FAQ
If you only read 3 things on this site, the first 3 questions below would be recommended.

NUMBER 1 Question:
Why do you say your system is not a loop system and why is a loop system dangerous
with limited performance?

People still do not understand the differences between a loop system and ours.
Note that a loop system is a system that uses a smaller solvent tank that does not hold
the correct amount of solvent required to complete the extraction and therefore
requires you to recover it and loop it back through. This long contact time with
the plant material and solvent extracts or dissolves a lot of heavy wax out and therefore
requires very very cold temps to eliminate some of the wax when they attempt to freeze it out.
Wax dissolves in butane very easily and if given enough time it will dissolve and come out
with the oils.
Using cold temps to eliminate wax from dissolving while it is in a solvent that dissolves it
easily is not practical.
The longer the contact time the colder you have to go.
It is like beating a horse that cant walk to make it run.
There are other ways to get wax out or delipidate during and after extraction that are much easier and
more economical but these guys just don’t have the knowledge and surprisingly built a whole process around
that one fault which is not using a correctly designed tank with a sufficient enough volume capacity.
It would be like building a super cool telegraph machine at this day and age.
Although cold temps do play a role in the tamisium design the design is not built around it.
You can put a sleeve on any column and add dry ice but who wants to add time and work hard to add cold.
Why not go faster and not add cold and finish quicker in the process while getting a higher yield.

To be clear. The first step you can take to avoid or include wax is being able to control contact
time because it takes more time to dissolve out than the lighter weight oils.
To do this we use a correct loading ratio so we can send the correct amount through one time as fast
as we need to.
We don’t loop. We use a properly volumized tank that holds the correct amount of solvent so
you can send it through at any speed temp with any combination of solvents. This is called a
loading ratio and the benefits are seen when the results are compared. The reason and benefits of
being able to add contact time or take it away while adding co solvent and temprature change are the
reasons we build a properly volumized tank that does not require you to loop.

Number 2 Question
ARE YOUR SYSTEMS PEER REVIEWED AND CERTIFIED

YES, A engineer designed AND certified tamisium extractors and that certification has been accepted in every state. This review will have to be accepted not only by the state in some cases but the county or city you will operate in. We offer both ASME designed and inspected systems made from ASME designed parts but not ASME inspected or certified for those that do not require certification.
We also use those same ASME drawing and calculated designs to make ASME designed and certified systems that dont actually carry the ASME code stamp. In states that allow you to use properly designed and calculated tanks but not actually require it to be ASME stamped this system will allow you to save money but still have a safely designed system. A egineer has reviewed the system we build and certiified it as safe in all states he is licensed. Any engineer will do the same for any other state he is not licensed. WA CO are the only states currently require this review. The city of Denver is the only city in the US that has not accepted a Tamisium Review as of October 2015. However an approved review has been submitted and is currently being reviewed for approval by Denver.

Number 3 Question:
What separates your extractor from all the rest?

The things that set us apart from the rest are as follows.

1. We place the column of plant material directly on top of the extractor tank where the extract ends up.
   Doing this allows us to avoid using ball valves and lines to pass the extract through once it has contaminated the solvent.  The only time the solvent passes back through a line or valve is when it is distilled and cleaned during recovery.
   This eliminates the need to clean those lines and valves every time you change plant matter. Because we only have one inlet in the column on top and one outlet on bottom we can simply close the inlet and stop outflow using a vacuum created by any solvent attempting to flow out of the bottom of the column through the fine mesh filter placed in the bottom. We use this filter as a resistor or ball valve if you will. Using a fine or coarse filter can be used to control how much pressure or vacuum is required to go fast or slow when passing solvent through the plant matter.
   
   
2. We offer a unique patent pending product called a Channel Filter that allows you to avoid the use of Dry Ice to Dewax or Delipidate your extractions. It also speeds up the process and increases your yields.
   
   
3. A tamisium process by design avoids waxes and other heavy compounds by not looping the solvent back through the plant material.
   A Tamisium Extractor is not a Loop Extractor. Looping is unsafe and creates havoc during the extraction process.
   Loopng is avoided by buying a system that has carefully designed the tanks to avoid looping. We created the loop process over 10 years ago and dropped it by redesigning the tanks we have now. When people look over your shoulder and copy what you do, they do not know what you did to get there and can sometimes repeat your mistakes in an effort to cut cost. I can assure you that the only cost cut is on manufacturing. You will spend exponentially more money if you choose to buy a loop process. It requires pumps, super cold tempeatures and excessive labor. It is unsafe and problematic as you can see from the countless explosions and contamination articles and news reports.
   
   
4. We use a Wafer Valve to seal the bottom Extractor Tank so that you can safely remove the column and refill it. The Wafer valve allows you to save the butane that was required to vapor lock the system. This is the butane that evaporated away and created the pressures you see in your tank. If you purge this out to open the largest tank  you will lose that butane and create a unsafe situation by exposing those vapors in the tank to oxygen where they could ignite as any flammable solvent would. Keeping the main larger tanks closed is the first step to incorporating and utilizing the safe logic that will transform the way we think of flammable solvents in a lab. 
   
   
5. We use a loading ratio where a known sufficient amount of solvent passes through one time to extract everything from the plant possible based on temperature, time and polarity. Using density, temperature time and polarity to control what we extract out. We can also turn down temperature, time and polarity to avoid extracting unwanted compounds.
   
   
6. We use distillation because pumps are mechanical by nature and will fail and when they do you cannot predict what will fail and therefore you cannot predict if a solvent will be ignited or what catastrophe will happen from that failure. Even if a HVAC pump was rated safe to make medicine a failed pump would not have that rating anymore.
   By eliminating carefully designed a more costly tank we now a system that never requires one to work and never fails.
   A tank will never need to be repaired or replaced and NEVER will ignite the liquid solvent or vapors.
   Pump systems have been around for decades. If a safe pump system could have been built it would have been built a long time ago by much more experienced people than the people pirating machines today. It is funny to watch them think they invented the wheel all over again but sad to see all these people burning down buildings and blowing up their friends and innocent employees that placed their trust in a ETL mark or some other misleading safety given to a machine and not a whole process.
   
   
7. Because we don’t use a machine to vacuum solvent out and pump it into another tank we have more control on the temperature and time of that solvent while it is in contact with the plant material. This allows us to create many extractions by avoiding or targeting specific compounds based on the solvents ability to dissolve more things out with time or melt things with time and temperature or avoid them by decreasing those parameters and restricting the effect of time and temp.
   
   
8. Using distillation also allows us to add other solvents in with the butane and separate them during recovery. Using other solvents allows the extractor to dissolve more than just what butane would dissolve alone. This allows you to have a extractor working for you instead of you working for a single solvent.
   There are two worlds meeting here. The art of running an extractor and the art of extracting. Both need to be fully capable and versatile and both need to be safe and run by a competent person and many solvents.
   Plants produce many compounds of varying Polarities, Melting Points, Volatility and Viscosities. It would be wasteful and absurd to spend any time or money building or buying a machine that can only do one thing.

What we have here is a very controllable safe versatile extractor.
As a matter of fact until proven otherwise,,
It is The Highest Yielding, Most Efficient, Safest, Easiest to Operate Extractor available.

Can I use a Refrigerant Recovery Machine with a Tamisium Extractor?

Yes you can in any closed system but not recommended in any closed system when making food products.

To this date, there is no Food Grade Volatile Flammable Solvent Recovery Machine created. If there was we would use it.
A HVAC Recovery Machine was designed to work with AC units that use refrigerants. You may have been told that R600 is Butane. This is true but R600 and the way it is transported from tank to tank is not regulated because it is not going to be used to make consumable products. It is going into a AC unit that will not get cancer or get sick.
It is transported from tank to tank where it ends up in your tank. In each tank it dissolved and carried out of that tanks lubricants and oils that were used to keep those tanks from rusting and reduce friction during machining. There is flux on the weld joints, pits in the tanks and other areas of concern such as material contact and so on. Toxins and contaminants left on the tanks and lines are present because those lines and tanks are not used in food production. They are used in the HVAC industry. Nor is this Recovery machine that recovers them used in food production. The Recovery machines only job is to capture R600 or R600A to prevent it from entering the atmosphere outside. It was never meant to recover solvent for reuse in the food and medicine industry. Any fool that would design a system around that process and then sell it to the public is not thinking of your welfare.

Another thing I wanted to ad is that Tamisium used recovery machines for our research and development during the extraction and recovery phase for many years. It was all the data collected that led to eliminating them completely.
We are very prejudiced against these machines. We built the tamisium as a result of having one of these machines fail with catastrophic results. Many failures preceded and would have followed. The earlier failures were more about quality concerns and just simple breakdowns that caused some lost time or product.
You will not know what the break down will be or what it will do until it happens. They are labor intensive, costly, high maintenance, dangerous, produce lower quality extractions, remove control from the process and are not designed for the application.
They are mechincal in design and will fail.

Can N Butane be used to extract from all plants?

Absolutely YES however it cannot extract everything from all plants and Butane is not the only solvent that can be used in a Tamisium Extractor.
IT is amazing to me when a person uses a solvent for a single plant and suddenly that solvent becomes plant specific.
That is like asking if water can be used for anything other than making coffee or tea. A solvent dissolves molecules based on their like polarity. Water and Ethanol mix because they are both Polar. Wax, Oil and Algae Oil and Butane mix because they are all Non Polar. What makes a solvent preferred over another one is if you can easily remove it once it has been used to extract what you want out. No other solvent is so easy to remove and recover for reuse than butane. So it makes perfect sense if a solvent was going to be the leader in a new wave of extracting it would be N Butane or CO2. That does not mean that solvent can only be used for one purpose. Propane, IsoButane, Butane and CO2 are the preferred solvents used in the industry to extract pharmaceuticals, flavorings, cooking oils perfumes and fragrances from plants. The difference between Propane, CO2 and N Butane is that butane can easily and safely be recovered without a pump and is considered a more environmentally friendly solvent due to the low wattage consumed during converting from liquid to gas phase and back again and it does not impact the atmosphere.

Take Vetiver Root for example, Over 250 tons of vertiver oil is produced for the perfume industry every year. Over 90% of all fragrances contain vetiver oil for the base fragrance in mens cologne. The current process of steam distillation requires months of aging the oil to remove the by products created by using heat to produce the oil. With a Tamisium Butane Extractor you can eliminate the requirement of heat because Butane boils away at just over 32F. Many labs use our equipment to extract a variety of compounds from many plants. Our original research which led to the creation of the Tamisium Extractor was conducted with plants in the amazon that contained the highest polyphenol levels known to man and can easily be extracted by combining butane with another solvent so that a low pressure low temperature process can extract these products with no harm to the molecular structures.

Is a scale mandatory for this process?

A scale is absolutely mandatory when filling your tanks. You should always leave a 15-20% air space after filling with liquid solvent. Every tank has a maximum liquid capacity. This capacity should never be exceeded EVER. If a tank of any kind is overfilled and this airspace is removed the liquid will have nowhere to expand into as it expands and contracts with temperature changes. When liquid expands it can lift a house. It will rupture a tank if allowed to expand too much. To prevent overfilling a tank you must weigh the total liquid added. Weigh the liquid in grams and convert it to milliliters if needed by dividing the liquid N Butane Weight in grams by .577.

For example, the TE175 holds a maximum liquid volume of 700 ml at ROOM TEMP. 
To figure out what this is in grams you multiply milliliters by .577 and you get 400 grams. 700 ml / 400 grams is the maximum safe liquid volume you can add to that tank.
To convert it back into milliliters you divide the gram weight by .577. It is that simple. 
Never fill a tank to a milliliter volume line unless you do it at room temperature because temperature can change the volume line. Remember! liquid expands and contracts. Some more than others. Propane can expand 4 times or more than butane with the same temperature variation.
Always check your volume with gram weight. This always remains the same.
You can operate your system with less than the maximum but NEVER exceed it.
 

What types of products can you produce with this process?

Extracting is not magic. You are dissolving chemicals of various polarities with solvents of like polarities. You are using temperature to melt  and make soluble or solidify wanted and unwanted components of the plant. And you allow time for this to occur to more or less of a degree. More time for what is working to work. Adding heat can speed up the process if you are not concerned with what heat may melt down and make soluble and easily extracted. The ability to control these adjustments from zero to maximum allows you to get everything out if you want or to restrict the process in multiple ways. This is what makes a extractor more or less valuable.

The ability of the extractor to be constrictive in one or all these adjustments is what separates a Tamisium from other extractors. Some always will require pressure or heat for example. To be able to extract with the least impact on the final product is golden. In other words, you want to be able to take out what is in the plant without changing it. Heat and Pressure are violent forces and are catalyst for molecular reaction and when combined with reactive compounds and reactive solvents can even create toxic by products or unwanted compounds. Butane is non reactive and we do not use enough heat and pressure to cause reactions anyway. It is a dream come true apparatus for those that know. And it is your only choice if you want it all. If you know you want High Pressure all the time, Go with CO2 but it will cost more. If you want heat all the time then go with a soxhlet, it will be cheaper but if you want to be able do it all, then you have to buy a Tamisium Extractor.

There are many non polar oils that are extracted from a plant when using the non polar solvent butane. Some are thin and some or thick to solid. And even insoluble products will come out if you melt them into a solution using heat and or use a like polarity solvent and enough time. Just by the force of pressure and flow speed you can extract less or more. Temperature and time controls how much and what you get out. If you extract them all out you would have a concrete. To get a solid from a mixture of these you would have to evaporate the thinner oils, separate, filter or avoid them during the extraction process by using various extraction techniques using your ability to control time, temp, pressure and solvent polarity. To target a limited number of them you would have an absolute. To target one or two you would have an essential oil or more pure oil. You can do it all, You just have to now what effects the outcome. It will be either solvent combination, time, temp, pressure, quality, density of your packed column or any combination of the 6. The key is to find out what targets what you want while not targeting what you dont want when you are after purity or an absolute or essential oil.

You can get anything out of the plant and in most cases you can control what you get out but the industry standard procedure for isolation is to prepare your extract after it has been extracted. Separating based on weight in a centrifuge machine and by polarity of compounds using a separatory funnel is the most common. But some people just evaprorate the products away with little regard to what is being lost. Refining it to look like what you want it to, after you get it out is the normal.It is remarkable to be able to do this during the extraction process but with a Tamisium, you can do this in most cases. Because it is easier to restrict the effects of these extraction parameters with this system. And if you want it all it is easy to max them out as well.

I am aware of extraction processes using a Tamisium that have produced a dry even hard paste but I can guarantee you that almost 50-80% of the products in the plant were left behind during the extraction or evaporated away afterwards while doing so is some cases. But you can be sure that if you are using a liquid you are getting a higher yield even then. It is good to know you can do anything you want and have the highest yield possible in any case.

If you have to add a solvent and you will have to evaporate that solvent away in the end you always have to be concerned with the boiling points of that solvent and the boiling points of the volatile oils you have extracted. So be aware of the fact that for a long time, some oils in plants have never been seen before until butane or CO2 extracted them out and left them behind. Adding another solvent may prevent that oil from appearing in your final product.

Can you sell extractors to Medical Facilities that deal with MJ Concentrates?

If the customer or potential customer indicates that the use of the extractor is going to be for the purpose of extracting a chemical that is controlled federally we will not sell a unit to them for that purpose. If that customer has already purchased an extractor and after the fact indicates the extractor will be used for this purpose we will be forced to void their warranty and cancel all support. The reason is there is no way to service a unit that has been tainted with a controlled substance that would prevent it from being shipped for repair. And to engage in guidance on the phone or via email may be interpreted as participation. To ensure I am here to help everyone and sell extractors I have no choice but to adopt this policy.

The fact that this unit can be used to extract any oil or chemical from any surface or porous material implies that you could use it for anything and are not limited to usage for one purpose. To limit yourself to one purpose that could eliminate any chance of obtaining an extractor is to close a door to any other opportunity the extractor could provide for you. It is up to you to follow the laws that govern the area where you live.

We are legitimate researchers at Tamisium and long before this MJ movement came to our attention we were well on the way to creating this product to extract from all plants. You can use Tamisium Extractors to extract estrogen from wheat, oil from algae or any other plant or seed, even oil from soil and any other chemical created by a plant or material. We cannot justify participating in a process that could destroy our future which would hurt everyone. Tamisium Extractors Inc has a large vested interest in producing extractors and extracts right here in Texas that are perfectly legal in Texas and the entire US.
 

Are there Mercaptans/Odorants present in N-Butane?

In the USA, detection of gas leaks by adding an odorant is typically required. When they are required the amount used should be detectable when the mixture of air and gas reaches 1/5 the lower combustible limit of the gas. Typically 1%. However you will find that most of the time, butane has no odorants added. You would be able to detect the odorants by the odor obviously and also by the spec sheet supplied by the supplier. There are lab grades of butane available with N-Butane supplied in a 99.9% purity and absolutely no odorants added at all. Fear of mercaptan ingestion is not of concern when pure butane is available.

As a matter of personal observation, I have never seen any butane with any Mercaptans added. This includes disposable canisters and commercial size tanks. I think this is because butane is NOT the best choice of fuel due to it's low condensing temperature.
 

How efficient is butane as a solvent?

After we built our first original 5 lb prototype, before placing any plant material inside the unit, we performed an extraction to clean it out .. Using 99.5% pure butane during the extraction process, we extracted over 20 grams of oil from the pores of the the stainless steel extractor alone in a 5 gallon column. We cleaned all the parts first. You can expect as high as 99% of the oil to be extracted from a plant or seed or any other material for that matter.

Due to the ability to adjust the major extraction parameters Q.D.T.P.T.P. or Quality of Material, Density of the material, Time soaked in Solvent, Pressure, Temperature and Polarity of the solvent/s. You can extract out a more pure product than before or extract full spectrum or anywhere in between. If you give the parameters values of only 10 each, meaning 10 different pressures, 10 different soak times etc., you have the ability to create 999,999 varieties of products.

Can the Recovery time of Butane be Decreased?

YES. There are many techniques to rapidly recover (Evaporate and Condense) solvents including butane. However it is important to understand that increasing the rate of evaporation can greatly reduce the quality and yield of your finished product when volatile oils are being extracted out. Using butane allows you to extract and capture very volatile oils that would be lost if any other solvent were used that had higher evaporation temps than butane.  This is because butane boils or evaporates at a lower temperature than anything you would be extracting out and any other recoverable solvent you could use. Using solvents with higher boiling points that more closely match your extracted components would require you to boil those extracted components away when you boil your solvents away after using them to extract with. To raise this temperature or boil faster than you need to, would defeat the purpose of using butane. It does not matter if you use heat or vacuum to boil a solvent. Boiling or creating a pressure differential greater than required to boil butane, could cause extracted components to boil away as well.  In addition, as the extracted components become more viscous, bubbles will start to form and may become large enough to enter into your upper valves if the evaporation process is too fast. If this happens you could be required to disassemble your fittings for cleaning.
We paid careful attention to the design to ensure that any food product never enters into a line, ball valve or safety qd.

Soxhlet Extractions. How do they compare to Tamisium Extractors?

When using a sohxlet extractor you use a lot of heat and are limited to less volatile open system solvents that remain a liquid at room temp. When you do boil them to operate the apparatus you must use enough heat to boil the solvent at atmospheric pressure. This heat creates a wide band of extraction efficiency on a polarity scale. Meaning it even dissolves and extracts things that are not closely matching the polarity of the solvent. It just melts them out. The heat is bad and the ability to target a specific target is gone. Great Heat creates more efficiency but with a price. Heat can be a catalyst for molecular changes that may not be desired. With a Tamisium Extractor, you can use heat or you can elect not to. It is kind of like having a car that can go forward and in reverse.
Every extraction method has some limitation, you have to use pressure, you have to use heat, and so on. Now you can decide what you need and adjust accordingly
 

Is a Tamisium Extractor dangerous?

Yes. for two reasons. 

1. Any flammable solvent extractor is potentially dangerous and most solvents are flammable. No matter if it is boiling acetone and alcohol used in a soxhlet extractor with a heat source or butane in a cold Tamisium Extractor or a typical fuel pump extracting gas at any gas station, there are rules that we must follow. Laboratory safety precautions are the same with this extractor as with most others. The key point to note is that the Tamisium Extractors Inc. are totally closed systems. The butane is never exposed to the air during the normal extraction or the normal recovery process and it is recovered for reuse without a heat ignition source. The apparatus is a closed system and as long as the system is closed, you should not have any issues to deal with. When the valves are opened, there is a safety Quick Disconnect that continues to seal the unit if a line or tank is not connected to receive the solvent. Due to the fact that no pumps or heat is needed to extract or recover the solvent, you will not have to deal with boiling solvent fumes and sparks or flames to ignite a solvent if an accident should occur. The manual is very descriptive and is almost a book guide into a new area of extraction. A mini course in itself. It is a subject that we all have to learn to use just like any upgrade in technology.

2. Hydraulically Filling a Tank leaving no air space inside when using a liquid solvent or worse a heated solvent in a closed system is a dangerous thing to do. The fact that the system is closed means that the liquid inside will have no place to expand into when the liquid expands. Liquids are very powerful and do not compress. So when they expand they can lift cars and even houses. A tank is no match for the power of expanding liquid. We are not talking about air or vapor pressure. If you remove the air or OVER FILL the tank with too much liquid a dangerous result can happen. It is a simple thing to prevent. Simply know the weight of the correct volume of solvent and use a scale to fill your tank. Making sure to never exceed the safe maximum liquid volume or any tank and use weight to measure the safe operating volume.

It is very important to read the manual and follow all safety precautions regarding ignition sources and filling your tanks correctly. A pressure inside a tank is invisible and only makes itself known when it is too late. When using butane, a 15-20% air space should be enough for normal operation with normal temperatures. I do not use high heat and have not designed this system to operate at any temperature above 110F. 110F will dissolve almost anything you would want to get out. If the heat is too low you can add a little more time to the process and accomplish the same thing, even better because heat can break chemical structures down. This is why a cold process is choice number one when time and components extracted permit.

Hydraulically filling a tank is normally the safe way to test the limits of a tank but when you are using a pressurized liquid flammable solvent as your liquid to hydraulically fill it with instead of water, you are asking for trouble when the tank ruptures. Normally water just pours out the crack because it does not compress and therefore the pressure is relieved instantly once the tank ruptures. Then the water just pours out. But with butane the solvent will keep coming out with 25 psi pushing it or more if heat caused it to expand and increase the pressure. Even then you may be ok if the butane does not have a way to ignite. Cover all your bases. Remember accidents happen accidentally because people get comfortable and start ignoring the safety rules.
 

Do I need a permit to operate a laboratory or Tamisium Extractor?

I am not required to submit records for purchases or a Tamisium Extractor in any State nor is the Tamisium Extractor controlled in Texas as is other laboratory apparatus.
In TX residents that own some lab equipment are required to obtain a permit to possess that equipment. Texas companies that sell lab equipment to TX residents are required to report that sale to that TX resident while informing the customer before the purchase that they are requirered to obtain a permit within a few weeks of the sale. Tamisium Extractors are not viewed as controlled lab apparatus at this time in TX.

It is up to the end consumer to obtain the proper licenses and permits in the state or country they reside in. Contact your local Dept of Public Safety or your State Health and Safety agency for more information. In Texas contact 512-424-2481 and ask for Jeanne Malone. You will be pleasantly surprised at how very helpful and encouraging Jeanne Malone and the State of Texas can be in helping you get a proper permit. I am sure the same goes for any State Agency.
 

Is Butane safe to use for consumable products?

Acute Toxicity Level
N-BUTANE (106-97-8)

Non Toxic: inhalation.

Absolutely. Butane is non toxic and evaporates completely.
It is used as a propellant in non stick cooking sprays because it mixes with the oils and carries them out of the canister better than other propellants, and it evaporates easily leaving a non toxic fume in the air that quickly dissipates away. When used as a propellant, as much as 25% of the volume of the canisters is filled with butane. It has been used for over 100 years to extract out topicals and consumables for exactly that reason. For decades, butane has been used to not only manufacture, flavorings, fragrances, and food additives but it has been used to deliver those foods direct to your kitchen skillet. You can use it to extract topical and internal medicine, perfumes and oils. Especially oils. It is the holy grail of organic solvents and really shines with aromatic fragrances and oils, especially volatile oils/essential oils. Butane is the only solvent that will extract the aromatic and total essence of some flowers such as lily of the Nile. It is the solvent of choice for terpenes.
Component Carcinogenicity
None of this product's components are listed by ACGIH, IARC, NTP, DFG or OSHA.
 

Is Butane State or Federally Regulated?

U.S. Federal Regulations
None of this products components are listed under SARA Section 302 (40 CFR 355 Appendix A), SARA Section 311/312 (40 CFR 370.21), SARA Section 313 (40 CFR 372.65), CERCLA (40 CFR 302.4), TSCA 12(b), or require an OSHA process safety plan.

U.S. State Regulations
The following components appear on one or more of the following state hazardous substances lists:

Is Butane harmful or toxic?

Due to the fact that butane would rapidly evaporate after being ingested, inhaling it or drinking should be considered lethal. However you may find it hard to ingest because it would be freezing everything it touches due to its rapid evaporation. Inhalation of any concentrated gas alone without oxygen could be potentially fatal. Butane can displace air/oxygen just like CO2 and that could cause asphyxiation. Breathe a mixture of natural inert air gases, not concentrated gases is a good rule of thumb. MSDS N-Butane full spec sheet. NFPA ratings give Butane a rating of 2 for Health, 4 for Fire and 0 for reactivity.

Butane is non toxic and evaporates completely after extraction. It boils at 32 degrees F and will rapidly evaporate after being exposed to 80F room temperature. If you get any on your skin or face you should wash it out immediately to be safe. You may not notice any burning or anything but it is better to be safe than sorry. I have had butane on my skin and my face and in my eyes and if I did not know it was butane, I would have thought I was sprayed with very cold water. However, we all can react differently. So always use eye protection when using anything under pressure or potentially dangerous.
 

What is the polarity of butane?

Butane (C4H10) has no polar groups and no isomers.
Butane is NON POLAR all the way, which means you can use Butane as the only solvent if the chemical you want to extract is non polar as well. If not, then you will have to add another solvent to the butane before extracting. Amazingly enough, those solvent will mix with butane to perform the extraction and separate during the recovery of the butane. Solvent amounts added are determined by the saturation level of a particular plant component in a given solvent. Butane is composed only of carbon and hydrogen. It is non-polar. It has no net ionic charge. Polar molecules can dissolve polar molecules and non-polar molecules can dissolve non-polar molecules. The closer you can get the polarity to match up, the more efficient the extraction process will be.
 

Is Butane the only solvent needed for a complete extraction?

Sometimes, to perform a complete extraction of an herb or plant that contains components that are not polarity matched to butane, you will need a small amount of one or more other solvents such as ethanol/alcohol or acetone. This is to be added to the butane before you begin the extraction process. This is the remarkable feature of using butane in the Tamisium Extractor. Because you can add these other solvents in a variety of combination's. The components you can extract from plants is virtually unlimited. And you can extract several chemicals from the same plant in one extraction or isolate the extraction to one chemical in most cases.
 

How do you know which solvents to use if butane is not the one required?

Solvent choice is determined by two factors.
Chemical Saturation Point, of a chemical in a given solvent, and Chemical Polarity Matching of the solvent to the chemical being extracted.

Chemical Saturation point is the point at which a solvent will no longer dissolve a chemical.
You will need to know how much chemical resides in the plant you are extracting from and you will need to know how much solvent is required to dissolve all that chemical to extract it from the plant.

Solvent Chemical Polarity matching is something you will just have to figure out with each plant component you extract from. Most of the information is known already. You can look in an index or reference source such as a Merck index or type in polarity and name of chemical on the internet and find it there. You can also determine from more more mainstream extractions what is currently being used.
 

Why is Butane considered such a great solvent over other solvents such as CO2?

You do not need high volumes of solvents to extract when using butane as the Primary Extracting Solvent because it condenses into a liquid at very low pressures and is very effective at extracting oils due to the being a very Non Polar Linear Molecule. Other solvents such as CO2 require a minimum of 800 psi to begin assuming any efficiency at all. Going as high as 10,000 psi in some extracting processes. The less dense forming gas of CO2 requires much more volume in the containers holding it and the containers must be very heavily constructed to hold the high pressures required to condense it into a liquid which limits the volume of material one can extract from. Requiring great expense in manufacturing and use to build any size machine. It also requires expensive pumps and much experience and labor to perform an extraction. This type of labor is costly. The major drawback to using CO2 is dangerous high pressures, cost of operation and cost of equipment. Making products with CO2 therefore cost much more and the final product price must be higher. Higher prices do not denote higher quality as a rule anymore. Until butane, those higher prices had to be paid. Now a lower cost alternative can produce a higher quality product making some products more profitable and within reach of consumers.

When Butane is used as the primary solvent, such as is the case in most oil extractions, the extraction process really works well due to the fact that you are sending almost 4 volumes of a very effective LIQUID Butane through the plant material when only a 1/2 of a volume would be more than enough to dissolve all the oil contained in that volume of plant material.
This allows for an extremely efficient extraction.
During testing, I have extracted as little as 2% more oil when making a second pass with clean recovered solvent, extracting from the same extracted plant material which means that 98% was extracted out the first time.

But most important is the fact that Butane boils at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it is non toxic and evaporates completely with minimal effort and can be manipulated from a gas to a liquid at very low temperatures and pressures. The other primary solvent added if any, as well as the extracted out chemicals, boil at much higher temperatures and will not evaporate with the butane. This allows you to separate the several chemicals very easily and without the use of expensive equipment which is what makes using BUTANE as a primary extracting solvent so incredible. The fact that you can add other solvent to Butane to extract out everything from a plant is the icing on the cake.
 

In oil extractions when using butane, how can I get all the butane out as the oil thickens.

There should be no butane in the extract if you recovered the butane properly. Adding a transport solvent before beginning extraction, should assist in the recovery of all the butane because it changes the viscosity of the oil extracted and allows the molecules of butane to leave more easily while warmed during the recovery process. Adding a Transport Solvent should be all that is needed to remove any butane should any be left behind after recovery of the butane solvent. A Rotary Evaporator is another common tool in use. You can use your freezing Recovery Tank as the vacuum needed so that any butane evaporated away while using the RE, can be saved.

Having butane remain in the extract is no problem in regards to toxicity. We actually use Butane as our transport solvent. You have to freeze all containers and tanks before opening and transporting butane in this way. But when you do, you can deal with it as any other liquid not under pressure. Dropping the temperature of Butane below 32F reduces the relative pressure to zero. This is the reason butane alone does not work well as a gas cooking fuel or lighter fuel.
Remember that Butane is added as a propellant to spray cooking oils.

Warming the extract up is another alternative. It will not need to be warmed more than 110F. Never use an open flame or heating element. Immerse the holding tank in warmed or cool water to warm the solvent above freezing or use a heating plate with a spacer and check the temperature with a laser thermometer. Only evaporate flammable solvent in a well ventilated area. The problem with open evaporation is frost tends to leave water deposits in the extract.

Another way is to add warm water to the oil and mix thoroughly. After the warm water has evaporated the butane you can then separate them into layers and drain the bottom layer and discard. If you have extracted out polar compounds they will be lost in the water layer.

As more question come in, more questions and answers will be posted.