The Modern Extractor

Learn the tricks of the trade for centrifugal ethanol extraction. Jason talks to Adam Chambers of Delta Separations about how their CUP line of ethanol extractors are the best tool for extracting the most out of your biomass, as well as all the other equipment offerings Delta has released recently. Times, temperatures, and SOPs that Delta usually charges for training on are 'extracted' in this interview.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Jason Showard - 00:00:11 

Hello and welcome to Episode three of The Modern Extractor, the podcast that focuses on the processes, equipment and science found in a cannabis extraction laboratory. I'm your host, Jason Showard, and I work professionally in the cannabis extraction field. Here in season one, we're focusing on ethanol extraction and post-processing. With each episode digging deep into a particular stage in that process. The shows are released in an order that follows the progress of material through a lab, following it from Cultivar to concentrate. 

Jason Showard - 00:00:39 

Last week we discussed how to select quality biomass to extract from. After listening back to the show, I feel like I said a lot about what could go wrong there and neglected to mention that forming great relationships with your local growers is the absolute best way to consistently get quality biomass. In the second half of last week's show, we talked to Bri Tolp from Futurola about how their shredders can get you to your ideal mill sites for extraction. It was a great show and definitely worth a listen if you haven't already. 

Jason Showard - 00:01:08 

This week takes us to the next stage, which is the extraction process. We've got Adam Chambers from Delta Separations on today to give us the latest from Delta, as well as breakdown how their revolutionary CUP Series centrifuges will get you the most out of your material. So without any further ado, Adam Chambers, welcome to The Modern Extractor. 

Adam Chambers - 00:01:28 

It's great to be here. Looking forward to this. 

Jason Showard - 00:01:30 

Absolutely. Yeah. We're excited to have you as far as starting off with you. Where are you calling in from today? 

Adam Chambers - 00:01:36 

So today I'm speaking to you guys from the conference room here at Delta Separations in Cotati, California, just north of San Francisco and south of Santa Rosa. It's the main headquarters for Delta Separations and it's where we've been full time for the last couple of years and has been our home, this acquisition, and this strange year that we've had. 

Jason Showard - 00:01:59 

OK, great. Tell me a little bit about your journey to Delta and how you ended up working there. 

Adam Chambers - 00:02:06 

Of course, I don't think it would be uncommon to say that a lot of the people here at Delta, their route to the company was somewhat unconventional and I'm no exception. I studied forensic molecular biology, got a minor in chemistry and physics at the Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduating, I moved back over to Europe. I am half British in case that's of any consequence. And my father lives in Mediterranean Spain. I spent a couple of years up there just kind of figuring out what I was going to do. 

Adam Chambers - 00:02:43 

And I was invited to open an ethanol extraction facility in Southern California and in Coachella. And so I, you know, two weeks later, I was on a plane. And I had, and that was where I'd kind of get my start. And in the middle of the Mojave, really hot, inhospitable environment but we threw together some shipping containers that we retrofitted ourselves. And did the electrical and all of that stuff. And fitted with our own homemade extraction system with pumps and some basic lab gear as a proof of concept before we were picked up as being, you know, after we proved what we could do. 

Adam Chambers - 00:03:28 

Langfield Global. The notable ethanol solvent supplier in general and Verano Holdings, that they decided to invest in us so we formed a new, that went from [inaudible 00:03:40] manufacturing, which was the original name to DGV Group, the conglomerate of the three companies to produce distillate at large quantities. And so we started to do research as to how we would be able to handle this throughput. And we came across Delta [inaudible 00:04:00] and our CEO met them at a trade show. And they were, you know, very, he was very enamored by the CUP series in general, as it should have been. 

Adam Chambers - 00:04:12 

And we made the decision to go to their gear and actually ended up with some of the very first, if not the first falling film and rolled film distillation units, as well as the CUP 30 that we had. And we also made a bit of a precursor makeshift version of the DC 40 or so, just with a keg, a heat exchanger, and some compressors outside. And all that again in shipping containers, individualized, but very, very well kept. We were a group that had all studied hard science in school and kind of knew what we wanted. 

Adam Chambers - 00:04:50 

And we worked out all of the S.O.Ps. The following film that and the chiller designated to it does not [inaudible 00:04:58] not quite robust enough to keep up with 128-degree heat in the summer. 

Jason Showard - 00:05:04 

I could imagine that. 

Adam Chambers - 00:05:06 

Yeah, it was rough. So we helped Delta to find their way to G and D as a supplier for their trailers, that went rather well. And that's the falling film 60-gallon variant was also born just because they had more. The robusticity of the entire platform just kind of went up. And now while it was about a forty-five gallon capacity for us people. In a normal environment to push a bit more. Also hoped to make some modifications to the RFE. So one of us kind of came up with the [inaudible 00:05:39] helped them with the standard way to get a really good removal rate for cannabinoids and the CUP series. Involved in that project were many of the different people at Delta because we were kind of the canary in the coal mine for a lot of their newer platforms. 

Adam Chambers - 00:05:55 

So I met Ben and Jim out here. Steven's being the founder and Jim being the head engineer. And obviously some of their more famous characters like John and Casey, who I owe a lot to. They taught me a whole bunch, and it made me a much better extractor. They have a lot of experience in the game. 

Adam Chambers - 00:06:15 

And then I, you know, I wasn't very happy after we completed all of this stuff, we weren't very much appreciated for our work. So I decided to move on. And I took a job with another company called Halo Labs that produced products for some reputable brands, Hush being one of them for instance. They did use hydrocarbons to extract and I helped them with some optimization that they needed in their labs. The head of when [inaudible 00:06:48] kind of crippled them a little bit and they were forced to let a bunch of people go. 

Adam Chambers - 00:06:54 

And that was when I finally made the right decision, hit Ben up for a job. And he, you know, with open arms helped me come up to Santa Rosa. And actually, yesterday is March [inaudible 00:07:09], the anniversary of when I joined up here. Just shortly before the acquisition and everything. It's been kind of strange. I've been involved with Delta for much longer than I've worked here, I suppose. Yeah, that's kind of the come to the company story for me here. 

Jason Showard - 00:07:28 

All right. Yeah, I am no stranger to how those relationships grow, and when you're one of the first people to receive some equipment, and they actually are good at giving feedback and having technical conversations, you can build some relationships really quickly. 

Adam Chambers - 00:07:44 

Yeah, and Ben is a visionary and a fantastic human being. It changed my life for the better as well. So I was happy to help him out when we were pioneering some of his gear. But more so when he offered me a job and was so generous with me. I just owe him a lot. 

Jason Showard - 00:08:05 

Nice. Well, that's great. So can you give me a brief, like a bird's eye view of Delta as a company? How did they start? How did it all come about? 

Adam Chambers - 00:08:16 

Yeah, of course. So, again, it comes down to Ben really. Ben's been in the game for a long time. Longer than I've even considered it an industry before legalization, all of that good stuff. He is a technical man himself. 

Adam Chambers - 00:08:34 

But this started out, you know, I suppose you could say that Delta was kind of founded on his just, services in building some custom systems. Despite the fact that ethanol is the main, what Delta is known for. Ben also has experience building CO2 and hydrocarbon systems, along with some of the other people that he helped start Delta with as well. They're also to be credited. 

Adam Chambers - 00:09:02 

And as it progressed, you know all those five years ago or so, around three years ago, that is when Ben had the bright idea to make an ethanol [inaudible 00:09:13] that would go two directions. And it sounds simple, but the electrical engineering work that goes behind a motor that can do that readily is harder than you might think. And so they came up with a method and optimized it, paid for it. And lo and behold, it just works better than most anything else out there. 

Jason Showard - 00:09:32 

I can attest to that. Absolutely. Yeah. That's why when it came down to the episode on centrifugal extraction, I was like, OK, Delta is the one that I want to talk to. I was very happy to get you on the phone. 

Adam Chambers - 00:09:45 

Yeah, very happy to talk about. 

Jason Showard - 00:09:47 

Yeah, I mean, you guys got to be proud of being the best. 

Adam Chambers - 00:09:51 

Yeah. I mean, I feel bad repping it. I guess it helps that the [inaudible 00:09:57] I suppose helped in developing it, but the engineers that developed it are the real rock stars. 

Jason Showard - 00:10:02 

Right on. So Delta started doing ethanol extraction and that was their main bag. When I got into the industry, every manufacturer had their specialty. You went to Delta for your centrifuge and there are other manufacturers that you would go to for a falling film or road evap even before that. And then moving on to all the various stills that are out there for distillation. Nowadays, everybody is coming out with their own entire suite. So can you give me a brief description of just the current equipment offerings that you guys have now beyond the CUP series centrifuges? 

Adam Chambers - 00:10:48 

Of course. So as far as just Delta is concerned because obviously, we have under the Gibraltar umbrella as of this year and everything. With specific to Delta or the ethanol products and again, the rolled film molecular distillation rate that we offer. But it gets [inaudible 00:11:11] from the beginning, so to speak, the Direct Chiller 40, DC 40, as it's known, is a [inaudible 00:11:19] filtering system that will allow you to feel, it's very important and very useful, I guess, in the sense that it can one, chill your ethanol and has its onboard pump to bring in solvent from a tertiary location, but it can also refill your [inaudible 00:11:37]. That's one thing that's really cool, that it's so you can run things in a loop. We offer, we're partnered with [inaudible 00:11:45] to provide a filtration skill that again has its pump on it. So that you can make sure that after it comes up [inaudible 00:11:54] CUP 30. 

Jason Showard - 00:11:55 

I'm sorry, I didn't hear, I didn't hear which, what company that was for the filter. 

Adam Chambers - 00:12:00 

Oh, it's ErtelAlsop 

Jason Showard - 00:12:02 

OK. 

Adam Chambers - 00:12:03 

Yeah, they're a fantastic filter manufacturer for [inaudible 00:12:06] filtration and beyond the, you know. If you've processed before you've ever tried to use vacuum filtration for cannabis processing, you've probably had a really bad time. 

Jason Showard - 00:12:18 

It is not fun. 

Adam Chambers - 00:12:20 

Nah! That used to be my entire day way back when. And so yeah between that and winterization. I was very thankful when we realized that we wanted to go cold and that you could push your miscella through a filter instead of having to pull it through and wait several hours longer than it took it to attack your material. So, yeah, that compresses our extraction suite. Like the loop there, that you can do, and you can [inaudible 00:12:51] as many bags as you can fit into a batch of ethanol. That it was ever going to take it out of the loop, which we're very happy with. 

Adam Chambers - 00:12:59 

Afterwards, you can send it out to our falling film evaporator. It comes in two different, you can call them models the steel there is the same. And it's just a chiller size variant that will give you two different capacities of forty-five or six pounds an hour. Should be expecting some higher throughputs in the future, the near future that is. As it stands, we're implementing some new technology. My engineers will come and sock me if I talk too much about that, to get some higher numbers for the evaporation tech that we have. But the falling film is just the best way to go about it when you're extracting botanical compounds with ethanol. 

Jason Showard - 00:13:46 

Couldn't agree. 

Adam Chambers - 00:13:47 

Pull over a lot of. Yeah, exactly. You'll pull over a lot of water and stuff. And the falling film, the way that it's laid out, just re-proofs each time so you can pick all of the moisture content out of there. 

Jason Showard - 00:13:59 

OK, actually, I wasn't planning on getting too deep into this today because it is an episode on centrifugal extraction. But you've piqued my interest with the reproofing on your falling film. If you could just real quick describe why it reproofs the ethanol. I'd love to know. 

Adam Chambers - 00:14:21 

Yeah, of course. So as it falls down the column, the extract that is [inaudible 00:14:27] you vaporize it and the extract stays in its, you know, the viscous solid form, it's going to fall into the column, down the column and be recollected. But the vapor passed on the other hand, is such that it goes through a couple of ducts and travels against gravity to travel back to the second side of the heat exchange, the plate heat exchangers where that are being chilled. And will thus re-condense the ethanol. The molecular weight of water and any of the trapped extract as it's coming through across that column, is going to it's going to drop out against gravity effectively. And just be re-collected into the concentrate where you can easily get rid of it with the heat which [inaudible 00:15:18] 

Jason Showard - 00:15:20 

OK, that makes sense. So it stays with the heavies, so to speak. 

Adam Chambers - 00:15:24 

Exactly. 

Jason Showard - 00:15:24 

That's interesting. OK, cool. Was that it for your equipment offerings? Oh. No you guys have your molecular [inaudible 00:15:33] as well. 

Adam Chambers - 00:15:34 

Yeah, exactly. There's the roll film which we really, I really like. You know, it's, I love Delta Separations, but I'm sure anybody here would admit as well, it's a great machine for the price point. That again, you can do it, I love [inaudible 00:15:50] units, and there are plenty of other units out there that have a great price tag but are absolutely phenomenal in operations. [inaudible 00:15:58] yield as well, for a five-liter unit. It's hard to beat. [inaudible 00:16:04] it’s always nice to have because they won't break like the wipers will, if you've ever again, just going back to the processing days. If you've ever had to stop pulp production to change the wipers on a wiped film unit, can be really frustrating. 

Jason Showard - 00:16:20 

Well, and then also with the wiped film units, if you don't change them and nothing catastrophically goes wrong, they just recede and then you're slowly and slowly getting less temperature control as that film builds up a little bit thicker. It's something that's a little bit insidious there. Where nothing's catastrophically wrong, so you don't go in to fix it. But then it ends up costing you yield for sure. 

Adam Chambers - 00:16:43 

Exactly. And I'd say that I think there's one other machine that is worth mentioning. We've recently this year released our Vortex Trichome Separator. Our solventless [inaudible 00:16:59] hash machine. That's co-developed with [inaudible 00:17:03] it uses a patented dual vortex that's generated by the paddles down at bottom of the basin to, again, just kind of whip a vortex into the water and brush the trichomes off very gently to create some fantastic water hash with it as well. 

Adam Chambers - 00:17:24 

And it has some nice safety features and a [inaudible 00:17:27] pump to be able to pull your water throughout and not have gravity drain it as the older prototype units. That's all...

Learn the tricks of the trade when it comes to selecting the highest quality biomass and preparing it for extraction. Jason talks to Bri Tolp of Futurola about how their shredders are the best tool for getting to your ideal mill size.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Jason Showard - 00:00:10 

Hello and welcome to Episode two of The Modern Extractor, a podcast focusing on the processes, equipment, and science found inside a cannabis extraction lab. I'm your host, Jason Showered, and I work professionally in the cannabis extraction field. If you've listened to any of the previous shows, you know that season one is focused on ethanol extraction and post-processing. And each episode focuses on a particular stage in that process following the material through the lab from start to finish. If you haven't listened to any of the previous shows, welcome to the Modern Extractor. 

Jason Showard - 00:00:40 

In today's show, we'll be talking about how to select the right biomass for extraction, as well as how to prepare that biomass for the most efficient extraction possible. We'll have Bri Tolp from Futurola on with us later in the show to talk about how their shredders are the best tool to get you to your ideal mill size. But first, let's talk a bit about how to find good material to extract from. Obviously, the easiest way to do this is to get a sample, send it to a lab, wait for the results, and then purchase material that meets the right cannabinoid concentration specs for whatever you're trying to produce. 

Jason Showard - 00:01:12 

In a perfect world, there would always be time for this and it's absolutely how it's done for the large-scale industrial operations. It's really important to buy this way if you're a CBD producer buying hemp, so that you can ensure the material is not too high in THC content. Buying hot hemp could actually cost you more in chromatography to remediate the THC from the final product than the CBD will be worth in the end. There isn't always time to wait for lab results in the procurement process. 

Jason Showard - 00:01:38 

And this is where an experienced eye can make a big difference in your bottom line. If you're at the scale where you're extracting a thousand pounds or more weekly, it's unlikely that all your biomass is coming from the same farm all year round. That means that there's likely to be a broker involved who is collecting from a bunch of different farms to sell to extractors. With that being the case, there are often many different batches of biomass added to one load. 

Jason Showard - 00:02:00 

Hopefully they're separated, often they aren't. Hopefully the broker will tell you the story behind the load, but well, brokers. And even if you trust your broker, he could have been misled. So a thorough inspection isn't rude. It's just good business. First things first. We're going to look at all the different bags. The actual physical bags that the material's inside of. Not every farm packs their material up the same way. Not every store sells the same bags. 

Jason Showard - 00:02:26 

Is there any tape on any of the bags? How are they closed or tied? This will be our first clue as to whether or not there are multiple batches in the load. If there does appear to be multiple batches, we're going to want to open and inspect a couple of bags from each. Dig down past the top and into the middle of the bag. Get a good handful, pull it out, palm up, give it a good squeeze in your hand and then let go. 

Jason Showard - 00:02:48 

Good material will stick together when you let go and keep the same basic shape it was when it was squeezed in your hand. We call this the squeeze test. After the squeeze, rub it together between your hands like you're warming up at a fire. See how crumbly it is. If it turns to dust, it's not ideal, but it'll still work if it passed the squeeze. The best-case scenario is that it breaks a little, but still some moisture content. 

Jason Showard - 00:03:09 

So it rolls around and compresses and sticks to your hands a little instead of powdering. Leaving a little of what you just rolled around in your hands. Bring both hands up to your face and get your face down in there. You know what smell you're looking for. One thing to pay attention to with the smell test is the presence of any alcohol or solvent odors. Keep your eyes open when you get your face down into your hands to give it a smell. 

Jason Showard - 00:03:30 

If your nose misses it, your eyes may water a bit in the presence of solvents. While the industry is slowly cleaning itself out and the honorable business folks are rising to the top, there are certainly some bad actors out there still in the mix. Some rascally brokers have even been known to sell material that's already been processed. This is referred to as Spun Trim. If it appears to have been processed with alcohol in a centrifuge or Blown Trim if it appears to have been run through a hydrocarbon column. I've even seen some “fresh trim” come in that still holds the shape of the column it was processed in. 

Jason Showard - 00:04:04 

This will look like little biomass hockey pucks that are usually three to six inches in diameter. There are some vapor probes you can buy for this, but I find them less reliable than these inspections. As you process material, pay attention to what your own processed material looks and feels like after it's had a chance to dry out. If it looks and acts like that, don't buy it. OK, so we've got our hands on some good quality biomass. Our lab tests came back at 12 percent. 

Jason Showard - 00:04:29 

It squeezes and smells nice and sticks to our hands and it's going to make some beautiful goldies. The next step in ensuring we get everything we can out of this material, is to make sure that it's milled to the ideal particle size. There's a bunch of machines out there that say they do this the best, and many a booth full of promises at BizCon. Extractors use everything from shredders to hammer mills, to mulchers, blenders, food processors, you name it. If it chops things up, we've tried it. 

Jason Showard - 00:04:56 

If there's one thing not lacking in this community, it's innovation and willingness to think outside the box. For about a hundred bucks at your favorite big box hardware store, you can get a Toro mulcher that'll do the trick. But it's a bit of a pain to use. When you run it forward, it's a leaf blower that blows air, and in reverse, it's a mulcher that sucks material through the metal fan blade and mulches it into a collection bag. Unfortunately, if the material's dry, it powders it up pretty well, even on the lowest setting. When the time comes to invest in a machine that mill as fast and accurately as possible, look no further than a Futurola shredder. 

Jason Showard - 00:05:29 

When choosing your desired mill size. There's a lot of factors to consider. Mill it too fine, and it will break more cell walls in the material, allowing for more chlorophyll and undesirables to be extracted. The finer the particle size, the more ethanol will be retained in the biomass after the spin cycle of your centrifugal extraction. After a run through the centrifuge, all of the ethanol that is retained in the biomass, is not only a loss of ethanol, but a loss of desirable oil that you've just dissolved into the ethanol. 

Jason Showard - 00:05:59 

This ethanol retention loss issue is often compounded by the fact that the same batch of ethanol is regularly re-chilled and used to extract from multiple batches of biomass, before being run through an evaporator and having the oil separated out of it. The process of evaporation and ethanol recovery is often a lab's biggest bottleneck. So it's a current industry standard to use one batch of ethanol to extract from multiple batches of biomass. From a solubility standpoint, there's probably room to dissolve seven or eight batches of biomass into the ethanol. 

Jason Showard - 00:06:30 

But your loss rate from the ethanol retention in the spun biomass would make this inefficient. The correct mill size for your extraction recipes is critical. You'll be able to extract slightly more with a smaller mill size because the ethanol will be able to make contact with more of the surface area of your biomass in the centrifuge. But more of the ethanol will be lost to retention in your biomass after the spin cycle. Your particle size decision should be made based on the following factors. 

Jason Showard - 00:06:57 

One, what is your evaporation capacity? If you can run your ethanol through one bag of biomass and send it off to evaporation without bottlenecking yourself at the evaporation stage, this is the best way to minimize loss of oil. However, if this is the case, you'd probably be better off buying an additional centrifuge and figuring out how to send miscella that has two or three passes on it to the evaporator. 

Jason Showard - 00:07:19 

Two, what is your cost of ethanol? If you're paying a premium for ethanol, then the ethanol loss in finely milled material will start to add up. It isn't going to make or break your operation, but it is one factor to consider when making mill-size decisions. Cost-cutting is going to become a bigger factor, with the industry heading towards larger, more streamlined operations producing more product. 

Jason Showard - 00:07:42 

Three, what is the cost and accessibility of your biomass? If you can get biomass readily and inexpensively, then the extraction efficiency may not be as important as it would be if you were paying a premium for it. If this is the case, larger particle size, that may leave a small amount of desirables behind, but won't retain as much ethanol, may be ideal. 

Jason Showard - 00:08:02 

Four, what is the demand for your finished goods? If there's an infinite demand for your finished product and as soon as it's produced, it's out the door. The goal should be to produce as much as possible, as fast as possible. That said, it may be worth the retention loss, to run your ethanol through more bags of biomass than you otherwise would so that your miscella is as rich as possible. 

Jason Showard - 00:08:23 

This will decrease evaporation time and increase your gross output. If three or more bags will be run on one batch of ethanol, keeping the mill size between a quarter-inch and five 16th inch is ideal. In my experience, a quarter-inch particle size and two centrifuge runs, on one batch of ethanol was ideal after plugging in answers to the above questions. Depending on your variables, a range between three 16th and five 16th of an inch particle size is the sweet spot. 

Jason Showard - 00:08:50 

If you're running sugar leaf trim, larger particles are OK because they aren't dense. If your biomass has dense flower in it. Smaller particles are better. The idea is to make sure the ethanol has the ability to easily flow around all the surface area of your material. Sometimes the ethanol won't penetrate and extract from the center of dense snugs if they're left too large. After your materials build to your chosen particle size, it's time to back it up for your centrifuge. 

Jason Showard - 00:09:16 

Centrifuge bags are typically made from a light nylon mesh sewn into a tube with a flat bottom and a flat zippable top. These bags allow for ethanol to flow freely through your biomass and dissolve the compounds you're extracting. But they keep all the biomass contained so that it can easily be removed from the centrifuge after it's been extracted. Examine your bags regularly and be prepared to retire bags that have holes in them. Your downstream filters will definitely thank you. It's worth noting here that if you've done a good job milling your material, there will be less stems to poke holes in your bags and they'll last longer. 

Jason Showard - 00:09:49 

Well, now that we've gone over how to select your biomass and how to choose your ideal mill size, let's talk to Bri about how Futurola's shredders could help you get there. 

Jason Showard - 00:09:57 

The Modern Extractor would like to welcome guest Bri Tolp of Futurola to the show. Welcome. We're happy to have you here today. 

Bri Tolp - 00:10:03 

Thanks, Jason. I'm happy to be here. 

Jason Showard - 00:10:06 

So Bri where are you calling in from today? 

Bri Tolp - 00:10:08 

I am calling in from sunny Los Angeles where we are, you know, in lockdown. 

Jason Showard - 00:10:15 

I am also in the Los Angeles area, and also under lockdown. But hey that gives us plenty of time to talk about Futurola. So give me a bird's eye view. Tell me what you guys do as a company. 

Bri Tolp - 00:10:25 

So Futurola actually started in '96 in Amsterdam. We were a Futurola coffee shop. Funny enough. And if you go there now you'll see Futurola rolling papers and everything in all the different coffee shops all over Amsterdam. When we first started, though, we were focused more on the consumer side of things. You know, so we did rolling papers, grinders, these really incredible hand rollers that are just really simple and easy to use. Once we decided to bring it to the US, we started pushing that same market here, grinder's, rolling papers, all these different accessories. 

Bri Tolp - 00:11:00 

But going to all these trade shows and talking to all these different companies, we realized there was, that there was really something that was lacking here. That there's all these people that are, they're producing pre-rolls and they're doing all these different things, but they don't have a solution for it. So we started building the brand, and we started coming up with ideas to make things easier, streamlined and just better for production. That's when we created the cones. That's when we came out with the Knockbox, which is the machine that does a hundred pre-rolls in two minutes, which we actually just released a new one that does three hundred in two minutes. 

Bri Tolp - 00:11:34 

That's when we developed the first shredder, which I know we'll touch base on this, you know, shortly. You know, so we really went from this consumer side of things to more of now business to business now. Where we're working with these companies to help them fulfill their pre-roll needs. 

Jason Showard - 00:11:51 

Nice. So how did the Futurola's material prep products for pre-rolls become a staple of extraction lab material prep? How did that all come about? 

Bri Tolp - 00:12:02 

So we've, we created our first shredder in 2016, and the reason why that came about is because we had, right, so we had the lockbox. So we have this incredible, easy to use, extremely affordable piece of equipment that's going to produce a hundred pre-rolls in two minutes. But we don't have a solution for them to grind up their product you know. I don't know if you know this, but I'm sure everyone listening will understand, the way to grind a product was a food processor. It worked great. It's dandy. It's cheap. You have them at home. They're easy to get. But the problem with that is that you're not getting a consistent grind. So when people were using that with the machine, they're getting powder at the bottom, thicker material at the top. And when they're using it to run in the Knockbox, it's giving them inconsistent fills. 

Bri Tolp - 00:12:49 

So they're like, you have this incredible machine, why don't you have something to go along with it? And that was really when we created the shredder and from doing that. So I joined the team in 2018 and I worked at all these different groves across California. And our first shredder that we came out with, was basically an empty barrel with almost like, they're specialized weed whacker whips. They're moving on extremely quick speed to grind up the material. It's all based on time. 

Bri Tolp - 00:13:23 

So it's about two to seven seconds on average to grind up anywhere from one to seven pounds. But it's all based on time. So depending on the time you set and the material you're working with, that'll give you different material size. Now, when I came in, we had just released the super shredder. The super shredder is the unit that has a screen built into it. That's this three millimeter screen. So that screen is going to separate the stems and separate any other thicker piece of material that you don't want in the pre-roles. 

Jason Showard - 00:13:57 

Is that super shredder the most popular one used in extraction prep? 

Bri Tolp - 00:14:03 

Yes. And the reason being because when a lot of companies that are processing material for extraction, I mean, there's all different types of material that they're using right. But for the most part, they're getting a lot of biomass. And it's not like it's just clean, beautiful pieces of broken-down material. It's, there's sticks, there's stems. There is, it needs to be cleaned up. So by being able to process it with this screen in there, that screen is separating the sticks and the stems from the good product that you want to use. So there's no other sifting process needed after. And like I said, you're doing this in two to seven seconds. 

Jason Showard - 00:14:40 

Let me stop you for a second here. What I like to try to do is when we're talking about a machine on the show, I like to picture my listeners driving or not in front of a computer so they can't just click on and see what it looks like. So let's give a description of, you said the super shredders the one that's the most popular for extraction. So, let's describe the, can you describe the whole...

Jason Showard walks listeners through an overview of the extraction, distillation, and crystallization processes used to take cannabis from cultivars to concentrates.

Episode Transcript:

Hello, and welcome to the modern extractor. I'm your host, Jason Showard. And I work professionally in the cannabis extraction field. After years of experimentation tens of thousands of dollars in lab tests to collect data from those experiments, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of biomass successfully extracted and distilled. I decided to spill my secrets to you with this podcast. The modern extractor will be focusing on the processes, equipment and science found inside a cannabis extraction laboratory. I've yet to find a curated collection of extraction knowledge, and that's exactly what I'm going to build here. I decided to produce this podcast because I kept looking for something like it to listen to, and it just didn't exist. In Season One, we'll be focusing on ethanol extraction and post processing and either distillate or isolate. The shows will be released in an order which follows the workflow of material through a lab. Each episode will dig deep into a particular stage in that workflow and discuss the various approaches with industry expert guests. In today's show, we'll be taking a bird's eye view of the entire ethanol extraction and post processing workflow. For the sake of simplicity, and getting through the whole process in one show, this will be a less technical overview of the full process. For this overview, I'll be following what I believe to be the best approach to ethanol extraction. in future episodes, we'll dig deeper into each of the stages and pick apart the different options and approaches a lot more technically, think of this as both a walk through the process and a syllabus for what lies ahead in season one.

So after this week's overview, next week, in Episode Two, we'll talk about sourcing biomass and prepping it for extraction. The first step in any extraction operation is getting your hands on good material to extract from. Obviously, the ideal situation is to get a sample of the material you're interested in buying, send it to a lab and have the seller agree to hold the material for you until the test results come back and tell you exactly how much of each cannabinoid is present before you buy it. But this is a fast moving field. And there may not always be time for a lab test. You don't want to miss out on a good opportunity. But you also don't want to get burned by buying bad material. We'll go over some tests that you can do to ensure you're buying high quality fresh material that hasn't already been processed. After you've sourced your biomass, it's time to prepare it for extraction. The first step in the preparation process is either milling, shredding or grinding your material. It's just not efficient to extract from biomass that hasn't been appropriately broken up. There's no magic spec when it comes to mill size and your decisions here should be based on variables specific to your extraction operation. And Episode Two, we'll go over how to determine your ideal mill size based on variables unique to you, such as your evaporation capacity, your cost of ethanol, because the biomass, your access to biomass, and the amount of demand there is for your finished goods. Once you determine what your mill size will be, there are a lot of options out there to mill grind or shred your material down to spec. After trying way too many options. I landed on Futurola shredders to do the job right. On next week's show we will have Bri Tolp from Futurola as a guest to discuss how Futurola shredders will get you to your desired mill size better than the competition. After your material has been milled down, it's time to bag it up for extraction. Most centrifuge manufacturers sell specially constructed nylon bags that zip shut and fit their centrifuges perfectly. Once filled, the bags of biomass should be held at your desired extraction temperature for about eight hours.

In episode 3 we'll get into the extraction process. It's time to decide what temperature we want to run our extraction. Room temperature extraction will ensure we extract the most from our biomass but along with maximizing the extraction of desirables we also extract far more undesirables than with a cold extraction. If done correctly, cold extraction will leave a very small percentage of desirables behind, but reject so many of the undesirables that it will allow us to skip cumbersome downstream processes like winterization and carbon filtration. Cold extraction requires pre shelling of both our ethanol and our biomass. I'm a big proponent of this method, but in Episode Three, we will break them both down and discuss why it may be correct to choose one over the other as well as ideal run temperatures and some low tech chiller hacks to save some money until you're ready to buy that chiller. The majority of ethanol extraction is done in centrifuges, only micro garage scale or huge high throughput CBD labs use other methods. While we may touch on some of the other methods out there, we'll be focusing primarily on centrifugal extraction. An extraction centrifuge is basically an explosion proof stainless steel washing machine that's optimized to agitate and extract cannabis. A typical centrifuge run will look something like this. Get your biomass to your extraction temperature for about eight hours, get the ethanol down to the extraction temperature. Put the bagged biomass into the centrifuge, push or pumped chilled ethanol into the centrifuge, run the agitate cycle, run the spin cycle and then drain the ethanol which now contains oil. Often, extractors will get the same batch of ethanol back down to extraction temperature and run it through a second, third, or even fourth bag of biomass. This is another decision that is directly dependent on your operation variables. We will get into picking all this apart with our guests Adam Chambers of Delta Separations. Delta is the creator of the first extraction centrifuge to hit the market and has become quite a beast in the industry. With his extraction experience and education in forensic biology. Adam is super knowledgeable on the entire process, and I'm excited to have him on the show.

Moving on to Episode Four, we'll tackle filtration. I can't stress the importance of filtration enough, trust me, having effective stage filtration processes makes life so much easier and reduces the wear on your equipment. So at this point in the process, we've run our ethanol through two or three bags of biomass. What we have now has many names, tincture, masella mother liquor, the list goes on. Technically, I think masella is the correct term. But you'll catch me saying tincture here and there as well. Old habits die hard. It's It's funny how the terminology you use in your first lab will stick with you forever, get me around my original crew and we have some ridiculous names for everything. You'll catch me peppering them in here and there. Anyway, back to filtration. Some particulate matter will always break free from the biomass during the extraction agitation. The majority should be retained in your nylon centrifuge bags with some amount always get through and be suspended in our solution. All of our downstream equipment is depending on us to get the particulate as well as any fats, waxes and lipids extracted from the plant out of solution. If we're running cold, we likely haven't extracted too many of the fats, waxes and lipids. But it is important to get our miscella filtered well it's still called as these components are more easily filtered out at the lower temperatures. medium scale operations typically put together or purchase a filters skid. In my experience. The best configuration here is a bag filter, sometimes two in series staged in mesh size, feeding into a one micron lenticular filter. We'll have Maria Peterson from Scott laboratories join us in Episode Four to discuss the ins and outs of the many different styles of filtration used in cannabis extraction. She's the most knowledgeable person I've ever spoken to about filtration and I'm really happy I get to share her with you guys. Let's catch back up with our work in progress. After running our ethanol through a few bags of biomass and filtering the miscella, it's now time to separate the oil from the ethanol.

Episode Five takes us into evaporation solvent recovery and reproofing. So far, we've extracted the oil from the plant, but it's currently dissolved in ethanol at a very low ratio. In order to continue processing the oil the ethanol has to be removed. This part of the process has certainly come a long way. In the beginning, people were boiling ethanol off of their extracted oil on a hot plate. This is definitely not efficient, definitely not scalable and just plain dangerous. From there, rotary evaporators became the standard tool to separate the oil from the ethanol. While they were a significant safety improvement from a hot plate, rotovaps just weren't fast enough and bottlenecked many an extraction operation. Then along came falling film evaporators! These completely changed the solvent recovery game, with one unit being able to replace about 10 rotovaps. Trusteel was one of the first if not the first company to design a falling film evaporator for extractors. Thanks to their AUTOVAP line, ethanol extraction became much more scalable. Falling film evaporators are now the industry standard solvent recovery device. In Episode Five, I'm very excited to have Ray Van Lenten, founder and CTO of Trusteel on the show to discuss how falling films work and why they're the best solution for solvent recovery. For the sake of today's overview, the important thing to know about the falling film is that its function is to separate the cannabis oil from the ethanol that it's dissolved in. There are typically two collection vessels, one for the oil that's had the majority of the ethanol removed from it now referred to as crude, and one for the ethanol that's been vaporized off, re-condensed and collected again for future use. Before we follow the crude on to the next stage, it's important to note that during the extraction process, the ethanol can pick up water, it picks it up from the plant material and even from exposure to the air in the room. The ethanol and water from azeotropes that are hard to break. The azeotropes have a boiling point close to that pure ethanol, so they can't be separated out with any of the equipment we've discussed so far. As the proof of the ethanol decreases with the addition of water, the extraction efficiency also decreases. Medium to large scale operations will usually reproof the ethanol, removing the water and azeotropes with the molecular sieve or a multi plate fractional distillation column. At small scale, it's just not worth investing in the extra equipment. But at any real scale it's critical to reproof your ethanol and ensure you're getting the maximum extraction efficiency.

So back to our work in progress. We have crude oil... now what? In episode six we'll get deep into decarb with our guests Greg Arias of Aftermath Laboratories. Greg's a chemical engineer who you can usually find working on formulations, various cannabis chemistry projects or consulting of some sort. He's also my first phone call when I realize I need to call on the big guns for problem solving or brainstorming. Decarboxylation is the only chemical reaction that occurs during the entire extraction, distillation and crystallization processes. In the Decarb step, we will break the bond attaching the carboxylic acid groups to the cannabinoids through a timed exposure to heat. The majority of the THC and CBD found in a cannabis plant are found in their acidic forms of thca and cbda. thca is not psychoactive and won't produce the desired effects unless you decarboxylate it and convert it into delta 9 THC, which is psychoactive. CBDA has gotten a little bit more attention lately, and neither CBD nor CBDA are psychoactive. So occasionally the CBDA heavy hemp crude will be collected pre-decarb, but more commonly the hemp crude gets decarbed, distilled, and then crystallized into CBD isolate. A typical Decarb setup is a sealed jacketed pressure vessel with a mixing motor and a cold trap. Heated fluid is circulated through the jacket for temperature control. The mixing motor mounts to the lid of the vessel and has a shaft that penetrates down through a bearing seal on the lid. There's a small propeller mounted at the bottom of the shaft to stir the crude inside the reactor. The cold trap will we condense any residual solvents that are vaporized at decarb temperatures and pressures. decarboxylation takes place when the oil is held at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time. In Episode Six, I'll give out my time and temperature SOPs which I've kept top secret for years. They're way faster and lower temperature than a lot of the information that's out there and they work great.

Episode Seven takes us to devolatilization, which is a mouthful, so we call it terp strip. We terp strip so that we can remove all the volatiles which have a lower boiling point than our sought after cannabinoids. We do this so that we can achieve a far deeper vacuum on the distillate run that follows the terp strip run. The deeper vacuum on the ensuing distillate run allows us to keep the temperatures on our equipment lower and results in less thermal degradation or cannabinoids. wiped film or rolled film distillation is by far the most efficient method for this stage. So while I will touch on short path, the majority of the SOPs discussed will be pertaining to wiped or rolled film distillation units. If decarb went correctly, there shouldn't be any residual solvents in our decarbed crude at this point. The remaining volatiles are mostly terpenes. And we'll remove them much the same way that we removed the ethanol from our miscella by vaporizing them from the crude and re condensing them elsewhere to separate, or strip, the terpenes from the terp-stripped crude. In this process, your decarbed crude oil is pumped from the wiped films heated feed tank into the top edge of the evaporator body. The evaporator body is heated to a specified temperature using a fluid filled jacket. A wiper unit containing multiple sets of flexible squeegee-like vertical wipers spins inside the evaporator body. The wipers make light contact with the heated inner wall of the evaporator body so that when your crude is pumped into the body, the spinning wipers squeegee it around the entirety of the inner wall. The thin film of oil created by the wipers is easily heated to the temperature of the hot wall, vaporizing any volatiles in the crude that will vaporize at or below the set temperature and pressure. The vapors created are condensed on a condenser that runs down the center of the evaporator body. The condenser has a separate temperature control bath that allows it to be set at a different temperature than the evaporator body temperature that allows the vaporize terpenes to re condense into a liquid and the distilled terpenes run down the condenser and into the distillate collection vessel. Gravity and small angled grooves on the wipers help the decarbed crude make its way down the hot evaporator body wall and into the residue collection vessel. along the way and the volatiles have been removed and it's now referred to as terp-stripped crude. Extensive cleaning and a slight reconfiguration of the machine are needed before the terp-stripped crude can be run again on our wiped film to create distillate. For the sake of both time and loss efficiency. it's advisable to build up enough decarbed crude to do a large terp strip run followed by a large distillate run. Cleaning between runs is time consuming, and more or less the same amount of loss occurs on every run, whether it's 5 liters or 500.

Episode 8 is what we've all been waiting for. By far the most gratifying part of the process. cannabinoid distillation. time to make some Goldie's. We will be using the same style wiped film distillation unit we used on the terp strip for the distillate run, this time by raising the temperatures on the evaporator body and main condenser as well as achieving a deeper vacuum than we had on the trip strip. We will vaporize, condense, and collect our cannabinoid distillate. Similar to the last run on this machine. The terp stripped crude is pumped from the wiped film unit's heated feed tank into the top edge of the evaporator body. The spinning wipers squeegee the oil around and down the inner wall of the evaporator body and the thin film that thin film of oil is quickly heated to the new set temperature and the cannabinoids were after vaporize, just like the distilled terpenes did on the last run the THC or CBD distillate quickly condenses on the main condenser and flows down into our distillate collection vessel. The crude remaining on the evaporator body wall is wiped around and down and flows into our residue collection vessel. This 'one-pass' crude can be run again later at higher temperatures with diminishing returns. This is the end of the line for THC, but CBD distillate can be crystallized into Isolate. Delta nine THC's natural state is a light golden colored oil. So if we want THC crystals, we would have had to go after the THCA, which is crystalline in nature, before the decarb step. It is worth noting here that if we are after the THCA crystals, hydrocarbon extraction is 100% the way to go. Our CBD distillate can now be crystallized into Isolate if we want to take purification to the next level. The crystallization process starts with dissolving CBD distillate into pentane in a jacketed reactor vessel. The dissolved the CBD/pentane mix is moved into a jacketed crystallization tank and incrementally dropped in temperature over time. Once crystallization is complete, the crystals can be filtered out and collected as isolate, or re dissolved and crystallized again for an even higher purity final product.

Alright, well that takes us through the full extraction, distillation and crystallization workflow. I plan to record some more episodes on other lab related topics as the season progresses. Stay tuned for additional episodes with topics like breaking down your vacuum system, discussing lab testing, and what to think about all the Chinese equipment that's coming onto the market. Also, if you want to hear something specific, let me know. Email me my emails Jason at modern extractor.com I'll be excited to hear from you. If you guys like the show, please subscribe, the more subscribers I get the better guests I can get on in the future. Well with that, a big heartfelt thanks to everyone for tuning in to the first ever episode of the modern extractor. New episodes will be out every Tuesday. I'm Jason Showard. Let's talk soon!

The Modern Extractor is a podcast focused on the processes, equipment, and science found inside a cannabis extraction laboratory. In season one, host Jason Showard takes you on an in-depth journey through the process of ethanol extraction and distillation of cannabis. Episodes are released in an order which follows the work flow of material through a lab.  Each episode digs deep into a particular stage of that work flow and discusses the pros and cons various processes, equipment, and SOPs with industry expert guests. Join us every tuesday for new episodes.