For the past months I’ve been struggling with moldy weed and I think that’s the case of my distillate smelling funky. How can you remove moldy weed smell
Is it actually mold that your smelling? Distillate can smell bad if the fraction was taken too early, or from too little refinement.
Love to help but Need more info
What size setup ?
What pre distillation sop have You done ?
What method of extracting bho or etho or else ?
What vacuum depth When distilling ?
Smell is still there on second pass Distillate ?
What temperature does distillation takes place ?
What type of mold are we talking about
When biomass was harvested ?
When biomass was stored and cured ?
I have a pope 4 inch.
I do subzero etho extraction -40 to -50 an keep it there. It’s soak for about 10-15 minutes.
I remove the alcohol. Decarb. Deterp. And distill and I have my final product I’ve gotten really nice looking clear but it still has that funky smell to it.
Vacuum level is at 19mtorr being the lowest to 40mtorr the highest
I distill at 169c. Condenser at 72c. Feed rate about 500gs an hour.
Ok so about the mold ?
Where does that come in ?
Is biomass checked for pesticides ?
Old weed that was stored in bags some how got wet and it produce mold
I don’t know the types of mold if that’s what your asking I just know it’s mold and it smell funky
Ok pesticides ?
I think your answer/solution lies in a pre distillation sop
I would imagine that molds are water soluble so i would do Brine washes with ph swings citric acid for high ph and bi carbonate for low ph
The methanol hexane 3% water sop of @ Beaker might also be worth trying
If the amount. Of biomass is a lot
Both cleanup sop s can be done on Distillate
try using a hotter condenser surface, bump the temp up a few degreese on the heater too.
It seems like you are condensing some stink.
I have generated some pretty harsh smelling extract doing experiments of various sorts. One way to remove really foul odors but sort of last resort would be to boil the compound in isopropyl alcohol and water but only maybe 10% water or less. When the stuff is simmering and you are able to smell the odor it means that you are removing that odor from the liquid. Some of those smells make me nauseas lolz but so long as I can smell it in with the smell of iso I know it is being removed from the compound. I add in a bit of water because there is inevitably at least some components in stinky extract that the water can assist in removing those like a wash. I can cope with purging water under vacuum.
This had always been my general last resort sort of salvage operation when I scorched some extract or otherwise turned it smelly and just could not stand to vape it. These days I just run it again but with very low temeratures and let it take several hours. Good separation can do it but foul odors are just a tough nugget to crack if it isnt something simple like overlapping fractions too much?
Their distillation temp is probably fine, definitely bump up that internal condenser temp. Some people go as high as 90 to for sure reject the funk.
I’ve experienced dramatic increases in color from adjusting distillation temps even 2 degrees.
Have it tested for ochratoxin and aflatoxin before smoking it or selling it. There’s a possibility those could distill over, depending. Those mold toxins are no joke, way more hazardous than your typical pesticide residues.
EDIT: Here’s a reference, looks like it could easily survive wiped film distillation.
I read this paper and yes I understand that it mentions the toxins surviving x temperatures but where do any papers mention the toxins distilling over and recondensing in the distillates? We know the boiling.points for these toxins to be in the 500+ degrees Celsius ranges.
bp is 500C at atmospheric pressure. It’s definitely within the boiling point range of cannabinoids at reduced pressure. THC’s boiling point is about 420C (hah) at atmospheric pressure.
Decarb at atmospheric pressure and flash it up to 180 C if you can. Dilute 1000% with EtOh and filter to 1um or smaller. Winterize, any spores will float to the top accumulate and manually remove them, filter again cold down to 1um or smaller. If you can use a 0.2um chromatography filter, even better. This will remove any spores.
Perform a scrubbing step with bleaching clays AND carbon/charcoal, separately.
In an SPD, I would say remove everything up to your heads fraction, let it cool, add distilled water to the boiling flask, make sure it mixes well, and start over and begin climbing temps and grabbing fractions. Any aflatoxins/mycotoxins should come over with the water. Pull your main body.
Repeat these steps with your first pass distillate and your second pass should be totally Cat 3 clean and deodorized.
This is very interesting do you have any links so I can learn what you have read.
If your using ethanol as your solvent try isopropyl for your extraction, this should kill mold spores then recondition the extract with etoh.
Does Botyritis show up on lab results? All the research I’ve found says it doesn’t produce mycotoxins. I couldn’t find much research tho