Making higher quality crude

What @G_Boe said about it being under vac if you want to decarb that hot is accurate. Hot plate temp at 125C will take forever. I’m going to start decarbing in the roto from now on, but when I was decarbing in beakers I set the plate to 240c and held the crude at 125c until bubbles stopped. Make sure you have a good spin bar in there so it heats uniformly and you’re not scorching the stuff on the bottom.

3 Likes

Awesome thank you Copper and G!

Im in the process of our 20L and removing more alcohol before I end up putting it in the freezer to winterize maybe today or tomorrow morning. I think I should be set for two decarbs this week and plan to try this slower method to compare.

When you all are using any sort of T5 or AC for filtration, I assume this is happening after winterization and before decarbing? If so, I need to achieve some better clarity cause when we filter for winterization the crude oil coming out looks exactly like a cup of a coffee, super black, and the byproduct contained in the filter is far from what Ive seen people posting on here, ours is more light brown, chocolate colored.

WoW !!!
Tell your boss to look into that this is not good

3 Likes

@coppertop at 300C+ under vacuum decarbing is gina have all cannabinoids
Heads mains and tails in the vacuum pump :rofl::fist_right:

4 Likes

Lol, yea, I was thinking 300F. God damn imperial system. :expressionless:

3 Likes

Haha! Yes, way too hot IMO. Even I wondered the same.

I will definitely be looking into all of this, I have a few projects planned this week, including decarboxylation at a lower temperature, introducing a stir bar (they had us manually glass stir rod it every ‘once and a while’), water solubles being in there after decarb as well.

Next week I have a meeting to look into some AC scrubs and clay to remove any impurities, and I just got thru TheLostBiologists tek and MAN did it give me some amazing ideas. It almost seems more beneficial to filter this immediately after a cold ethanol pull, rather than waiting after winterization. It sounds like our entire processes need a bit of an overhaul here.

4 Likes

I have 75+ gallons of ethanol wash under my belt. I ONLY add dry ice rice to my trim and etoh, wash for up to 40 mins, drain thru bubble bag, into panda spinner, filtered thru fritted buchner funnel with celiye 545 bed, ONLY.

Then into the rotovap

Then purged and decarbd in my 2l spd mantle and bf. Then spd.

Nothing else added, or done.

I must be the spd unicorn

5 Likes

If biomass is fresh iT works :grinning:

1 Like

Not winterized crude , no cryo freezer . 10:1 ole to eth/iso. Stainless steel pot dry ice in it and around it . Sit for 40 mins filter with 20-30 micron Degum repeat winterize . Celite bed, roto, spd. ?
Sound efficient and correct ?

That’s much too high even for a fast decarb. You’ll get thermal degradation with many of the organic compounds in your crude. I’m not surprised that it had an odoriferous bouquet to it.

Take a look at this thread and the research paper I posted there.
https://future4200.com/t/gemstone-decarboxylation-sop/3354/5

4 Likes

#4 will be of interest to you i think.

Cant believe nobody mentioned catalytic decarboxylation.

5 Likes

Its the fats that makes the ring form. What solvent is that crude diluted in?

2 Likes

Always EtOH, 190 proof. After reading many peoples tek (including TheLostBiologist), I have a feeling I found a few places to improve our reaction process.

We freeze our biomass and alcohol prior to the reaction, for a minimum of 24 hours prior. However, I now realize that we are partitioning out our biomass into buckets, introducing dry ice, and then adding alcohol, so the beginning of the reaction isnt even at cryo temps for several minutes.

We do 3 washes of 10 min soaks each - and it sounds like this is far too much. We also remove the biomass between washes and allow to drain in a collander (which drains into the rest of the liquid phase)…I think this is also allowing a ton of fats, chorophyll, etc to get into our processes. Then it just sits in these buckets to allow the liquid to come back to room temp overnight until we begin our rotovape process - no filtering, clarifying, or anything like that in our processes

You would be surprised how wonderful methanol is for removing fats. In fact im finding out that when using methanol for winterization, if you dont filter the solution while its warm it turns into sludge when you freeze it on account of all of waxes that drop out.

In my experience it looks like methanol can drop around the same amount of waxes at room temp than ethanol can at freezing temps. Its by far the best solvent for winterization.

8 Likes

It would be hard for me to say what that is, it could be due to water content picked up by the ethanol from the plant material thats causing what your seeing but again it would be hard to say unless u can speak with the grower.

Otherwise you should be able to filter that with fine mesh filter, not the green but the murky white.

I’m curious if you have weighed your ethanol after each washing to determine how much oil you are actually picking up wash two and three. Also is your biomass milled?

1 Like

This is a great question. We weigh how much ethanol we are using for each reaction, and how much we reclaim, but not during this process since it is in buckets we dont have a scale that would hold this much material.
We have done some lab testing with our spent biomass and shown trace amounts of cannabinoids left so the extraction is complete, but its also shown to be bringing a LOT of unwanteds over too.

As for our biomass, it depends on what is given to us, sometimes its ground material, sugar and trim, or whole flower, or even a mixture of all the above. all completely dried out

How cold is your ethanol when you introduce it?

Thats where I think I need to tweak the process a bit. We have it in a deep freeze for at least 24 hours prior to use, but pour it in with the dry ice and biomass at the same time, rather than allowing the etoh and dry ice get to cryo temps first.

What is your current method of Filtration pre and post winterizing as well?

1 Like