So I’m not sure if I am excited over nothing, or this is repeatable, and I understand I am asking alot from someone who might have more experience in this matter. With that being said… I think I may have steam distilled some Terpenes in my Heidolph! This is not to say there was not water or hydrosols recovered along with them, but the smell (good nose almost water clear) and color… is pretty amazing considering the starting material.
I ran supercritical on my Apeks without a decarb terpene pull or sub pull prior to it. I then took my accumulate crude straight to the heidolph to decarb for FECO. What was being pulled during decarboxylation was the concoction I stated above.
A Is this possible?
B how do I seperate those terpenes from the rest of the concoction. Separator funnel? I know what it is and how it works. Not how to use it for this application. Any description would be fantastic.
C Is anyone else doing this? Why, or why not?
D Thank you for any and all help. I appreciate you making it this far in the post.
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@Betroit
@Kinsmanofthesun
Theres a few others on here I forget your screen names. They may be able to help.
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Much appreciated… I’m very excited for my “discovery”, and very underwhelmed with the responses I have gotten so far lol
So we run Eden machines and have a heidolph 5L rotovap. I don’t see why you wouldn’t gather terpenes/water/hydrosols as the crude is heated and placed under a vacuum. We haven’t run crude through our roto but when we run winterized CO2 oil through it we typically pull all of our alcohol out, then during our ramp up to decarb temps we pull out a mixture of alcohol/hydrosol/terpenes that definitely smells good. I haven’t yet come up with a good method to isolate the terpenes in this mixture from the remaining alcohol/hydrosol/azeotropes. However, to answer your questions:
A. Yes definitely possible. I’m actually going to go over and throw some of our full spec CO2 crude in our heidolph and see what I get out, I’ll report back with my results probably tomorrow.
B. For your mixture of mostly water/terpenes/hydrosols, a separatory funnel is going to be the easiest option to test out. For this process, obtain a sep funnel, close stopcock on the bottom, pour mixture into the top and stopper it. Invert the funnel multiple times to mix the contents, after every few inversions make sure to hold it upside, and pop open the stopcock (now pointing up) to release any possible built up pressure. After this, place your funnel upright on a ring stand and let the mixture settle. If it separates out into two distinct layers, then this method will work for the output you are receiving. In this situation, your aqueous layer (containing water/hydrosols) will be on the bottom, and your organic layer (terpenes) will be on top. Drain them into separate beakers, and you are set.
If, after this process, there are no visible separate layers, then the only other real option to isolate the terpenes in the mix is to do a liquid-liquid extraction. I have attempted a number of different LLE methods on hydrosols/terpenes/alcohol mixtures, with little success.
C. We aren’t doing that, just because we have a solid SOP established at this point for extracting our terps that is pretty bulletproof, and it works well with our post-processing flow.
D. Us CO2 folks gotta look out for each other, we are definitely fighting an uphill battle against our hydrocarbon/alcohol competitors most of the time.
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So I am wondering what your results were? I am thinking that the water boiling off with the terpenes and hydrosols allows for an easier transition and possibly get them to move over at lower temps. The terpenes I pulled out of the Apeks this morning were much more abundant and with less water and hydrosols but were also a few shades darker… I did 3 15 minute runs for the apeks terps. Still working on getting a separatory funnel, but thinking I may use a large syringe in the meanwhile for a temporary solution? I can shake it and slowly eject the hydrosols as they seperate pretty similar to what you described I think.
Hey, had a couple things in the pipeline already for the roto so haven’t had a chance to run it yet, but I have the crude ready by it. I’ll keep you posted on my progress when I get the chance to put it through.
Yes, you can definitely use a syringe as a ghetto separatory funnel.
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Don’t mean to be this guy but generally speaking unless your doing this on really nice sauce or extract, i.e. not crude, it’s going to be equivalent to cold trap terps. Even if it smells good, you won’t know what you have until you flavor with it.
I watched two goofballs take cold trap terps and flavor with them (unpurged, cold trap catch was -40) and the pen caught on fire. You could try drying salts but that would catch some terpenes and change your profile.
I don’t think this is significant. I get terps back with my ethanol on a falling film. I have a 55gal drum nearly full of terpenes.
I made a post my first day here about other industries that buy junk terpenes but there wasn’t very much interest.
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I used to toss loads of wfd terps! These smell much better promise!
Wfe wasn’t the only type of terp waste I mentioned.
What would cause a pen to catch fire? What else would be in there, but not a nice sauce or extract, that would be undesirable? I wish it were easier to flavor test terps… 
The butane from the purge step condensed at -40. Not that that can happen to you, but it happened to them.
Understandable. So allowing the terpenes from a cold trap to come up to room temperature would remove that worry?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is do some r&d and analytics.
So your saying Butane will not return to a gas form at room temp?
It’s ok if you don’t know the why or how. You don’t have to put on a front and look down on someone to cover up for yourself. Especially when you have not shared anything worthwhile to this post in the first place.
The answer to my own question is Lipids (fats and waxes) other than that crude and an extract at least my C02 extract are virtually very similar. Nothing else I can identify… and apparently neither can you … that would make a difference.
I was being nice
Heres the answer you usually get here
Go get a spoon
Dick
Lol its a forum. Its built for questions and interactions amongst posters. You have not only displayed your ignorance, but also your inability to comprehend concepts. Like I said you have not shared anything worthwhile to this thread.
When you cant TH Cut it. CBD your way through.
Experience and insight is all that this forum is. That’s what I provided. You didn’t like the answer so you got hostile. Im pretty sure I have earned a decent amount of respect here from helping people out.
The reality is that no amount of advice can replace experience and if you’ve ever done any analytics you’d realize how dumb you sound right now.
Go cure sauce at room temp and tell me how long it takes to pass analytics to sell to a customer. The answer is you won’t. Because while butane in a pure form might disappear, a complex matrix of other unknowns won’t.
Go explore and learn instead of throwing a tantrum when you aren’t given the explicit answers. This industry needs less crybabies like you.
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C b Deez nuts into your mouth pls
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