If you are performing decarboxylation prior to extraction it will speed up your run times at the cost of terpene loss… There are a couple of ways to offset this with CO2 extraction.
First would be to run your terpenes first, remove boimass, decarb, then reload. while it’s not the most efficient scenario it can help you to have higher yields of your terpene fractions. I talk to people about performing this in a batch process, taking a day of the week to run terpene pulls only, then the remainder of the week can be spent performing the deeper cannabinoid pulls on the same batch(es) of material.
If you only want to run the material once through the extractor I’d recommend looking to add a cold trap to your decarb oven. Scientific 710’s Odie can be utilized to recover terpenes.
You can also look into using a vacuum oven to decarb biomass, although it’s not the “best” solution it can get the job done. Cascade’s CVO-10 Package has their mechanical cold trap that can be used to pull them out prior to extraction.
Last option is going to be decarbing post-extraction. This extends your run times – as much as twice as long as decarbed biomass – but gives you the ability to fraction off your terpenes first, then pull the crude, and finally decarb through various methods depending on scale. Options for this route can be rotovap, decarb reactor, or using that vacuum oven with the cold trap listed above.
With the knowledge that decarboxylation is basically a function of time and heat, decarbing via rotovap can put a bottleneck in your production line depending on volumes/times needed to decarb. If you’re going the rotovap route you’d probably want to use oil in the bath instead of water, unless someone is there to babysit the bath and continue to top it off as the water evaporates.
No matter which way you decide recover your terpenes, if done correctly you should have more than you can utilize in end products if you pull terps from every pound you process. Diversify your product offerings by selling bulk terpenes, and get every penny you can out of your feedstock.