
Or just google it if you want to see one

Soxhlet extractor
Hanz von soxhlet 1879 or something

gwpharms said:

If you think co2 and butane are the best or even the only way to extract cannabis oils you have fallen for a trend or perhaps a conspiracy even, crated by big money corporations to sell co2 extractors and cans of butane by the case. Billions of dollars are on the table here, they want as much as They can get on the ground floor of this blossoming industry.
this is what they don't want you to know.

All this butane oil and co2 wax has just gotten out of control. People have forgotten what cannabis extracts are suppose to be and how they have been made for centuries without poisonous butane or expensive co2 extractors that only a few can afford. For a few hundred dollars in glass ware one can be equiped For a life time to extract all essential oils and make countless medications. I have used this method for 20 years now to extract cannabis and several other essential oils from numerous plants. I have executed this extraction numerous times in a lab. It is not my idea or invention, it has been used by organic chemist and pharmacists for over a century.
Everything used is food grade and can be eaten. Some of them can be found in the health food store. I have extensive tests on my finshed product and can account for 100% of its contents by volume. Of course I have regular test done showing 0 residual solvents. I consitantly get 20-22% returns from trim.Finished product contains 85% thc 8% cbc cbg cbd, 5% terpene oils and 2% simple sugars from cannabis.yeild oil percentage and terpene flavors will vary up to 3% depending on strain extracted.

whats the other 30% in your 70% THC BHO?

lets get started:
4-5 oz of trim. 1000ml absolute alcohol. In another post I can get into why ethyl alcohol is an ideal choice for extracting cannabinoids for several reasons.
Extraction body:
A soxhlet continuous extractor is used for the extraction. Plant material is held in desicant before running to decarb and remove residual h20. a drying tube is also afixed to keep out ambient moisture. My solvent of choice is 100% grain alchahol. Distilled myself from mash to azreotopic 96% and then dried to absolute using 3a molecular sieves.

Salt does not dry ethyl alchahol to 100%. A common myth perpetuated in this and about every other site.

The extractor runs continuous washing the sample with fresh distilled alcohol every 20 minutes over the course of 24-48 hours approximately, or until all oils have been extracted.

What's left in the sample jar contains fat wax and lipids and actually resembles crumble wax or shatter in look and texture. No essential oils are left. just the garbage. I have tested and analyzed the remains.
makes a fine mulch though.

Filtering. Activated carbon and cellite 545 diatomacious earth
The oil/alcohol suspension contain chlorphyl which is about the only down side to ethyl alcohol, but it is the easiest thing to remove!
Activated carbon from wood ash absorbs the color scent and taste of the chlorphyl instantly. Just add stir and filter through celite pad using a vacuum assisted buchner fritted funnel. The celite purpose here is 2 fold. To keep that carbon out of the pours of the frit and cellite 545 also removes any fatty compounds and lipids that may have found its way into the suspension. The resulting filtrate goes from dark green almost black to redish orange. Which will be the color of the finished product. (see my profile picture)

The term vacuum purged is thrown around alot these days and has created this misconception that these vacuum chambers and ovens that are now being sold in mass are magical appliances that whisk away all the poison with the turn of a knob and push of a button.DING! "poison is done"

I won't get into here the deep sciences behind vacuum assisted distillation and why it's done. Nor do I have room here to discuss all the myths and perpetuated mis information that's everywhere. (thank you internet) But I will say it again, it is a vacuum distillation or if you prefer, distillation under reduced pressure.

If you or your care taker claims their product is clean because it was vacuum purged for 8 days only means you or they have no idea what is going on or what you are doing during this process and likely do not have adequate controls or monitoring of your system. Read a chemistry book and turn off the you tube channel.

Solvent is removed and reclaimed by vacuum distillation at a range of 8 to 15 degrees Celsius and a consistent pressure of 29.8"hg. I have aquired several vacuum pumps over the years of different capabilities for specific applications but one kind i would not waste time or money on or even allow into my lab is an oil sealed pump.
Read about antseptic diaphragm vacuum pumps and water aspirator pumps if you want to know what a real lab vacuum pump really is.
A little pricey yes but one can get an aspirator that connects to their sink For less than $50 and has the same capabilities as a $400 oil sealed pump or even a $3000 oil sealed pump. No oil change motor failure no vacuum fluctuations and performance loss from the solvent condensing in your engine oil.
Diaphragm and aspirator pumps, read about them
Again here there is big money to be made here just like with all these trendy extraction tools.they don't want you to know about aspirators which have existed For 700 years.

Anyways..... For this task of removing solvent i use the good ol' brinkman recirculating dual head aspirator vacuum pump. It pulls almost a full 29.9"hg and any solvents that make it through are filtered safely into the water, not the pumps oil and into the working environment and people's bodies. It disgusts me to see people working a environment polluting oil pump in what they call their "lab"

The high vac the brinkman provides keeps my temps low, protects those wonderful cannabis flavors oils and sugars from decomposition allowing the finished product to have a full bouquet that is literally mouth watering when vaped. It takes me about 2 hours to complete this step of the process. Once the ethyl is gone and reclaimed I do like to raise temps to 30+ degrees Celsius under 29.8"hg for 2 more hours to carmalize the simple sugars and thicken the finished product. I also have an inert gas (nitrogen) bubble through the solution throughout the vac distillation. This keeps the "bumping" down, helps purge the solvent and further dry the product, and just because one should always have nitrogen in the system while under vacuum if only for safty, even though temps do not get that high in this process.

The vessel I use is a 12 liter ace glass reaction vessel with 3 neck lid setup with a liebig condenser and reclaim collection flask. Heat is provided by glas col mantle. I typically filter 6-8 soxhlet runs or 6000-8000ml filtered oil suspension into the pot and distill. Aprox yeild is about 20grams of finished oil per 1000ml of alcohol/oil suspension.
This can of course be done in smaller scales with smaller equipment.

Butane is a natural gas byproduct!!! It is POISON!!! It use to only be sold in small cans behind the counter at 7-11 next to the Zippo ligher fluid. Now to get in on this trend and make money anyone is slapping their label on a can and claiming it things like "food grade"
really!?!
Mmmmm taste great on crackers

And now there is "medical grade"!!
oh but I only hope the hospitals have enough to administer those life saving butane therapies.

And "Pure tane" seriously!?!


Common people open a book don't just think Google and you tube can teach you everything. That is the blind leading the ignorant.

This is real serious organic chemistry your attempting don't just follow the other lemmings over the cliff. Educate yourself
Thanks for reading.

Click to expand...

What's is your not hitting -29 like with my elevation I can only hit -26

gwpharms said:

Sorry my picture isnt great, kind of hard to get it all in one frame but since people asked i thought I'd show what a real vacuum purge setup might look like. The vessel is set up for simple distillation with a liebig condenser. The thing on the right is a fraction cutter distillation reciever. I can reclaim the solvent and collect it. The cutter allows me to pull out a fraction for analysis without breaking the vacuum. The pot sits in a heating mantel. I do need heat to keep temps above freezing under such a strong vacuum.

All the bells and whistles are not connected or shown here but you get the idea

Click to expand...

Mmmm . . . fun in the lab.

I've got basic lab distillation gear but my damn dog busted a bunch of my glassware years ago. Like my 2L boiling ball and two condensers so Just have a couple of 500ml balls and one condenser left. All the other bit's and pieces to run it too. Built a simple pot still with a big glass bottle that will hold 4L so I can cook alcohol off a simple sugar/turbo yeast brew I sometimes keep in the grow room for a bit of CO2 and free ethanol for extractions/sippin. Cook out Coleman's Camp Stove fuel to get some naphtha. Gotta be Coleman's.

Have distilled butane using 2 - 1L flat-bottom boiling balls and copper tubing going into the deep freeze to collect in the second ball for re-use. Get a lot more pot processed with the same butane being used over again. Can't store it in a damn thermos so need a pressure vessel to hang on to it for any time.



Went back to school in my 30s and got a diploma in environmental chem in BC. Comes in handy but didn't get much work in my field in the early 90's.

Eat2live said:

What's is your not hitting -29 like with my elevation I can only hit -26

Click to expand...

Wow bumped up huh. The laptop is out of the work area from here on out so i wont be back for a while.
You would just need a stronger pump. Im at about 800'
26 is fine you would just need higher temps to boil. 26inhg is actually a nice comfortable pressure to easily distill. Things can get crazy once you go into the high 28's and 29's. Bumbping is typically a problem at extreme low pressure.that has to be mitigated by stir or inert gas bubble. Boil stones really dont help much under vacuum. Some people say they do.

Hey, really like this kind of extraction! Reminds me of what I learned in organic chemistry classes years ago.
I want to give this a try. Just have few questions.

You said that Celite545 removes all lipids and fats. So is there no need for further winterization? Or does the filterization need to be done at low temps?

What is the inert gas bubble during vacuum destillation? Do you have information about residual ethanol in the product after vacuum destillation?

Jon_M said:

Hey, really like this kind of extraction! Reminds me of what I learned in organic chemistry classes years ago.
I want to give this a try. Just have few questions.

You said that Celite545 removes all lipids and fats. So is there no need for further winterization? Or does the filterization need to be done at low temps?

What is the inert gas bubble during vacuum destillation? Do you have information about residual ethanol in the product after vacuum destillation?

Click to expand...

this method is great!! op helped me along a bit with learning how to do this.i was a complete noob and after doing a lot of research on my own,with some help from op,i produced some really nice oil.you want to make a carbon pad on top of the celite which will help remove the chlorophyll.no need to winterize.i use a buchner funnel and a sink aspirator for this step.i have a shitty pump i did not use,so it was a simple distillation to evap the etoh.awesome medibles!