As the title states, I am looking for a solution for a way to eliminate the smell during decarboxylation. My company operates out of the compounding lab in a retail pharmacy inside a medical office building. There is no way to vent air outside, and naturally when we decarb it definitely smells like hemp. The smell seems to get sucked up from vents in the ceiling of the lab into the retail space and even into the hallways of the building. We have been running for a few months once or twice a week without any comments. But the other day while decarbing several batches of coconut oil extract, we had several people comment on the smell. Our long term solution is to purchase a fume hood. However, we need a way to continue running in the meantime. Can anyone offer any suggestions?
Setup an exhaust fan to make your compounding lab slightly negative pressure, particularlyid the door to the lab is kept closed. Think bathroom fan or dryer exhaust with a 4-6" flex duct to the outside. Far less expensive than a fume hood for an interim fix
Hop on Amazon and buy carbon scrubbers and and exhaust fans with some ducting. Set one up for each vent in your space, and do your best to utilize negative pressure in your workspace so you don’t have to seal your doors too. Utilize the same technology that growers have for countless years. It works.
a scrubber with a duct sucking air in directly above where the smell is generated
Decarb under vacuum with a cold trap. Also exhaust the pump. You can send the exhaust through sieves/carbon filters and/or bubble traps - for which bleach and vinegar denature traps will denature a lot of the smell.
Try this, put your decoction into mayson jars with the lid loose like you would for canning. pressure cook the jars at 15 psi for 45 min, allow the Pc to cool down to room temp before opeining. I used to do canna butter like that In a dorm room ages ago.
They called me drug santa… wasn’t good at selling was better at giving.
Does the pressure cooker reach the right temps to decarb? Currently I use a magic butter and then decarb the coconut/cbd oil on a magstirrer hotplate in a beaker. The beaker is open of course and just wafts hemp smell. I started using the SOP you sent.
Decarb in a vacuum chamber and have carbon filters in any ducts.
Given the OP’s specific situation, I’m calling @Soxhlet for the win.
At least as far as ease of adoption and fewest changes to OP’s SOP 
Thanks Santa!! 
AND everyone else’s responses are also of high quality imo 
Using a hood over the decarb station and exhausting indoors through a carbon filter, or sucking the room air through a carbon filter before exhausting back into the room are solid solutions. I’ve seen the first one approved in an analytical lab for solvent capture. Both have been used in grows for years.
Exhausting a hood outside, possibly after scrubbing would be the gold standard for general extraction lab usage, but OP says that is not an option. Given the scale (magic butter machine or two, every now and then), it’s probably not the solution they’re looking for…
Decarbing in a reactor under vacuum, and scrubbing the exhaust on the vac pump (and or dumping it outside) would seem to be industry best practice at the moment.
If your worried about exhausting outside, and neighbors complaining, add an ozone generator inline with your exhaust.
Its not a matter of being worried. As I am in a medical office building and the windows do not open. If venting outside was a choice, I would be all over it!
then since you can’t vent outside…
Can you not hang couple carbon scrubbers w fans above everything, no ducting, just open air exchange like in grow room… Eat the smell before it’s got out?
Does your space have it’s own shitter? Exhaust out of that almost certainly goes outside without venting into nearby units. Shouldn’t be too hard to run a poly line from outlet of your vac pump to intake grate on bathroom exhaust fan.
Yes, hanging carbon scrubbers would be an option. This is something I was not sure of the terminology for before the thread.
I will have to ask about this. We do have our own bathroom in the retail area of the pharmacy.
try decarbing in a rbf with a reflux condenser and a balloon over the top, that may work as well. Plus you can observe the co2 from the reaction fill the balloon.
That is magnificent!!
weigh the crude. watch balloon.
stop when it reaches predetermined size!