@ajonesy777: decarb will happen at room temp if you’re patient.
1800W should be plenty of ergs to bring a couple of cups of water to the boil in a pressure cooker.
have you tried just the pressure cooker and a couple of cups of water? How much extract are you trying to decarb? How long did you wait before deciding you couldn’t reach pressure?
3 qts of water and 700ml of coconut/hemp oil. I have tried just the pressure cooker. I tried 2-3 times over an hour each time. I actually ended up frying out my cooktop and needed to contact amazon about a replacement. The water did seem to be boiling, but I could not get past 5 psi.
why so much water?
condensing steam is a great way to transfer heat.
I would have run it with an in or two of water in it. You do have to worry about running out of water, but dialing the heat back so you’re not actually losing much is the correct response there.
without actually doing the math, it doesn’t seem that trying to heat 3quarts of water up to 120C should have killed an 1800W cook top. heating water is hard, but not that hard.
Those portable cooktops are generally crap, if your pressure cooker will work with induction those are usually much better and some allow digital “temp control”. If that wont work look for an electric burner that is rated for canning. They are usually the old school coil type and its what I use for my 21 quart canner several times a year without issue.
cheap pressure cookers are more often Alu than SS.
so chances are it won’t work with an induction burner.
they are great tools
Are we talking about decarbing dry herb or extracted material?
For dry herb, i like to use a sous vide method and open en process the decarbed bag further in a room with a fume hood scrubber.
cheapest thing i can think of to do to help is run a line from your exhaust into a jug of kitty litter. it will catch most of the smell you are experiencing.
@ajonesy777 If you use Amazon, type in bamboo or coconut charcoal air purifying bags. In my experience working at SRI Instruments, I have found keeping them in my office makes a difference. Compared to the main lab & tech support area, my office does not have a chemical and decarb scent.
I also keep clean air plants in my office, such as bromeliads and some succulents.
Hope it helps!
I was using that much water because that is what the manual recommended and said not to run less. I got a new burner in, so I can try with less water on Monday. I think it was the time that the burner was left on. It also shuts off intermittently to regulate temperature, so that could have been a factor in not reaching enough pressure.
I would have to return my pressure cooker and get the induction version of it. Also a new electric burner. This will be my next move if necessary. I am going to try with less water first with my new burner that came in.
I will definitely take this advice!
I was advised that decarbing the extracted materials would be more efficient. So that is what we are doing currently. Our fume hood is being welded together as we speak.
Update: The fan and carbon scrubber seemed to help for a while. But we are back to getting complaints again. This time my ability to use this lab space is being jeopardized. Pressure cooker did not seal, and the filters are clearly not cutting into the problem. Is decarb under cold trap with vaccum the best option. Getting really stressed here as the owner of my space is telling me to start decarbing off site.
man maybe an inline ozone generator and shoot it outside but now you have a weird rain / wet smell
Perhaps you should look into a grow tent and have the tent have carbon filtering.
Ino, like what was mentioned long before, and tom, ozone gen is your only option imo.
Just exhaust the ozone outside of where ppl aer at.
It is impossible for me to vent outside in any capacity. I operate in a medical office building with windows that can not open.
if it’s not a good space to extract in, perhaps you need a new space.
That said, labs are retrofitted with ventilation regularly. you could vent outside.
it would just cost $. probably $$$.
folks who want to extract with hydrocarbons inside generally spend all kinds of money adding ventilation to rooms without opening windows.
when you say the filters works, and then the complaints returned, how long did that take? was there a noticeable decrease in smell? is it possible that you need to change your filter already? How big a carbon filter did you purchase? are you pulling or pushing through the filter? (no idea if that makes a difference here),
This chart really get’s overplayed in the community. It’s been a while since I visited that paper, and can’t remember all the details off the top of my head.
It’s a good guideline, but the times cannot be taken to be the word of God. For a reaction like decarboxylation to occur, you will need a transfer of a specific quantity of energy to make the reaction happen, so there is a specific amount of joules per gram of THCA required, which is related to, but not the same as temperature. Temperature and time will affect total amount of energy into the system. That study used small amounts and so their times were pretty short, and they also degraded the product eventually (ie., the decline in THC over time). Hopefully I am remembering that study correctly…
With all of that overly technically stuff said, @ajonesy777 I would recommend that you perhaps decarb in a reactor that has a reflux condenser. I’m not sure what your current setup is, but if you have no problem with retaining terpenes and other “smelly molecules”, just heat it up in a closed vessel (with appropriate pressure rating and pressure reading gauges for safety) and have a chilled condenser on the top that will condense any stank back into a liquid, instead of evaporating away into the air. In my experience, 121 deg C for 2hrs is usually plenty of energy for decarbing a considerable volume of 70%+ oil (10-20L).
Hope that helps!
I think we were just optimistic that the filter worked decently and were lucky that no one complained. Though yesterday during the decarb I think we may have hit higher temps than usual and the smell was pronounced. A doctor from next door came over and said the smell was giving him a headache. The pharmacist who’s space we use is telling us that we need to decarb offsite. If we can make our process more foolproof then we have a chance at turning this around.
This is our current filter set up
