Tamisium n-Butane Extractor Hawaii using Butane for extraction. n Butane extracts oils from botanicals, organic and inorganic, residues, perfumes, biofuel, biofuels, biodiesel, essential oils for homeopathic use,,, table top to high volume extractions. Full recovery of solvent after butane extraction completes.

more extractions coming !

FAQ

Is a Tamisium Extractor dangerous?
Any flammable solvent extractor is potentially dangerous. No matter if it is acetone, 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.. Laboratory safety precautions are the same with this extractor as with most others. The key point to note is that the Tamisium Butane Extractors are totally closed systems. The butane is never exposed to the air during the normal extraction or the normal recovery process.
The apparatus is a closed system and as long as the system is closed, you should not have any issues to deal with. 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. These extractors are not sold to be used in non lab environments. They are sold to be used in laboratory settings by laboratory professionals and professional chemist in lab or home research. The manual is very descriptive and is almost a book guide into a new area of extraction. A mini course in itself.

Do I need a permit to operate a laboratory or Tamisium Extractor?
I am not aware of other states that require permits for laboratory apparatus. Texas is one of the only states I know of that did require a permit.
This varies in each State.
In Texas, I am required to have a permit for my other lab equipment and an additional permit for sale of various lab apparatus. This extractor has not been around long enough to be listed on the Controlled Laboratory Apparatus List for the State of Texas.. This may change and I assume it will. I have notified TXDPS that I invented it, use it and now sell it. I have been asked to submit Texas State Purchase Records for all purchases made in this state. I have agreed to this request due to the fact that the apparatus is being reviewed for the purpose of adding it to the Texas Controlled Apparatus List and will most likely be added.
Be aware that upon adding it to the list, you will be required to get a permit. I will update the site when I hear of any changes.
I am not sure if you will be grandfathered in if your purchase was prior to it being added or not but all Texas Record of Purchase will be available to TXDPS from the very first sale. I know Texas customers will be required to gain permit if it is added to the list prior to purchasing.
The bottom line is if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide. The point of a permit is for the safety of the people in the area you live in and to ensure that you do not get tempted to violate that safety in regard to unlawful drug production. If required and not obtained you will be breaking the law in Texas for sure.
I respect you rights to privacy but in the state of Texas I will comply with TXDPS as much as required. I am not required to submit records for purchases in other states unless I am contacted and requested to do so to aid an investigation as is any other lab equipment supplier.
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. I am sure the same goes for any State Agency.

Is Butane safe to use for consumable products?
Absolutely. Butane is non toxic and evaporates completely. It has been used for over 100 years for exactly that reason. 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. Butane is the only solvent that will extract the aromatic and total essence of some flowers such as Lily of the Nile.

Is Butane harmful or toxic?
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.

What is the polarity of butane?
Butane (C4H10) has no polar groups.
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. Solvent amounts 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 nonpolar. It has no net ionic charge.
Polar molecules can dissolve polar molecules and nonpolar molecules can dissolve nonpolar molecules, but they don't mix well together and will separate into two layers in a separatory funnel. The closer you can get the polarity to match up, the more efficient the extraction process will be and the lower volume of solvent that will be required. If you want to separate them during the cleaning process, you will need the polarity to be opposite.

Is Butane the only solvent needed for a complete extraction?
Sometimes, to perform a complete extraction of an herb or plant, you will need a small amount of one or more other solvents such as 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. Because you can add these other solvents in a variety of combinations, the possible plants you can extract from 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. In a 3 volume extraction it is advisable to use 3 times the saturation point. If 25 ml of solvent will dissolve all the chemical in the the amount of plant material being extracted, you should use 75 ml or more in your extraction. If making a 4 volume extraction or 5 volume extraction, you will need to increase the saturation rate to 4 or 5 times respectively.
Visualize this - The column of plant material fills with solvent, then drains and fills again and drains and fills again and drains. This is a 3 volume extraction. Each time the column fills and drains is considered one volume. All the solvent required to dissolve all the chemical or oil in that material will need to be in that first volume because the following volumes will be only used to wash that first volume out. In the extraction business, we consider that 3rd volume to be the one that gets all the extract out. To be true, the first volume has be be able to dissolve all that you want to get out of that plant. Otherwise the next volumes are not washing, they are still dissolving. Remember that when adding the primary extracting solvent to the carrier solvent, it will be divided equally into those volumes of carrier solvent. Hence the reason you need to add 3 times the amount required if using 3 volumes of carrier solvent. 4 for 4 and 5 for 5 etc.

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. You will want to double that volume of the solvent or quadruple it if possible.
Because you are using 3 volumes of solvent to every volume of plant material, you will need to make sure enough solvent is in the first volume that passed through the plant material because the 2 other volumes are just to wash out what has already been dissolved.

Solvent Chemical Polarity matching is something you will just have to figure out with each plant material you extract from or 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.

How efficient is butane as a solvent?
After we built our first original prototype, before placing any plant material inside the unit, we performed an extraction to clean it out .. Using 99% pure butane during the extraction process, we extracted over 200 grams of oil from the pores of the the stainless steel extractor alone.

Why is Butane considered such a great solvent?
You do not need high volumes of solvents to extract when using butane as the carrier solvent. And when 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 5 volumes of butane through the plant material when only a 1/2 of a volume would be more than enough.
This allows for an extremely efficient extraction.
During testing, I have not been able to get one more drop of oil out when making a second pass with clean recovered solvent, extracting from the same extracted plant material.

But most important is the fact that Butane boils at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it is non toxic and evaporates completely with minimal effort. The other primary solvent 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 which is what makes using BUTANE as a carrier solvent so incredible. But when it can be used as the carrier solvent and the primary solvent as one, it really shines. When used as the primary solvent alone, be sure and add some solvent like alcohol in the bottom tank. Otherwise you may be left with a goo when all the butane has evaporated away during the recovery process. And remember, you can use other solvents as the sole primary solvent. But recovering them takes way more time. But it can be done. And in some states, such as California, where the use of butane is not allowed, it is required to use other solvents as the sole solvent or in combination with other allowed solvents.

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. Assuming you need to clean the extract, adding the cleaning solvent should be all that is needed to remove any butane should any be left behind after recovery of the butane solvent.
Warming it 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 water to warm the solvent.
Normal recovery removes all of the butane if a transport solvent is used and the recovery time is slightly increased. You may have some vapor pressure that resides in the tank, and it will be expelled when opening. Use a Safety Purge Line to purge away remaining vapor pressure.

As more question come in, more questions and answers will be posted.
Please use the forum to post question if possible
And email me when you do.

Please remember that most solvents are flamable. When opening and closing any of the extractors, please do so in a well ventilated, spark free environment. The smaller units can be taken outside. Know the properties of the solvents being used for any process of any extraction with any apparatus.