Decarb in Roto

Hey all :wave:

I feel stupid asking this question but we have a consultant that seems to think I will be able to directly put our decarbed (in a 50L reactor) bho with no winterizing (so no ethanol, just straight tane) into our shortpath.

In the past, my process has always been extract on the loop, purge, winterize, roto and then SPD. Then I liquid chromo any bullshit out and end up with a consistent water clear disti at 95% thc. Am I decarbing in my roto when I band out? Or is it like this consultant says and I decarb in the reactor? I’m also confused because I’ve never specifically added a step to “decarb”. I’ve only done this to the biomass itself when co2 or decarbing the falling film extract.

Why would I need to decarb when the SPD will reach temps needed to properly fraction?

Idk if I’m mistaken or if I’ve been doing it wrong for the past 3 years? Can anyone help me out by explaining what in the world this consultant is talking about?

Much appreciated :raised_hands:

I think there may be a miscommunication.

You can put non decarbed material into a shortpath to decarb it. You do not need to re-decarb it if you did it on the plant material or previously during one of your pre-distillation steps.

You should winterize before you put it into your spd though. I think the consultant was saying you can decarb in a SPD not necessarily to skip winterization to achieve that. The thorough decarb step is more of a wiped film thing because you want a huge load taken off of the wiper in the first terpene/volatile strip

I have never separated fats without a winterization but I’ve seen a few people claim to have done it with multiple careful passes.

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Decarbing in the roto just saves time in my opinion and also strips volitales and you dont have to baby the vac like in a spd trying to keep it from foaming through out the system. I run my roto til about 70c then collect all alcohol and turn my temps to 145c or so and dont keep that alcohol and terps with your normal storage of alcohol as you will keep compounding the terps for future uses. You can run unwinterized just remember the fats get smaller once there decarbed so you will have to filter below 1micron

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So, this is exactly what I told him and he basically told me, and in front of my boss, that I have no idea what I’m doing. We did just recently get a wiped film, but I’m going to terp strip on the SPD for a 1st pass and was going to put that disti into the film. Am I on the right track with that?
I just dont want to waste this SPD I have when I could save my film for other minor cannas.
I also feel like decarbing the crude 2x prior to the SPD would just waste my time and my technicians time when its happening in the path, on top of decarbing not fully removing any of my fats.

I decarb and volitales strip about 3-4 liters in 30 mins or so, if you have 1-2 bumps in the spd you’ll waste more time cleaning than you gained in my opinion. Ive done it both ways and i will never go back to decarbing in the spd.

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To each their own, I guess. I’ve never had this problem. I’ve also never reached above 90c on my roto to band out and stop recovering volatiles. I’ve only had a crazy bump when running CBN, and that is a nightmare to clean. Decarbing isnt meant to be removing volatiles and that’s where my confusion with using this term is coming into play. Thanks for the help :+1:

I’m aware of more than one processor that loads their (cold extracted, crc’d) bho directly into their wiped film units with excellent results.