Cleaning up terpene colors post-purge / separated

Hey F4200

I have around 800g of fresh frozen terpenes that smell excellent. They were poured after the sugar crash and were kept separate during the purge. Even with W1 filtration the color is darker than what I would like for what I intend.

I have a full 2L SPD, different size buchners, pretty much a full lab to try different techniques, so please assume I have the equipment / media or that I can get access to it-

Terpenes aren’t viscous.

I was told to make a slurry with silica and buchner it.

  1. Should I reintroduce anything other than the terpenes / silica?

  2. What micron size filter should I use for the buchner?

  3. Best way to homogenize the media?

  4. Would the SPD be a better fit for this? I know the same process can be done for distillate color clean up inside the SPD with the media but unsure if the same science is applicable to terpenes because of the BP difference.

Summit sells these…

Could probably do it your spd.

But distillation isn’t my strong suit, so I’m not going to say anymore lol

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Use your SPD no media, distilling using the lowest temp you can

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I assume you mean HTE not pure terps correct?

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Winterize them with butane. Utilize that lab filtration equipment.

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Agree with this. Just enough heat to bump the terps off. Also was suggested by @Future in another thread to use a nitrogen sparge. Haven’t tried that yet.

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Yep.

@Hansel Seen that bad boy too, but LS recommended a slurry / buchner

@Dred_pirate that option also got brought up but does seem the most labor intensive, but if it gets the best result I wouldn’t mind.

So between-

  1. Slurry / Silica / Buchner

  2. SPD Low temp with no silica mixed in, no heat on condenser

  3. CLS re-filter with silica and collect / purge like a normal run

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Maybe drop your recovery and final purge temps a little, if you aren’t in a hurry.

Better safe than sorry…

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How much media to biomass did you use?

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I think the SPD is the first sensible try. I found a couple searchable threads I’ll get some info from.

I got a 2L SPD with a CRVPro16 ready to rock. I’ll start with 100g and start the heat at 15-20C and go till it passes slowly. I’ll use whatever terps pass to make a few carts and see if the same peppermint smell / taste is still in it.

No silica.

Will report back.

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Please do, interested in your results…

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Any distilled terps that i’ve experienced never taste right. Havent tried em all, but that’s my experience. What solvent do you plan on using for the buchner?

Try distilling with a room temp water bain marie instead of a mantle; use a dry ice slurry for the condenser and make sure you trap it well. Most of the terpene distillation issues are related to temperature degradation and access to oxygen. Sparging the system out well before you begin is worthwhile as is breaking with inert gas (even though you’re operating the whole time below R.T.

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I was recommended to either 1) reintroduce some cold tane; or 2) just use the terps and silica as the slurry, as they aren’t viscous at all, just extremely dark. It definitely had to do with the biomass, the pictures of this plant prior to freezing “Purple Panty Dropper” the entire flower was beautifully purple.

@SidViscous agreed, but I figured that was because they were generally left over from winterization / decarb and were aggressively removed vs. a very gentle heat with a super power vac.

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I would ad that it is also very worthwhile working with amber glass, and/or inactinic lights.

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What do you mean by “breaking with inert gas?”

When you release vacuum to bring the system back up to atmospheric pressure, use nitrogen instead of just air. That keeps the oxygen from making contact with hot oil which is pretty much instant stink

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Thank you

I agree with most of the distillation tips here especially regarding nitrogen and would add that if you put that liquid terp stuff in the freezer first and get it super cold before distilling it will take a little longer to come up to distillation temp which is very helpful when dealing with volatiles. Get it real cold & thick before pulling vacuum and use at least 2 cold traps. The trap closest to the pump should be the coldest (dry ice slurry) and the one closest to your condenser should be really really cold but at least 10-20 degrees warmer than the dry ice trap. Use a regulator on your vac pump and go as slow as you can stand.

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My life is oxygen making contact with hot oil

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