QUESTION; David, in the six ways to control an extract I believe I understand all except for polarity. Are you speaking of the physical alignment of the atoms?
I'm assuming you explain all of this in the instructions. I just can't wait. I ordered the 175 last night. Thanks.
ANSWER; Hello, water and oil don’t mix because they are not the same polarity. They repel each other. For a liquid or solid to dissolve in a solvent it must be the same polarity as the material you want to dissolve. Meaning they are miscible together. Water and Alcohol are. A more advanced view that complicates things is when you have a mid polar like acetone that mixes with either a non polar oil or a polar alcohol or a compound or solvent that has a dipole moment. It will mix with both all the time or to some degree. When this mid polar liquid like acetone mixes with a polar like water for example, the acetone polarity changes and will no longer mix with the non polar compound oil. This can be useful or work against you. You can use temp and time to control this behaviour to some degree.
You can use this to work magic or if you did not have it in the plans it can make a nightmare for you. To complicate things even further, the plants have an array of polarities in them that can alter the polarity of solvent, making them useful or working against you in small ways. Normally a 10% mix would effect a noticeable change. So you don’t have to worry about this if you use enough solvent. This is one of the problems with Soxhlet Extractors and loop systems. They use a small amount of solvent and recycle it constantly by boiling the solvent and condensing it over and over again. Normally they are altering things very slightly and go unnoticed. All the extractors that brag about speed are using less solvent or use a machine to vacuum and compress the gas to speed it up. We have found that the problem above occurs more often with the machines and the risk of using a machine with a flammable solvent was not worth it. Building a faster tank was the answer although more expensive. The more you extract the more you learn about how to fine tune using polarizing techniques.
The most important part of extracting is to understand how to use polarity coupled with temperature, time and pressure or no pressure. We assume you know about polarity when you buy a solvation process. For example if heat is getting things out that you don’t want you can reduce the heat and replace it with time which may get just as much out that you do want but without the effects of heat should leave out what you don’t want. When one parameter produces something you don’t like, replace it with parameter that creates similar but not exact results. Heat is a cousin to pressure and time. Time is a cousin to temperature. In a since they are cousins to each other in one way or another. Think about it,, sugar in water will dissolve faster with heat but will dissolve if given enough time but with cold can dissolve very slow. Add sugar in oil and no amount of time will dissolve it but adding heat may melt it and put it in suspension but NOT SOLUTION because it is not dissolved it is just in suspension and will separate into layers if given enough time and allowed to rest.
Add enough heat and it will dissolve faster but if there are enzymes in the water the heat may kill them. Pressure may as well but to a smaller degree. Seems like time pressure and heat are our friends but are enemies as well when extracting for purity.
Something else you need to understand is this. The major extraction occurs with the first volume of solvent that contacts the plant. You have 1 volume in the column that holds the plant material You have 4 volumes in the solvent tank that holds the solvent. We call this a 1:4 loading ratio or 4 volume efficiency. Any liquid only requires 3 if the polarity matches what you want to dissolve but we give you guys an extra volume to make sure you have enough to play around with co solvents and the like. The point is, when the first volume of solvent fills the column, this is the point where temperature, time, pressure and polarity work their magic. After they have finished the job of extracting, the 3 remaining volumes are then allowed to wash out what the first volume has dissolved. This wash can take place quickly of slowly. If you want to leave things behind that may agitate loose and come out, then you may want to wash out slowly. Not understanding this fact is why some people produce higher volumes than others. And differing qualities or better said, appearances. If you understand this and know how to apply it correctly, you should not be able to find much in the plant after you have extracted it unless you intended on leaving it behind.
Remember that oils have differing viscosities and molecular sizes as well as varying polarities to some degree. Understanding what you have in a plant and knowing how to manipulate those components using time, temperature heat and solvent can make the difference. Even the location of where they are located in the plant can play a role. If in the stem, the flower, the surface, the leaves. Leaves hold more chlorophyll for example. If you want something else in the leaf but not the chlorophyll then you may not want to use alcohol, or heat or longer times. Perform a low efficiency extraction first or a high efficiency extraction first. Then change it going the other way. See what you want begins to appear and then adjust one parameter up and down to see if it gets better or worse. Knowing the polarity of what you are wanting to get out is half or more than half the battle.
For example, Oils vary in viscosity and weight. Wax is heavy may hold some light oils but a lot of oil may not be in the wax at all. So a cold extraction will decrease extracted wax and will dissolve the oils in other parts of the plant and on the outside of the wax if given enough time to. But if you add too much time or don’t decrease the temp enough, the wax may dissolve or melt out as well. If the wax has dark tannins in it you may want to leave those behind but if the wax has valuable oils in it, you may be doing more harm than good. You have to weigh out if the wax contains things that you don’t want or that are harmful. Appearance by color, weight etc is not a good judge of quality. HPCL HPLC HPLC will tell quality. Yet it appears recently that appearance has don’t just that, become a judge of quality when in reality it is more a of an example of how one can use cheap quipment to make one product in so much volume to sway public opinion by conditioning them. The fact that this system can produce such a high quality product on the low end sometimes will mislead someone into thinking that that is the best quality that can be produced when in reality they have just begun to learn how to take full advantage of the potential.
I will admit wax is not a good thing when burned. Smoking any medicine and converting some of it to poison is not the best way to receive it. Oral or injection of a controlled known dosage is the true delivery method that should be employed if the pure compound is beneficial. Most plant oils will be readily accepted by the body through the skin if the molecules are small enough. What does not get absorbed most of the time will act like a good defense for the body on the outside just like it did with the plant. Do plants get cancer? Well is a parasite a cancer. Sure it can cause the same damage. Modify the plant so that it no longer has to produce protectors to fight parasites then you rid the plant of the cancer fighting properties it used to produce for us to consume. It is like a symphony going on right before out eyes. Some bad (corp) and some good (organic). Do it yourself and you know what you have.
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