Squiggly, when I had said, " back up with science" All you had to say was, " I work in a lab." On a keyboard, everyone is an expert or a bad ass. I am not a pig headed guy. If my knowledge is faulty, I update it and move on. I was happy with my results on small scale, but far from married to it. I had several different ideas for extraction on large scale, but as that was not my question I had not brought any other methods up. I simply got a hair up my ass when you said a 4 minute mile was impossible when I just ran one. I got kicked out of chemistry class for dropping chunk of flouride in teachers coffee cup. That is the extent of my chem knowledge. For a long time all I did was butane blast or bubble hash. I have only done 4 batch of acetone total.

By fall, I think I am going with butane and recycling it. But right now, this 10 lighter and fucked up power bill have me tapped. So short term.

1: you mention a dewars flask. all the ones I have seen are crazy pricey. being as it's alcohol I am freezing and not liquid nitrogen, are there any cheaper alternatives for larger loads?

2: I understand that long term, using lab grade chemicals are better. That said, what are the safest options in order? Denatured alcohol at depot seems cheap.

3: Your ISO method. You call for a long soak at cold temps . Wolf calls for a 20 second wash. He likes ethanol better if i remember correctly because waxes coagulate for filtering when frozen. Do you need to polish with your method? What is your evap method?

4: collection. Is there REALLY no better way than a razor blade and pyrex?

5: A HUGE thank you for taking time to educate.

chronicdreams said:

1: you mention a dewars flask. all the ones I have seen are crazy pricey. being as it's alcohol I am freezing and not liquid nitrogen, are there any cheaper alternatives for larger loads?

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The dewar flask is only really necessary for butane--because to keep the butane liquid it must be in a highly insulated environment. If you check ebay, you should be able to find a reasonably priced dewar flask (you might have to wait a few weeks for one to pop up, they aren't rare per se--but also aren't common)

2: I understand that long term, using lab grade chemicals are better. That said, what are the safest options in order? Denatured alcohol at depot seems cheap.

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1. Ethanol -- safer only because it's prone to more complete combustion. It's polar, though, (while retaining non-polar character) and so efficiency is reduced in this non-polar extraction, in my opinion necessitating those below freezing temps to compare well with butane.

2. Butane

As far as I'm concerned, that's it.

You can use denatured alcohol--but you should never make edibles with the extract if you do (smoking it is fine). PLEASE be sure that the denatured alcohol you buy DOES NOT have aniline added. This is an extremely potent carcinogen and poison.

3: Your ISO method. You call for a long soak at cold temps . Wolf calls for a 20 second wash. He likes ethanol better if i remember correctly because waxes coagulate for filtering when frozen. Do you need to polish with your method? What is your evap method?

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VERRRRY cold temps (and freeze your material to be extracted as well--preferably under a dry atmosphere (no moisture--but this isn't an absolute requirement by any means).

The impetus behind this is that we're trying to exclude water and water solubles. If we keep the ethanol below the freezing point of water--it will for the most part be excluded, however--the cold temperature significantly slows down the extraction which is why a longer soak is called for. Try dissolving sugar into very very cold water until no more will dissolve--now bring the heat up and see how much more goes in. A ton more will go for each degree increase in temp. Because reactions like dissolution all follow equilibrium behavior--the more capacity or "room" there is for molecules to dissolve, the faster they will do it. If you reduce the solvent capacity by bringing temps down, your dissolution will proceed more slowly.

I'd say, do the cold soak first--and then do a 2nd batch of lower grade at the warmer temp to ensure you get everything out.

You can still "winterize" both of these extracts to remove waxes and such--but there will likely be far fewer contaminants in the "cold-extracted" oil.


I evap in a vacuum chamber intended for degassing resins (hand made and purchased from ebay). The vessel itself is aircraft grade aluminum so it allows me to heat the vessel while degassing which is quite the benefit.

4: collection. Is there REALLY no better way than a razor blade and pyrex?

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Well according to what others have posted here, parchment works. I'm unsure of the chemical makeup of parchment, but I can check into this for you. I have an inkling that they are correct.

I've oft tried to think my way around this problem--but I keep hitting a wall. I think it's because I know EXACTLY how to do this in the lab--but it requires a $20,000 piece of equipment. So I just keep falling back to that design and asking myself how I can make it cheaper--when really I should probably be coming at it from an entirely different angle.

How we do it in the lab is to fill a vial with the material we want--and then to attach this through various adapters to a thin film rotary evaporator (or RotoVap).

I will be attempting to solve this problem over the next year. Check the oil section for updates.

5: A HUGE thank you for taking time to educate.

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It's my pleasure.

chronicdreams said:

Squiggly, when I had said, " back up with science" All you had to say was, " I work in a lab." On a keyboard, everyone is an expert or a bad ass.

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Also wanted to point out a few things about this quickly.

1. I would never, NEVER, respond to a request to back up something with science by simply saying "I work in a lab take my word for it." That goes against every scientific bone in my body. It is a personal joy of mine to pass down knowledge I've gained to those who are eager to accept it, but I challenge all such people to convince themselves of that knowledge--rather than taking my word for it. My intention is to give people the tools to do that, not to display mine on the internet.

2. I agree everyone is an expert behind screen/keyboard (and in RL, frankly--we're all armchair experts in some respect, it's human nature and a limitation of the hardware we're stuck with--the brain).

3. There is no need to justify or apologize for your caution in taking my word for it--this is the proper reaction to have in my opinion. You should ALWAYS question new information. Failure to do this is what produces "armchair expertise" in the first place. Just taking everyone's word for it and parroting it back sans understanding. The understanding is key, and I expect you to resist until that comes to you--if you didn't you'd be a fool.

Dude, you rock. Some people Lord their knowledge over people. Some share.

Butane. By fall, very real chance I build gray wolf's terp machine. Small batches, I guess I have to stick with blasting ( vs dewars cost wise. )

ISO vs ETHANOL vs D.A Do you have a favorite here ? What would the prospective soak times be? I am assuming all still frozen. I am thinking bell jars here.

Another question I had on the alcohol. Can I run more than once with it? Meaning say, pour in bell jar one. soak. drain to second bell jar. soak and drain. would help the solvent go farther. Or this not work?

I looked up that vac chamber. It would take me all of 10 minutes to build. What kind of pressure do I need? Hand pump adequate? You mention heating. To what temp, and why?

I would love to hear that parchment is safe for all methods. From my understanding it is wood pulp soaked in sulfuric acid then pressed and dried and coated with silicone?


Again, I appreciate you taking time to pass on knowledge. I am going to try to do more of the same in my area of expertise. ( from seed to weed )

chronicdreams said:

Some people Lord their knowledge over people. Some share.

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and some use the searchbar when they join here instead of just relying on others who have already done so.

everything you're asking has already been discussed in numerous other threads (i know because i read them before adding my own opinions). and btw, many of these threads contain long chem-info posts by Squiggly, which i'm sure took considerable time for him to present there.

most of what you're dissolving off parchment is probably silicone, which as i understand it also happens with butane (in spite of it otherwise being one of the safest solvents re finished concentrate meds). unless it's the older style parchment, which is made with a crosslinked polymer process instead (less common now). i also considered using sil-pat baking mats, but these are also impregnated with a silicone based compound.

now if you want the citations, it might be better to ask Squig for advice on critical-thinking, sci-method, and how to vet published articles. everything else you can reference via google..

yawn. still here huh? what made you think I meant you? You seemed miles from knowing anything.

don't flatter yourself, i scanned whatsnew and noticed squiggly posted. thought his followup response might contain useful info (which it did, albeit on a different topic).

the funny part is i actually answered the question in your subject heading, you just don't care for the answer (or to research for yourself and determine it's validity). and unlike our chemist friend, i'm nowhere near as friendly to idiots like you.

I will do here what I would do with any child throwing a tantrum and ignore you.

any one need a wood spoon...cause only dope cooks use acetone ;) lmao

ahhh shit the stupid clown opened his mouth ...hehe

I'd say if you're purging properly, then go with the ISO--it's really a better solvent for this, it's got some special structural properties that help the extraction along.

The ethanol is better if you're not getting the best purge.

The above is if you're making edibles or vaping.

If you're smoking, the ethanol might give you a smoother smoke (I can't explain why, it's just an observation of mine) but the iso should be a cleaner one realistically--the chances of residual traces combusting fully (instead of incomplete combustion giving you CO and soot) are much greater with the iso.

When it comes to the alcohol washes, you're going to want to play around with solvent temps/soak times to get the consistency you want. I would always look at it as trying to get a really pristine first run that turns out just the way you like it, but also keeping in mind that you should sacrifice a good amount of yield in the first run in favor of potency/purity. The 2nd run is where you can get a more crude extract going and then carry out some processes to clean up the oil.

A caveat on the long alcohol soaks, even frozen. Chlorophyll readily dissolves in polar alcohol, whether the frozen water keeps the water solubles at bay or not.

For instance, note the color differences between a 3 minute frozen soak, and a 10 minute one.

Graywolf said:

A caveat on the long alcohol soaks, even frozen. Chlorophyll readily dissolves in polar alcohol, whether the frozen water keeps the water solubles at bay or not.

For instance, note the color differences between a 3 minute frozen soak, and a 10 minute one.

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is that iso or ethanol?

That was ethanol, but isopropyl is even more agressive.

Is the iso more aggressive b/c of the polarity?

yes. lol take it easy

I had stuck some that turned green in solution in sunlight for a hour. turned amber again.

chronicdreams said:

I had stuck some that turned green in solution in sunlight for a hour. turned amber again.

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UV or heat? Both? I wonder what did it...

UV it was cold out
Got the UV idea from gray wolf site

ftwendy said:

Is the iso more aggressive b/c of the polarity?

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It has more to do with sterics--and polarity by proxy, rather than as a primary source of the difference.

When we discuss dissolving power in the simplest of terms what we're talking about is polar vs non-polar character and varying degrees of both. Isopropanol inhabits a very weird middle ground between these two--sort of what you might call a "best of both worlds" or a "sweet spot".

When we talk non-polar character what we're generally discussing is either:

1. Carbon and hydrogen ONLY.

2. Carbon affixed to molecules which are polar--who's polar vectors cancel each other out (they pull/push in equal and opposite directions throughout the entire molecule--these ALWAYS have at least 1 plane of symmetry).

Let me just rewind for a second here and say that what we're REALLY trying to get at here is how these molecules are sharing electron density. If one atom in the molecule is more electronegative (a physical property), it will unequally pull electron density towards itself--and this puts the distribution of charge in the molecule out of whack. This creates a magnetic dipole--and these dipoles (from molecule to molecule) are attracted through charge interactions in the way we are all familiar with. Similarly molecules which are not symmetric were never in balance to begin with, so they are inherently polar.

Non-polar interactions depend on two things.

1. Hydrophobic interactions (or in a manner of speaking "polar-phobic" interactions). These are driven by entropy (which says in a simple explanation that the disorder of the universe is always increasing and that things progress down this sort of thermodynamic well that I described earlier). The simplest way to explain this is that, structurally and magnetically, in order for the polar molecules to mix very well with the non-polar ones--they need to form very advanced structures so that the chemical mixture will "make sense". In a sentence, the structures required would lead to negative entropy. It's hard to think of this sometimes because with thermoydynamics often we find out that what does happen is because of what "would" happen. In a sense we find out that a less favorable possibility is the driving force behind the process that actually takes place, the un-favored future affecting the present.

This has always drummed up the Einstein quote "spooky action at a distance" for me, but it is nonetheless what is happening.

In lieu of these advanced structures, the polar and non-polar elements just exclude themselves from one another--by snuggling up with one another.

2. Van der Waals interactions. Also mentions with these are London Dispersion Forces--but it all essentially means the same thing. These guys works off of what are known as "instantaneous dipoles". These occur from the actual movement of electrons around the molecules. This is a much more nuanced magnetic interaction, but it results from the same idea--as they move through space, sometimes the molecule has more electrons on one side than the other, and this slight imbalance produces a dipole. These interactions are orders of magnitude weaker than polar interactions, and that is why non-polar solvents have much lower boiling points (and also why their boiling points go up as chain length increases).

To the meat:
With isopropanol we have a special situation--not only do we have these polar and non polar elements play off of one another as in the other short chain alcohols, but the OH group is attached to the central carbon atom of a chain of length 3 (3 carbon atoms long).

The oxygen atom in the alcohol group pulls away some of the electron density from that central carbon, which in turn pulls (equally) from each of the two remaining carbon atoms through induction.

What we end up with is a sort of super-polar propane. Because each of the carbon atoms is sharing the pull from the oxygen--they end up all donating about the same amount of their electron density and thus the non-polar "character" of this chain is mostly retained--at the same time, there is a SIGNIFICANT dipole moment which is created through this interaction even though the distribution across the chain has been equal--the molecule has still been polarized on either side.

In ethanol, for instance, what we have is a molecule that has been almost entirely polarized. It can only induct straight through the chain--this offers much less stabilization than a bi or tri-directional spread. It can still do some nonpolar-ish stuff because (for lack of a better way to say it) carbon and hydrogen chains really love other carbon and hydrogen chains, even if they've been polarized.

We can however see this difference better with the salting out behavior of isopropanol. It's possible to separate iso from water by adding salt to the solution--whereas doing this with ethanol is mostly fruitless.

The ethanol is undisturbed by the increase polarity of the solution (due to the ionic salts now dissolved)--whereas the isopropanol can only interact with it so much before the hydrophobic interactions from the non-polar chain will dominate over those effects.

From still a third stanpoint--structurally isopropanol does some weird stuff that makes it a really really aggressive solvent. This is probably well beyond most of your capacity to understand sans considerable primer material, and is hilariously far beyond my ability to properly explain.


As with most things in chemistry, it is never so simple as "is it this because of that?"

Probably a dozen people have spent a good portion of their life trying to fully understand this one molecule, if not more.