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Over the years we have
been asked many questions about extraction methods and extracts. I
have put this explanation together to answer those questions.
I have also added a brief explanation that leads to the reasoning
behind our new method of extraction along with the design of the
equipment that we had to develop to make it all happen..
We DO NOT carry Crude
Extracts. Crude and Regular Extracts are weaker and contain
inconsistent amounts of Salvinorin-A. Neither do we carry
Standardized Extracts. We have developed a special method and
equipment so that you can get the quality of standardized and the
strength of crude. This may sound like absurd statements but read
all the way through to fully understand the reasoning.
WHAT EXACTLY IS
A STANDARDIZED EXTRACT AND A CRUDE EXTRACT?
Standardized
extractions have grown in popularity because of the garage type labs
and home based extraction procedures. They were inefficient and easy
to do, As the demand for higher strength extracts grew, the crude
extractors cut corners to save time and money.
Because of the loss of salvinorin A and low quality due to various
methods customers began to demand that they get a standardized
amount of salvinorin A deposited on the leaf to ensure they are
getting what they pay for.
A standardized extract is one in which the
active compound - in this case salvinorin-A - is extracted from the
plant and isolated, weighed and then redeposited back onto the dried
leaves at a specific amount. In the case of Salvia extracts 2.4
milligrams is considered the standardized amount to assume a gram of
salvia leaf contains. Therefore if you want to enhance the leaf to
10X or 10 times stronger, you would add 24 milligrams back onto
dried, ground up leaf material. The standard average amount was
conceived of ?? by ??. Not sure but I am sure that the quality of
leaves has only gotten better. At this point in time if one were to
assume this standard to be correct then you would be with left over
Salvinorin-A crystal after you placed the amount back onto the
leaves. Leaves do not vary much but if they do then you would have a
loss. Not only could you possibly suffer a loss but it is a
worthless expensive and time consuming step if you have a known and
repeatable process performed with high quality leaf material. As a
matter of fact it is usually only performed to check quality unless
the isolated chemical is needed.
Therefore we stopped standardizing extract shortly after developing
this new process. As most others have. The cleaning is still
performed but not up the point of loss. As a matter of fact, even
our method of cleaning the lipids out is specific to this new
method.
 Pure crystalline
salvinorin-A is a very rare compound that few people have ever seen
and even fewer people have ever produced. Almost all the other
salvia extracts on the market are crude extracts because of the
complexity, time and expense you have to shell out to isolate a
chemical. It involves a series of washes involving two chemicals
that do not match in their polarity. One polarity of one chemical
attracts the desired salvinorin A. While the polarity of the other
chemical attracts the undesired components.
This mixture is allowed to separate into two layers. The layers are
separated into two parts. This or a similar process continues up to
five or more times to ensure that all the salvinorin A is extracted
from the lipids and that the Salvinorin-A is isolated enough to get
a accurate weight that only reflects the weight of the Salvinorin-A.
The lipids are discarded each time. That means that you are throwing
away some of the salvinorin A that was lost in the separation. The
system is not perfect. As a matter of fact you could loose from 20%
to 40% depending upon how well you do your job. This loss is
compensated for by charging you for more leaves to compensate for
the loss in the process.
The Salvinorin-A can now be weighed after drying off all the solvent
that was used during the separation performed above.
You can now begin to crystallize the SA if desired. If so the
salvinorin A is again placed in a solution and is now set into
motion to allow the chemical to crystallize. Using temperature
variations you can speed the process but for the most part time is
your friend. Sometimes it begins to happen immediately. This process
as stated above is time consuming and expensive. The chemicals such
as hexane and methanol as well as naphtha are toxic, very expensive
and hard to locate. These are the chemicals that are used to wash
and isolate the salvia molecule. There are even more harsh chemicals
that can be used. D Limonene shows promising results.
Basically to only
deposit some of the salvinorin A on the leaf requires an additional
step of purification (isolation) and those steps of isolation will
incur additional cost and will produce a weaker extract because of
the loss during washing and separation unless more leaves are used
which again cost more. Standardized cost more to produce.
This is what ends up happening when you wash and weigh and wash and
weigh until you get a pure isolated chemical.
Crude extracts and
standardized extracts are extracted exactly the same way. The
difference is that crude is not washed or cleaned as standardized
is. All extractions are performed by soaking the leaves in a variety
of solvents to dissolve the salvinorin-A out of the leaves. The
trouble with this is that a lot more than just the Salvinorin A gets
dissolved out of the leaves, especially if heat is used. Much of the
plant lipids (fat, oil, wax and tar ) get dissolved in the
solvent as well and end up in the extract if it is not cleaned or
standardized. Not to mention sticky extract is hard to put in
a vial or baggie.
This is a large coffee filter that is being discarded
after it was used to filter out a 2 kilo ethanol extraction of
salvia divinorum. The lipid weight came out to be 75 grams. And this
was just the amount we could filter out after freezing to 20F
degrees below zero. These were the early days of extracting. Luckily
only 5x was being made.
This ancient extraction
method ensures that you get all of the Salvinorin-A out but only if
the method that was incorporated was well done and efficient.
Acetone, mild heat and time is usually used at this point because
Acetone will hold way more salvinorin A per drop than any other
solvent. Remember that heat gets more unwanted lipids out but also
remember that a large portion of the salvinorin A molecule resides
in the lipids and is virtually inseparable without a wash. Ethanol
can be used as well but with slightly less efficiency.
Some Popular
Solvents
Because of the massive tax on ethanol, even when it is used it is
still denatured or poisoned so that it too is non consumable.
Acetone will evaporate completely with very little heat applied.
Ethanol takes forever to evaporate. Since a complete evaporation is
desired, Acetone is preferred in the scenario above. Both solvents
being non-consumable.
Acetone extractions are the most efficient means of extraction for
most botanicals. There are other solvents but they are far more
toxic. Most certainly it is the best for salvia extracts. The
polarities of the Salvinorin-A molecule and the Acetone molecule are
perfectly matched. They attract like magnets. But because acetone is
such a good solvent the lipids are pulled out in abundance. The
leaves are literally leached of everything. They are pale in color
after the extraction process. All life is removed and now rest in a
pool of acetone waiting to be dealt with.
Ethanol / Alcohol extractions are also used but are less efficient
and seem to take just as much lipids out as well as putting them
into an unmanageable gunky state. Ethanol cost much more than
Acetone because of the tax and even without the tax, and does not
seem to pull as much salvinorin out according to HPLC testing. Not
with this method we use anyway. Some people mix acetone and ethanol
together hoping for better results.
I have heard of many concerns with using certain non-consumable
solvents for extractions that moves me to add this statement.
Remember that a solvent is chosen because of the high evaporation
rate. It must evaporate off completely and leave no residue at all.
The lower the temperature to evaporate it the better. No exceptions.
During the pouring and drying of the extracts at 175F, the
chemicals, what ever they may be, are evaporated with such
efficiency that none of the solvent remains to be weighed with the
most sensitive scales.
If you have a solvent that boils at 20F then you can safely say that
at 80F it will surely rapidly and completely evaporate.
Crude
extractions seemed to be manageable for a while. As long as you were
only making 5X and 10X. But the wet nature of the fats
waxes and oils degraded the quality of the smoke.
As the market grew to desire stronger extracts such as 15X and 20X
it became harder and harder to make extractions that were clean and
lipid free.
With the higher strengths, more lipids and Salvinorin-A were poured
onto fewer leaves to make extracts stronger. This meant very sticky
and dirty extracts if crude methods were used. It also meant more
cost if you wanted to clean it up. Standardized extracts started
looking like the only way to go. There are many roads to
standardization.
Crude extracts were not marketable at all in this new stronger form
of 20X extract.
As you can see from the picture below this crude extraction is very
sticky. And after you pour 50 grams of this onto 50 grams of leaves
to make 100 grams of extract it is still not diluted enough with
leaves to be tolerable or manageable.
These are the lipids that can be expected from a single kilo
extraction. The weight can range as high as 75-100 grams of just
lipids alone. Dependant on the quality of the leaves and the solvent
and the temperature and time the process is allowed to run.
Enough about
Crude methods
A new method had to be
developed or adopted that would eliminate the expensive steps of the
isolation and standardized methods and at the same time keep the
lipids ratio of salvinorin A to a minimum while still providing a
strong extraction such as found in a crude extraction methods.
We have developed that method.
OUR METHOD OF EXTRACTION
We do not provide Standardization for extractions nor do we use
acetone or ethanol as solvents.
We have eliminated that step and those solvents from the process
with the method and equipment we developed and now use.
There is no need to standardize and charge for the process if the
process is repeatable. You just do it once and then you eliminate
that step. After you have isolated the Salvinorin-A and then weighed
and measured it and you find that the end result is the same every
time then you can safely eliminate the isolation, weighing and
measuring phase. This saves you money and saves you time as well.
Even if you are paying for it it is probably not being performed.
Do you taste your tea for strength every time? Of course not, you
know what effects a teaspoon will produce.
With our method we know
that we will get 90-95% of the Salvinorin-A out of the leaves and
onto the final extract / enhanced leaves. The only thing we need to
know is how much salvinorin A is in the leaves to start with. This
can be performed with one test and it is performed with each new
shipment of leaves from a new supplier. The leaves from any supplier
may change as much as a half milligram. But from shipment to
shipment from the same supplier they do not change much at all if
any. Once a good supply of leaves are found we stick with it.
Up to 3 milligrams of Salvinorin-A can be expected from a top
quality supplier. If any more than that is claimed, then it is most
likely not a true claim or they are being misled or they are just
using more leaves to extract and get that much SA out. You will
probably be charged for that.
After years of testing
and working with various solvents and equipment we have discovered
and developed a method to produce extractions that are void of all
lipids but still contains 90-95% of all the SA.
Notice how clean the above extraction looks compared to crude
methods as pictured above this picture. You can also get an idea of
the temperature required to accomplish this if you notice the frost
that immediately accumulated on the glass after exposing it to the
humid air. 90% of all the Salvinorin-A in the leaves was
pulled out from the leaves and retained in this 200 gram test using
our new method and equipment. More than any other standardized
isolation/wash of the same amount of salvia leaves.
This new method of extraction economically and efficiently produces
much higher quality and stronger extracts and maintains a totally
clean waste free extract, all in one extraction process, with the
least loss of salvinorin A - of any other method bar none. We do
this with no heat applied to the extraction or leaves. And the
entire process take less than 1 hour per 2.5 kilo extraction.
Basically we have discovered how to extract from the leaf material
and the lipids in one process.
By using a special formula of solvents along with temperature,
pressure and time we can control exactly what and when we will pull
out any chemical from just about any material.
We have tested each and every process over the years. The resulting
data has been duplicated over and over until we finally began the
final development of our design and extraction equipment. Our final
design is now complete and running beautifully. We call it "The
Final Cut".
We borrowed some ideas of the supercritical extractors and
incorporated knowledge and data we gathered over the years to build
a totally new extractor.
WE did not cut corners, we eliminated them.
That was our goal for the past two years.
In the picture above you can not
help but notice the Salvinorin-A crystals adhering to the outside of
these flakes of salvia leaf.
This is 20X extract produced with the Final
Cut process that we have developed and refined over the past 3
years.
As you can see, the extract is void of all waxes, fats and oils.
This is verified by the pure white crystals of Salvinorin-A that
crystallized onto the outside of the leaf as the extract cooled down
during the drying time.
I think when you receive your extraction order you will no longer be
concerned
with standardized extracts and ethanol or acetone extractions.
We have spent the last 3 years designing and building equipment and
processes that are specially designed to suit your needs.
BUY SALVIA EXTRACTS
BUY SALVIA LEAVES
Lipids are a large class of organic substances, insoluble in water
and greasy to the touch, including the fats, waxes, oils and
sterols.
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