HI EVERYONE me an my wife are in the aroma therapy industry and are getting into extracting our own essential oils. I recently found out that R-134a is a approved food grade solvent for extracting food grade safe oils which leads me here as i am in the middle of planning to build a extractor using refrigeration technology & knowledge as it is very well established an safe. yes this is not a refrigerator but it is new tech that uses refrigeration technology and it is new uses for R-134A please dont delete me i need help lol. anyway the extraction process is simple get R-134a into a liquid phase pass it or pump it through a chamber full of powered plant material and a filter then spray it into collection container while evaporating it in mid air thus the spraying action then all u need to do is condense it back to a liquid and pump it back through. there are some special issues though first everything in contact with the solvent(R-134a) has to be stainless steel or other inert material like glass, two nothing can have residue of lubrication oils so the solvent must be pure this may affect pumping issues, three the extraction chamber is filled with powdered plant material that gets very much compressed an turns solid and needs to be opened and closed very often in such a way that lets the solid plant brick material out easily so like open the top an bottoms like a pressure cooker not sure how to seal that but cant use rubber seals maybe metal to metal, four the collection container has the same issues so maybe quick connects and hoses, five what pressure to use or build for, was thinking 500 psi for safety but only need the gas to stay liquid but it gets real hot here so wanted to plan things for 150*F ambeint temp to insure no blow outs due to summer heat and possible sunlight heating the metal, and six we are going to use this like nonstop so there is some cooling issues to be looked at i would hate to have hot/cold swings to make fractures in the metal, and again both the extraction and the collection chambers are opened emptied filled then closed so loss of solvent and the introduction of air into the system are issues to look at.

there will probably be a lot more issues but these are the ones at hand still dont know if i can do this with out getting a pump or vacuum but if not i can buy one either way, any and all ideas are very much helpful if u have any knowledge or ideas about this please respond as i still have no clue what thickness all this stainless steel has to be and i have looked for relating sites they only tell me that its being used industrially not how they are made or where to buy one