Subcrit co2 terp extraction from crude

Hash and Stuff Extraction
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Weve got about 50gal of unwinterized undecarbed supercritical co2 crude that’s been sitting in a corner for about 6 months. Sadly we stopped running our extractor about that same time, because it just didn’t make sense financially, but I was thinking about throwing the raw oil back into the machine and doing a subcritical run to get out terpenes. Anyone have experience doing this? Would love to hear suggestions

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That won’t work bro

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no? why not

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Have you personally run the machine before

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Your best bet might be to try to sell the crude off by itself… You could winterize, and decarb to charge a premium on your crude, but I think that the way those machines work the terps would have already been harvested before the crude run… Please take this with a grain of salt because I have never run one of these machines

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Yeah if you load a bunch of crude oil into the extraction column you are going to have a bad time. If you really like the smell of the crude and want to capture the terpenes off of it at this point, your best bet will be to use a vacuum oven with a cold trap on it. You will collect a mixture of water and terps in there (depending on the state of your crude), you can separate the terps and water afterwards with a centrifuge or separatory funnel.

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Yes I actually built it. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t work. Please elaborate

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I did some test runs awhile back and successfully pulled decent smelling terps from winterized oil, don’t see any reason you couldn’t do it with crude (and it should smell even better as you loose monoterps during rotavap). Couple of notes:

  • Expect your extraction vessel to get messy. Even with long run times, some of your crude is going to end up sticking to the inside of the vessel wall and solidifying. Should clean right up with some ethanol post extraction.

  • You need to maximize the surface area for the extraction to work. Best results came from filling part of the extraction vessel with small glass beads (~1-2 mm diameter) and then pouring warm oil over the beads.

  • Recommend going slightly supercritical for extra penetration into the crude. We didn’t test subcritical, but guessing its going to take substantially longer to separate the terps from the oil if you don’t go critical. 1200 psi at 100F worked well in our test runs (followed by a second run at 2400 psi and 120 F to collect the fats/waxes/cannabinoids)

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