My apologies in advance for being blunt and appearing to be confrontational, but what is the scientific reasoning behind advocating such low temperatures?
Why would an extremely long vac purge at <100F where the oil is thick retain more terpenes than a short purge at 115F where the oil is fluid? Why would the percentage of butane to terpenes being released be different?
Is this some effort to sell more vac ovens, lol.
Here’s my take from another thread on the subject, and a link to that thread:
I purge BHO at 115-120F at down to -29.5" Hg in a thin film until the bubbling slows to a crawl.
The short explanation:
The 115-120F is to ensure the oil is in liquid state for the butane to easily escape the matrix.
The down to -29.5" Hg means I don’t ever pull past this point. I don’t leave the pump running, which would take the vacuum down to -29.9", which I believe is unnecessary as the 115-120F @ -29.5" Hg is deep enough to remove any moisture, and pulling a deep vacuum on and on possibly disturbs the matrix leading to waxing up. I go for shatter, and consider other products unfortunate ‘accidents.’ But feel free to cook up whatever waxes, budders, honeycombs, crumbles you want, just don’t expect me to buy into them as premium grade product.
This process will get you to below the residual butane solvent standards as quickly/efficiently as possible, further purging is unnecessary imo, and I’ve presented a long and thorough case for my opinion in a single thread previously.
“At what ppm can you taste butane?”
Having observed the trend to these low temperature and exceedingly long purges over the years, I think they came about as knee jerk reaction to slabs waxing up, with no one ever questioning how ridiculous, and without scientific basis the rigmarole is.
It’s long been both Gray Wolf’s and my opinion that the oil needs to be fluid to get the butane out in an expeditious manner, and that ~115F does so well without major loss of terpenes.
If there is such a difference in the loss of terpenes between purging at 85F versus 115F, then on a large slab you should be able to weight the slabs and prove it.
And… if you’re going to say purging at 115F leads to waxing up,