Regarding Decarbing before distilling

Boiling your flask with a mix of ZEP and alconox peels most of the gunk right off.

3 Likes

Hot water eats sugars

3 Likes

Yeah hot water is the best cleaning solution for any post processing, imo. You can scrub away and try any mixture of solvents, but water just collects the gunk effortlessly.
I always clean like this; warm ethanol for recovering anything left over, then warm water maybe with a little pressure/force from a faucet, then acetone to remove anything left, sometimes another water run after acetone. Works like a charm every time!

1 Like

They’re on the evaporator body - been running variations of h2o, limonene, vegetable oil @ different temps to get some results

Have you considered removing the sugars before distillation? How long do your wipers last?

1 Like

I’m reviving a machine which was rode hard & put away wet…
Our current crude inputs are much cleaner, but getting the equipment back to square one is my current goal

Hi,
Take the wiper body off and get inside to scrub the deposits, make sure everything is aligned before reassembling the apparatus… otherwise… crack!

10% H3PO4 rinse followed by a 5% NaOH soak works awesome for burnt on water solubles. Obviously rinse well between.

2 Likes

Yeah, cracking it upon reassembly is my biggest concern.

Are you reccomending using those solutions through the machine as assembled; or once disassembled - rinsing/soakiing the evaporator?

See if you cant get a manual explaining the assembly process.

I have no experience personally with cleaning a WFE, only cleaning nasty burnt up cannabis materials in general. IME the acid only needs a short period of time to “soften” the gunk up and then the base will lift it off like elmer’s glue. Soaking is how I do it for most everything, but then again the stuff I’m washing isn’t as much of a PITA to disassemble. I’ve had no need to reflux either but I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t work of you were careful.

First, why are you distilling CO2 crude? You’re not decarbing before extracting? The CO2 is superior because of the cannabinoid profile extraction. The downside is operating times compared to other solvent extractions. Winterize and fill carts. People are critics of Co2 bc most have never had a product from an experienced operator. Don’t underestimate the entourage effect.

I haven’t tried CO2 crude in the RFE but if its anything like ethanol or LPG crude than you will be degassing inside the jacket. When the crude is degassing along the jacket surface wall there will have bubbles popping and this causing crude to spray on your condenser.

The only option you have as mentioned above is to burn one run just for degassing BUT the second pass will need to be slow verryyyy slowwwww. Decrease the spin coat controller and inlet feed. The parameters of speed ive forgotten but it will take 4 hours for a hopper to be done. You won’t be disappointed in the quality.

If i was in your position ill focus on prepping crude. Cleaner the crude; the easier of separation.

Question on something I saw touched on but not an exact answer to-

My process:
BHO →
10:1 200% Ethanol →
1x Room Temp Pass →
3x Winterized -80C pass →
248f 45m 302f 15m while under full vac purge till all bubbles are gone →

Here is my issue, when pouring into the flask every once in awhile I’ll get a batch of oil that is more volatile than others and while heat gunning it in it will tend to pop up and try to make its way through the condenser.

Suggestions? Thank you.

put a temp probe in there. differences in volatile content (solvent or terpenes) can affect temp if they’re boiling off. so set temp & reactor temp are not necessarily the same.

your end point (bubbles gone) is decent, but I’ve had samples that took 6 hrs to decarb in boiling water (probably because they had water in them) using that end point. And seen vats that were still bubbling after two days, ostensibly at temps that should have finished in 1hr.

thermometers in the vats was my solution. never did figure out what was up with that batch of crude though.

3 Likes