Hey everyone, hoping to get a quick answer here. I always thought crude co2 oil for vapes needed to be decarbed first but I was told that it wasn’t necessary and that the pens did the decarbing. Is this true?
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It seems like you are focused on decarbing in the sense of whether or not it will deliver the full amount of active THC to the consumer when vaping. What you should really be concerned about is the consistency of the oil. In order for something to work in a vape cartridge it needs to flow. It can flow at a VERY slow speed (see raw distillate), but as long as it can liquify and wick into a porous heating element you aren’t going to have any issues.
The thing is, non-decarbed crude co2 oil is typically high in THCA content, as well as fats and waxes depending on your setup and parameters. THCA is a hard, clear crystal in its pure form which means that extracts high in THCA will be very hard and tacky. This makes them not work well in vape cartridges. When you decarb the oil, the THCA is converted to D9 THC, which in its pure form is a very thick, clear oil. So by decarbing your oil you are typically going to change the consistency to something that will work better in a cartridge. However, you also would typically want to winterize the oil first, because if you leave too many fats and waxes in the oil then it will not flow in a cartridge.
The typical workflow to take CO2 crude to a vape-ready oil is winterize in ethanol, reclaim ethanol via rotovap/falling film evaporator/whatever you are setup to do, then finish on a stirring hot plate @110C to remove remaining ethanol and decarb.
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It is possible to pull co2 oil straight out of a machine, let the excess CO2 dissipate at room temp, then immediately fill into cartridges, that’s what we do for our special in house carts. The trick is that we run our Eden Labs 20L at very specific parameters in order to pull a fraction that is about 50/50 D9-THC and THCa, along with anywhere from 10-30% terpene content depending on the input material. This combination gives us a nice full spectrum of cannabinoids and terpenes, tastes just like the bud, and flows well in a cartridge due to the high terpene content acting as a diluent. It really comes down to what your desired end product color/consistency/taste is. Doing a full winterization procedure typically removes a large portion of the terpenes present in CO2 crude, resulting in a higher potency but less flavorful extract.
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Thanks, I appreciate the response
That sounds delicious.
I hung myself out on making that product line go. It does really well in the accounts that can understand what sets it apart and can market it accordingly to consumers, but even for the ones that sell a lot now I basically had to meet in person with the buyers, talk them through the science of it and shove a cartridge in their mouth. For the most part, it seems like people that try it love it. It’s just hard to get people to try it when it doesn’t look like what they have been taught to think is “good oil”, and has a lower total THC value (even if the total cannabinoid content is solid!)
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Re-educating the consumer is so hard when they have been taught a certain thing for so long. Takes so much marketing to do so.
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@SauceBossNW is absolutely correct that usable vape oil can be pulled directly from the machine. Our customer Wonderleaf does this, of course without the winterization. Our oil never needs to be touched by ethanol. To thin the viscosity of their pen oil they re-introduce the terpenes that they pull in a first stage extraction prior to de-carbing of the biomass.
www.instagram.com/wonderleafco
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Are these folks extracting in such a way to minimize extraction of fats and waxes in the first place? If they would have winterized would a lot of junk filter out or no?
Typically if we run parameters that pull less waxy material and end up taking it through winterization, we filter out far less material and end up with a better yield out of the process than if we started with a rougher crude.
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@SoStupendous.
Yes, they run parameters that are “low and slow” (sub-critical and long run times) That being said, the reason our machines are different than any other out there is due to our PSI fault tolerance. Our PSI variance is only ±10psi our closest competitor is ±80psi. What that means is its a gentler push on the cell wall. When you have a large variance that acts like a jackhammer on the cell wall creating Lysis. Which is the explosion of the cell walls ejecting wax, fat and chlorophyll. Hence why SauceBoss still needs to winterize.
Further, winterization boils off lighter cannabinoids due to ethanols boiling point of 78.3*c. That’s why you hardly ever see a distillate with much CBG or CBC. As we all know every cannabinoid is important, and provides the pharmacological benefit.
Our machines generate #shelfreadyoil. No need for post processing at all.
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That first paragraph makes sense, I am really skeptical about what you say in the second paragraph. I don’t know of any cannabinoids with a boiling point anywhere near that of ethanol. Most have boiling points around 400 deg C at STP. I have made lots of distillate from different extraction methods that contains CBG and CBC.
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We have an old 10L IES system. We have to have much longer run times but it does pull a little wax out so we have to winterize. We have found that running alcohol as a co solvents helps pull more oil per run, just have to deal with the chlorophyll after. The alcohol also prevents the isolation cups from freezing and dry ice forming inside the isolation cup. The expansion chambers purge too fast and the co2 turns to dry ice and the cups freeze up. When this happens all out oil goes to the accumulator chamber and the small amount of waxes get left frozen in the iso cups. But like I said a little alcohol co solvent prevents all that from happening.
What are there run times per lb?
@SauceBossNW any chance you would share those parameters? I have a 5L 2000psi apeks, and just ran our third run since getting it installed!
Agreed. That second paragraph was inherently incorrect.
I’ve made hundreds of kilos of distillate from our CO2 crude and had 3-8% CBG on many runs. Cannabinoids do not boil out from winterization. The distillate they are seeing with less minor cannabinoids is due to the input material and the type of extraction. Who would recover alcohol at atmospheric parameters?
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