Hey guys, I’m pretty new at the business and only started distilling this year with a 5L short path. I’ve boosted up to a homemade wiped film and its pretty great but still cant get my temps down. All my material has had the terps removed in the short path but I’m still having trouble separating my fractions, mainly THC, CBD, and CBN I can get my vac down to 110-140 microns but still seeing red distillate around past 150c any idea for correct temps? Thanks
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THC and CBD have very simliar boiling points. You would have to go a very different route if you wanted to seperate your THC and CBD fractions. As for the color issue, you most likely just ran some old oxidized material. I would search for the VTA parameters on here and tweak your wiped film from there. Best of luck to you. The community is great here and there is plenty to learn using the searchbar.
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Hey welcome you two! Super helpful, well thought out first post @SuperKamiGuru! Hey good on you for only distilling on a batch system for a year and earning enough to step up to a continuous one, quite the feat @Jaymayne88! Enjoy our forum thanks for coming!
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@SuperKamiGuru is correct, you should not hope to separate cannabinoids from cannabinoids via distillation, boiling points are way too similar (and i’ve always suspected they exist as an azeotrope)
the red nature of your distillate i’d also agree, most likely old material, or material that had already been extracted once, OR you’re not getting a deep enough vac. wondering if you’re using diffusion? where i operate we get around .01 to .001 mBAR, which is around 1 micron–possibly your weak vac level is preventing good separation of fractions? either way a deeper vac would help you–you could run faster, get better separate of fractions, etc.
at this vac level we use a still body temp of 158C for our ‘2nd pass’ (distilling the cannabinoids from retentate from the first pass), then we take the distillate generated from that pass, load it back into the feed flask, set the still body to 154C, then run it at a ~93% ratio, this cleans color and potency up noticeably. so you could remediate that red distillate, to a point [you’ll never make it honey-gold]
hope that helps!
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What’s your vac level? And what vac pump are you using? Generally speaking, the lower the vacuum the better separation you’ll get.
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I have a diff pump that I’m getting ready to test sometime this week. Had a bad gasket. Hoping to achieve microns down to single digits. I just don’t know what temps I would have to use to get my heads/terps, main body and tails. I’m using a Edwards E2M40 Vacuum pump in used condition I’ve been able to achieve 60 Microns when not distilling. But the moment I turn on my peristaltic feed pump I lose vacuum to about 110 and then through evaporation It’ll reach 130-140 Microns. I’ll test my diff pump and see what I can achieve in microns and report back. Thanks guys!
Edwards E2M40 is enough
What size is your 6" or 8" wiped film evaporator?
Cema
I have a 5" wiped film evaporator
Chromatography column can help
About
“you’ll never make it honey-gold,”
Is there like a limit to how much color you can clear up?
I’m pretty new to distillation too. I thought if I do more passes the color will get better every pass, but I guess that is not the case?
I got this batch that discolored badly. I tried distilling it again and again, thinking it should eventually get really good in color, but it never got better than the second pass.
I was confused. Please enlighten me haha
I have a pope wiped film.
@GreenSmoke how did you get your crude? what steps did you take pre AND post extraction? i’m a rookie too but, i run our wiped film ( going on 3rd year ) i maybe able to help idk.
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in a word, yes, in my experience there is a limit to how much one can clean up color utilizing distillation alone.
the bitch of it is that exposure to heat generally darkens color, so even though it is possible to perform multiple passes on the same material for color improvement, 1. in my experience it’s very difficult to do while preserving a decent yield, ie you’ll sacrifice a lot of your feed material to retentate, and 2. every additional pass means more heat exposure, thus darkening of color–so you kind of end up working against yourself. you’ll also increase the chances of THC degradation, thus lowering potency of your end product.
chromatography was mentioned above and that’s definitely more of a sure thing, but, also a whole new setup and investment in the equipment and consumables and additional processing steps, given the price of distillate these days it might well end up not being worth it.
there’s also the option of redissolving it in ethanol to proper ratios and running it through a membrane skid set up for color remediation; efficiency, yields and investment costs would also be gnarly and in my experience jury’s out on if it’s worth all that