Ive been decarbing in the roto for 5 yrs with rhe same roto, if tou have an across call and ask how to reprogram it to go hotter, if its a non ai Chinese one it should go that hot anyway. Its the best way steips volitales and decarbs fast under vac
what media are you using for thermal?
Can you elaborate a bit on your process - time and temp - of decarb in the roto? We are kind of noobs, but we have our lab up and running and would love to take care of this step while our crude is still in the rotos. Thanks!
A reason to decarb prior is you will be flooding your vacuum oil with volatiles right before your more sensitive fraction ranges if you decarb and distill back to back.
plus, wouldnt you be dirtying up your vapor path with fart juices and shitty volatiles before hitting your keeper fraction?
Duratherm S
I run the roto til about 65-70c then i empty it, and dont keep anymore alcohol it will be full of terps. I turn my roto to 145c and by the rime it reaches that temp it’s usually done or very close.
Ah ok. Thanks, that makes perfect sense.
Better vacuum, less stench and junk in your pump, faster distillation times.
so I’m thinking that less things will be destroyed (cannabinoids) under vacuum and such in the roto than on a hot plate or mantle in atmospheric conditions ? anyone done both and noted yields from crude?
when your loaded into spd after this are you still running a cold condenser up to 160 ?
I dont run a cold condenser at all, i just dont turn my oil heater up until i start to get to flavanoids. My setup is a lil different then most i use multiple cold trap, my lieberger condenser is the first piece in series that is cold m.
Ive been using the same 10 gallons of suratherm S for a few years, back when it was cheap and no one knew about it and they would sell directly to the public. Dont have any experience with any other thermal fluids, its what we used in the wiped films so i just went with what i know
totally used the safflower oil as lab supply in town had no duratherm worked awesome after I got over putting cooking oil in a 2000 dollar piece of scientific equipment 
thank you sir
Ok, tagging onto an old post here for a quick question: how long should I expect it to take to decarb about a liter of oil in a rotovap at 100C. I really don’t feel like swapping back to oil in the bath to kick it up to 110 where we normally decarb. Anyone have some data for how much longer it’s going to take for complete decarb in boiling water? I tried digging around and couldn’t find much. Going to stick with ye olde bubble method but was hoping someone might have some good data to share.
You can add water as it boils off and use ping pong balls to lower boiloff rate.
But if your planning on using the roto for decarb, why not just stick with oil in the bath as it can handle both evap and decarb?
It’s just messy as hell and I don’t usually decarb in this particular rotovap. Also, for future reference, it took about 4 hours for the crude to stop bubbling although it may have been done sooner because the bubbles were fairly large at the end and might have just been terps.
4hrs for a mass of crude at 100°C is not unreasonable, def a little slow but not much. I like decarb/devol @ 150°C