Hey guys, I hope this doesn’t seem like too stupid of a question but I’m in a slight disagreement with my boss about this. We have a Delta Separations RFD-27 for distillation, and the heater for our decarb reactor went out. My boss seems to think that running it through the rfd(rolled film distillation) without decarbing will be totally fine, but I personally feel like it’s gonna fuck up the 100k+ piece of equipment by cutting corners like that. If anyone can share their thoughts in regards to this, I’d appreciate it cuz idk If my intuition is correct or not.
Won’t fuck your unit up, it will make a mess and waste a lot of time though. It may push your vac levels up and also throw some light terpenes into your pump oil. If you have a glass wfe or rolled whatever, you can actually see it boil on the sides of the evap and subsequently slash the residence time. Super inefficient
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Appreciate your input man! Definitely not trying to fuck anything up cuz boss man is being extra pushy and cutting corners -.-
Get a big s.s. soup pot, or several, and a hot plate, or several. A magnetic stirrer would be even better if you have one around, or an overhead stirrer would be best. Decarb the old fashioned way with constant stirring while you ramp up to 150C and leave it there for an hour or two. Then load this into your rfe and you’ll be good as gold!
This is how we have been running our wfe for the past 2 years.
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Yeah, don’t do it, not worth your time. Your material will begin to decarb on the evap column (or feed vessel) and bring CO2 into your vacuum. This will result in a way weaker vacuum and you will end up with lots of cannabinoids in your residue. You’ll have to combine everything and rerun.
On the other hand, if you’re in a bind for hot plates, you could probably toss your evap column real hot, run non-decarb’d product through, collect decarb’d product, and rerun everything. But I wouldn’t!
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Hm yeah ima try and suggest we at least do that before. Hopefully he heeds my words but I’m doubtful lol
Yeah I tried telling him the co2 is gonna mess with the vacuum…we do have a cold trap with liquid nitrogen that should stop most terps from getting into the pump, but all in all it just doesn’t sound like a good idea whatsoever lol… but I guess if he wants it done so badly instead of taking the time to get a tech out to fix the heater, I might just have to spend allll day rerunning shit 
In the beginning, I once loaded our feed tank for the wfe with crude that I was told was decarbed. I immediately saw the oil start to decarb in the feed tank and got pissed at the people who gave me the crude. The only option from here was to run what I had loaded, clean up and restart later. What I found out after I ran the 2 liters of non-decarbed crude, ruined my week! I had to spend nearly 10 hours running a cleaning run on our machine, at many different parameters, just to get all the gunk out. Dark oil had splashed ALL over the inside of everything! Imagine the way water boils, but inside a $100k machine… not fun. 10 outta 10 would advise against!
Do NOT run undecarbed material through a wiper
It won’t ruin the wiper but as the crude decarbs it’ll splash onto the condenser and cause problems
Use a hot plate, roto or reactor if possible
If you do not decarb properly your vacuum will be horrible as decarbing produces co2 which will reduce vacuum level
A good decarb is key to a proper vacuum level
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Thank you for your input, ima relay all this info to my boss and hopefully he listens lol.
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Thanks everyone for all of your input! This is my first time asking anything on this website and it’s awesome to see such a great community interact in such a helpful way! Wish you all the best!
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If he doesn’t listen you can always clean the machine, just be careful with warm ethanol crude
Sugars are a bitch to get off
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Basically you will waste a run decarbing it without meaningful separation. If you run an extremely hot pass, you can get all the distillate on the condenser (along with a bunch of splashed garbage). You can take that distillate and rerun it, and you’ll get good results on the second pass.
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Worst case if you can’t convince the boss you know of what you speak;
Getting to know your machine intimately by tearing it apart to clean it…
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that shit will erode your wiper.
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Best way to clean the chonks of burnt sugars?
alconox and hot water
Are the chunks in the wiper body or on the wiper itself?
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He knows my easy method to clean a spd bf.
Lol
Toss the bish in tha garbage, and use a new one.
I’ve never been able to clean a spd bf after I shut it down after a run.
Granted my business partner doesn’t like that option. But I save 5.00 vs spending 1.5hrs scubb8ng and trying to clean said bf.
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you can heat up the flask untill everything is melted, then dump out any remaining resin. Follow it up with acetone, I never had any trouble getting glass clean like that.
It seems like cleaning glass never ends in the lab, I remember washing glass all day everyday.
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