We are looking for the best method for decarbing Sauce. We get our Sauce via different separations, but you can assume that the sauce is about 60% THCA, 20-25% Terpenes. We are trying to decarb while maintaining the integrity of the terps as best we can.
We have tried decarbing in a Mason Jar at 140F, R&D testing showed this goes way to slowly (would take weeks)
We then bumped it up, and tried at 180F, with basically the same result. We tried 180F in a water bath as well, with the same result.
Decarbing at 212F for 8 Hours we got down to about 20%THCA, but my boss wants to get under 10%. We can just go a little longer to acheive this, but the oil has a slightly off smell after decarbing this way.
My next thought is to put the sauce into a stainless container, vac out the air, replace with about 5psi nitrogen, then decarb on a hot plate at 110 C for 1.5 hours.
We keep getting a slightly off smell that i assume is terpenes degrading, as well as a whole lot of CO2 disolved in the oil. After agitating to release the CO2, the off smell seems to linger. the effects of tthe oil are good, but if someone smelled the oil in bulk, it would seem a little strange.
I know there are a couple threads talking about this, but I wanted to see if there are any other methods or processes that have popped up since this topic was last discussed. Thanks for any input!
Have you considered removing the oxygen when decarbing,add inert add add heat? Would you preserve the taste? While the same time, possibly eliminate a considerable amount of degradation?
@NorCal We do this, I am only interested in decarbing the portion that already has had most of the THCA crashed out of it. We want our sauce syringes to be active as I know many people in the market we are in like to orally consume the sauce with food.
The next decarb we try will be with oxygen removed and back filled with nitrogen to about 5 psi. then onto a hot plate to decarb.
Thanks for all the input, let me know if you have any more ideas.
It sounds like your crystalization step might be the first thing to look at if your raffinate still has 65% THCa.
Also just wanted to mention you should take a look at some of the decarb under pressure threads if you’re going to attempt a sealed container because there are a few safety concerns.
We found that decarbing in a vac oven sparging with N2 under a few in of vac works pretty well to keep the environment inert but you go though a lot of N2 and need a pretty solid vacuum pump
We have gotten mixed results when it comes to the crystallization, our current method is to pour our cold -50C extracted hydrocarbon oil into a large beaker while it is still solvent heavy. then simply leave it at room temp for about 3 days until a very compact sugar layer forms, with the terp layer on top.
What THCA% do you think we should be aiming for in the sauce? Or, at what %THCA in the sauce will the THCA stop crashing out by itself?
I think we may add another day or 2 of allowing it to sugar, but at a slightly higher temp. Our room temp is about 68F, so maybe bumping it up to 80F or so to help it finish crashing out the sugar?
We are using W1 in our CRC, so we get sugaring/crystallization pretty easily, just fyi.
I would think you should be able to get down to 20-30% THCa fairly easily depending on the composition of terps. As your growth slows/stops, boiling off more solvent or cooling the temp will supersaturate the solution as the THCa is depleted (precipitated). How quickly you can do that and keep increasing the size of the rocks (versus getting a bunch of new crystals) is fairly dependent on viscosity. One of the reasons pentane works so well for crystalization is that it’s a pretty poor solvent so you can supersaturate it without getting rid of so much that the THCa can’t move around
Edit: so to answer your question directly, if you purge some more solvent out after the sugar stops forming, you’ll get more to grow. Once most of the solvent is gone, you can try reducing the temperature, understanding that growth will slow as the sauce gets thicker. Where you decide to stop is going to be an optimization. And ultimately you will never be able to reduce the solubility if your THCa in the sauce to zero. Some terps have much higher capacity for THCa than others so how much you’re stuck with will be highly dependent on that
Maybe the @VapeJet can create a 2 nozzle system where one nozzle shoots n2 or c02 into the cart while filling/capping. Kinda like the c02 push before a fresh can of beer.
I wonder if our reservoirs could be used to do this. They are a stainless steel pressure vessel with a PRV and gas input port. Wrapped in a silicone heater /w thermocouple. I’ll admit, the chemistry side goes over my head, so would love to know if that is a possibility.
It would probably work pretty well (although the PRV might get gummed up with how much CO2 would be coming out, a short length of tube could solve that and a BPR would solve that.
The big thing would be establishing how much time would be necessary to equilibrate. By agitating like @cyclopath suggested, it would obviously be faster but eventually all the O2 would be diluted out of the oil via Raoult’s law. There’s a tough optimization there because the lower the temp, the longer the time but obviously raising the temp before the O2 is gone defeats the purpose of the exercise.
TL;DR is that replacing the air with inert gas certainly can’t hurt and as long as there’s a way for the gas to get out, it should work for a decarb vessel.
I also think I threw up a design for a 1l 1000psi filter housing that would not even need a PRV unless you filled it near the top to decarb (still install one of course though lol).
Heating mantle, Round bottom, Reflux condenser, and a chiller of some sort. You can decarb and preserve terps all at the same time. Only issue I ever ran into was that the solvent (EtOH in my case) re condensed with my terps so I am always left with too much EtOH in my extract. Tried to get some help and develop a plan to remove that last bit of ethanol but never could really get anywhere with it. I still need to try setting my chiller to a bit higher of a temp and see if I can get the terps to condense and allow the EtOH to fly off. Last Temp I tried was 1C but the EtOH still condensed back down.
I would never expose my terpenes/hte to decarb conditions. The solution to pollution is dilution! To avoid crystallization in you carts/syringes etc all you need to do is increase the amount of D9 vs thca in the oil. d9 does an excellent job of interfering with crystallization. Just remove some high purity thca from your oil (via crystallization or even winterization) and decarb that thca >> d9 via any normal method, then reintroduce that d9 to your original while its warm hte. Heating your terpenes and even worse exposing them to the acidity of all that co2 during decarb will cause degradation and possible isomerization into more dangerous things like benzene. Dont do it. Just decarb some thca by itself and add it back in. #formulatewithintent
