Hello everyone I am looking for some advice, I am Operating a Pope Scientific 4” distillation unit, all purchased together as a new system. This unit Is quite the upgrade to the 10L AI SP I have experience on. I am having a hard time dialing in parameter on this pope unit. Processing materials I started with CBD crude had great results 90+% on test, now moving forward with THC I am struggling to reach 80%.
Running at manufacturing specs for 2 passes, (2nd = 75% THC) even pushing a 3rd pass as a polish to hopefully bump the percentage, 3rd = 79% THC
Curious to how others run parameters, something I found interesting when testing the waste ball on 2nd and 3rd passes the thc% was less than 10% away from the distillate ball %.
2nd pass 75% THC distillate- 69% THC in the waste ball
3rd pass 79% THC distillate - 76% THC in waste ball
Color in waste ball is always black on both runs, color in distillate side is tea colored in liter amounts, yellow in steam as coming out of distillation unit. Running CBD in the past I can honestly say I have had prettier distillate from CBD but this feels wrong. Any suggestions or opinions of this also?
In theory this machine made me excited to run but now I want to go back to my short path systems. i won’t allow my self to till I master this machine or break it lol
Reject more junk, what’s your condenser setting at?
What are all of your settings and vac at?
For a pope with a single two stage rotary vane you should be somewhere around 90-105 C on the condenser and 158-170 on the Evap. Cold as possible on cold trap.
Thank you i did read over these actually, had a hard time finding any 4” with someone not running another process to separate the Terpenes out. Thank you tho i will reread these to see if i missed anything
I have considered bumping heat on the heat bands more but got scared i would degrade the thc, i will try this today and see if the pull comes over better. Thank you
if you’re getting cannabinoids in your waste flask, it means you didn’t evaporate them. only that which evaporated can hit the condenser and be swept into the collection. So you’re not running hot enough (or not sucking hard enough for the evaporator temp you’ve set).
if you’ve got in house analytics, then dialing up the temp a degree at a time to see where the sweet spot is is pretty easy. if you’ve got to send that stuff out to know what’s going on, it can get expensive quickly.
feed rate is also critical. if you feed too fast, the good stuff won’t have a chance to evaporate before it’s swept to waste (feeding faster requires hotter evaporator).
** at a min, doing the strip/devol/decarb pass in a separate reactor frees up the WFE for doing more actual distillation runs. 150C with stirring and vacuum will get the job done, and the equipment is considerably less expensive than the WFE you’re tying up.
I did have a great success with the distillation at 175 wiper band temp, and 80 condenser temp, for the first L but had a hard time pulling complete vac.
Clean system pulling 40mtorr before introducing crude, then ran material vac bumped to 170mtorr. Material separated a lot better though for the solid first L then waste ball started to increase in oil. From slow moving wrinkled black lava consistency to a heavy used car oil look.
Anyone have a recommendation on how to counter this during the run? I did bump the condenser down to 70 to see if it helped (thinking it would thicken the oil, or pull more vac) steady movement from waste side makes me think oil started pushing to that side and wasn’t condensing on the finger, about half way through my 2L run is when I noticed this. Bumping temp down did thicken thc side ball but no noticeable change in vac or the waste side.
Now thinking about it a few hours after leaving the lab, I feel I should have bumped the condenser to 90? or the wipers instead to 179-180? Opinions?
I should also add, when I ran this material yesterday I was able to pull 1L of distillate out of it and now rerunning the waste as I could tell the run was not correct I had almost 2L in the waste and only 1L in distillate.
Also side note and question on testing results. When mixing 2 separate L (1-81%thc / 2- 85%thc) of our 3rd pass distillate. Then sending it to testing we were shocked at a couple things… 87% THC but popped for pesticides. now I know cannabis materials through are state shouldn’t spray but we know everyone uses something on plants… so now that I have a decent % on THC ( although I question how it raised in %) how exactly would you recommend efficient remediation? chromatography?
Filtered sand or machine?
This is normal, you have more vapor and therefore less vacuum. It seems like you need to strip your material better. Your vac pump oil is able to keep up with a single liter then you terpene and other contaminant log your oil and the vacuum efficiency drops. Your lower temps before mitigated this by producing less vapor.
You can do a better terp strip in a reactor or on the column and then do a second pass and get better results with the above described methods.
As for pesticides, if you have the equipment and you want to invest in it (and are willing to make some clear, near colorless oil) chromatography is the best and healthier way to go but requires skill, testing and equipment. If it’s just one pesticide and it’s a low amount, the unethical route would be dilution with some good, pesticide free, near the same % oil to below the action limit or LOD.
Also crank that condenser, 100degC is cold in the world of resins and is cold in comparison to 175 deg C. Do not fear the process temps.
Thank you so much I will do this, so on the crude, yesterday and today I recovered zero terps or ethanol. Usually my thoughts are exactly that, that the terps or something volatile was making vac high but none recovered. Is this strange?
Lol I also should add, we are spending the money on chromatography vs deluding the oil with good oil I will not allow short cuts to cover up somthing I can fix definitely after spending so much and always preaching quality vs quantity.
Update on rerun of distillate, gravity feeding to eliminate some of the vacuum issues or heating of the stainless lines.
Parameters are the following : wipers 175, internal at 90C, wiper speed at 60 RPMs, Ethanol chamber -90 and temp trap -15
Seems to still be pulling lighter on the waste side then what would be ideal. During this run we have 70mtorr vac so doing well. Opinions please haha
Am i silly and the waste is ok as long as its coming out a shade darker or should i still be getting black residue as i was expecting?
That’s the thing about having some type of in-house testing so that you can test your raffinate for thc content. Try as @NewLevelProcess pointed out about getting your condenser to 100C, and see what come of it. But until you test your waste fraction, you won’t know how efficiently you’re distilling.
I don’t know what 60 rpm is but that seems very slow. Your wiper should be quite fast to make a thin film. No this is not normal you should have a thick, black waste stream.
90-100% on wiper speed
Only first pass trash should look like motor oil.
If you need a consultant let me know. We can get u dialed in. I have 3- 4 inch and 1- 6 inch I run
i won’t allow my self to till I master this machine or break it lol
now I know cannabis materials through are state shouldn’t spray but we know everyone uses something on plants… so now that I have a decent % on THC ( although I question how it raised in %) how exactly would you recommend efficient remediation? chromatography?
I will not allow short cuts to cover up somthing I can fix definitely after spending so much and always preaching quality vs quantity.
