We have a pinnacle srs skid and decarb skid having trouble with get the terps out and this happens all the time now what do I do please HELP
Decarb produces CO2 as a byproduct. Bubbles are normal.
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Yeah I sure hope it’s happening all the time…
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Yes but we are getting runny crude at the end and it does not harden like normal and is very terpy. Also it has dropped our potency down? Any reason why the bubbles would drop the potency?
Decarboxylation conversion is only .87 so if that’s your potency loss your right on track
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We’ve dropped 10-15% since this started happening.
It’s odd because we aren’t pulling the same amount of terps out as we used too and it taste super terpy. Is this because of too much vacuum?
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13% is standard.
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I… Don’t even know where to begin…
Take a deep breath, your process is working properly. Please do a little bit of reading about what decarboxylation is and why you are doing it
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Okay people thank you for all Your input! However the issue is it is leaving terps in the crude and the cold trap is not putting terps out like it is supposed to! I’m very aware what decarboxylation is! I don’t see the decarb stage because is is all stainless with no view and have never seen the crude bubble over b4 it is even supposed to! So my question is, Is the vacuum too high or is my cold trap not working correctly. We run through 500 lbs a day and this is an issue and I’ve been running this machine for 8 months now and never seen this!
Did you change your extraction parameters? Was the biomass extra terpy? Sounds like the profile on the batch is different than previous material- might smell extra barnyard-y, might have more high-boilers in there
I’m not sure what exactly how that skid is laid out. What exactly is your goal with it? Recover solvent from crude, decarb and strip terps for distillate I assume? Bubbling is caused by gasses evolving from the liquid. Could be CO2 from the decarb, could be left over solvent boiling, or it could be terps boiling. Need more details to diagnose
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First guess?
Vacuum pump no longer contains oil. It has ethanol instead.
==> it doesn’t suck worth a damn.
==> no degas or devol.
==> bubbles, and solvent, and terps
That’s before RTFM…
Do you (does the skid) have a vac gauge?
A target vac depth?
When did you last check your pumps blank off value?
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Agreed.
60 sec didn’t yield a manual, but this image suggests the pump that comes on the skid might be a diaphragm pump.
Still seems like a lack of vac…
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Could also be a lack of hot. We will need numbers and units. Probably not even very precise ones
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Looks like a steam pressure valve…so lack of hot should be documentable
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Yep, orders of magnitude would probably be sufficient to establish the malfunction
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Given that this decarb unit is an add on to the SRS, it’s also possible the issue is upstream.
Too much residual solvent in the input would presumably lower both the decarb both devol efficiency in what is probably a timed passage.
…it still reads as not enough suck to me
…and I’ve drained enough unfathomable messes from vacuum pumps over the last 30years to know that most users don’t give the pump any thought till it stops working on them.
Surprisingly, I’d say molecular biology postdocs are rougher on vac pumps than hashashins, but it might just be that the old Welch duo-seals kept sucking longer 
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We’re gonna be like click and clack for pot juicing: I wonder if we can solve the problem without a single additional clue.
Bubbles to me in the original post look more like decarb bubbles than solvent evap bubbles but of course that’s a tough guess. Described as “runny crude” at the end, which I assumed was describing successful decarb but now I’m thinking maybe the solvent isn’t even getting all the way out. No way to tell without at least one number.
Diaphragm pumps are hard to kill when they’re young
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That “timed passage” looks like it’s driven by the gear pump. So turning up the VFD could also give the same set of symptoms.
As could changing the starting viscosity by failing to remove solven upstream.
I don’t see how to solve this with just one number 
Feed them hash… (although I’ve never seen that actually kill them, just seen them improve after slugging ethanol more than once)