Co2 extraction with home-brew kit?

vostok

Well-Known Member
I tried this years ago, only to be the butt on my mentor, the C02 emitted is no way enough, best is a small lpg burner, gives shit loads of c02, but adds water to the air too, .. or a very small BBQ is best
 

Blunter the kid

Well-Known Member
I have seen some impressive Co2 extractions lately, but the equipment looks pretty expensive. Is there a way to Co2-extract with a simple home brewing kit like this:

http://wineandhop.com/collections/homebrew-equipment-starter-kits/products/homebrew-kegging-kit-with-new-co2-tank
I think for co2 to be effectively utilized as a solvent it needs to be cold enough and/or pressurized enough for the gas or solid to be a liquid so it can saturate the material and dissolve the trichomes in the same way butane does.
Basically it can't be done just because it takes a serious pressure vessel to take co2 and pressurize it into a liquid, although temperature can be reduced so pressure won't have to be increase quite so high to achieve supercritical co2.
It's an extremely expensive extraction technique, most suitable for large scale extraction, and making your own pressure vessel could potentially be extremely dangerous.
But yea you can't use co2 gas to extract, otherwise it would be totally easy :D
 

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Even sub critical CO2 extraction is done around 850 psi and super critical may be as high as 10Ksi. Here is the chart.
 

Attachments

Doer

Well-Known Member
It really is just another another liquid solvent. But, getting a liquid state out of CO2 is not a DIY effort.

The beauty of n-Butane is the boiling point is low, 31.5 F at atmospheric pressure. So, without heavy pressure and low temps we can use a dandy solvent that can be recovered as a gas by heating it to room temp again. Plus it will not freeze solid in vacuum at standard temp (59F) either.

That is not the case with CO2. CO2 extraction does not produce better results. In fact, they have found in paprika extraction, n-butane is better, being easier to control the pressure and temps. The entire paprika industry in Hungary, paprika's home base, is moving away from the heavy cost and dangerous CO2 extraction methods for n-Butane.

I read some really good papers in the literature about it.
 
Top