Unexpected decarb during LLE/polish

We just got a test report back on some oil that was slated to be shatter which apparently decarb’d pretty significantly at some point and we are scratching our heads about it. Crude was R.T. extracted and tested confirming no decarb prior to us starting. We performed a methanol winterization, heptane LLE, and room temp heptane scrub using only DE and B80 (cake style with a buchner). Recovered the oil to check for color (which is freaking awesome for the black sludge that went it) and took a sample for potency. Panel came back at about 50% THCa and 32% delta 9.

First thought was rotovap temp, which we’ve been running at 47C bath temp. In all this material has a good 10 hours on the rotovap. We break vacuum with N2 and I knew we were risking darkening at these temps but didn’t think we would have a decarb issue.

Next thought was the scrub may have catalyzed it but that was done at room temp and plenty of people polish shatter with B80 so that seems unlikely.

pH was checked at winterization to be around 6.

I know there’s a ton of threads on here about rotovap temps and I promise I did read most of them (well, probably not but a lot of them anyways) and couldn’t find much concensus on what temperature should make me concerned about decarb.

Lastly, we’re taking votes about what we should do with some beautiful amber gold oil that certainly won’t be a hard concentrate.

1 Like

47c at 10 hours is enough to easily get that amount of decarb. You wanna keep it around 30-35c to prevent that.

5 Likes

Roger that, I appreciate the confirmation

2 Likes