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AARRGGHH, Cloud/Wax, what the hell is causing it?

BigJohnny

Member
We've been having this problem for a couple of months now and it's starting to get extremely frustrating and discouraging, but many of our slabs are coming out of the ovens with cloudy spots in them that if left to their own devices (or further purging) causes huge waxy/greasy spots throughout rendering it total garbage for anything other than edibles.

I need to know what's causing it, Our material is bone dry and then once it's packed we freeze the tube for 12-24 hours.

Once frozen it goes right from the freezer to our terpenator and is then processed.

We bake it between 110-120F under full vacuum in a thin'ish film.

Lastnight for instance I put slabs into the oven around 5pm, flipped them at 9:30pm and then left them in the oven with the vac running until this morning at 9am and lo and behold, I wake up to cloudy spots. It was perfectly clear when I went to bed at 2am, and cloudy this morning.

wtf is going on?!?!?!

 
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BrainChild

Member
I feel like that's a little hot to be purging especially all night w the pump on, so maybe that's causing it to budder?

But IMO more likely is you could have a bit water in your solvent. Perhaps try running same material w/fresh solvent to isolate that variable.
 

Chonkski

Member
Try going a little lower and slower.

When I get hit with touchy strains or conditions, I go as low as 95 on the oven controller. And I'll flip less often.
 

krunchbubble

Dear Haters, I Have So Much More For You To Be Mad
Veteran
Fats/Lipids cause Clouding/discoloration...

When you poured the slab, all the fats went to THAT area...
 

BigJohnny

Member
I'm game for using lower temps, my asshole coworker is not, so I won't likely get a chance to try that for a little while.

But I'm inclined to believe it is temp related because it seems like if you get the temp right, you end up with a nice spiderwebby looking product, but if it's too hot you end up with puddles.


Fats/Lipids cause Clouding/discoloration...

When you poured the slab, all the fats went to THAT area...

We recover to -12 or so, so it isn't pourable, I use a spatula to scrape it out.

And before you start telling me that scraping causes waxing too, we have produced a number of perfectly clear slabs using the same method we've been using for about a year now.
 
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gholladay

Member
Big Johnny,

I would agree with the lower and slower assessment as stated above. The other tip that comes from Carla Kay is to make sure your shelves are up to heat, then put the slab on the shelf and allow it to come up to heat, and then add the vacuum. You may be doing this already, but if not, that might be something to try out.

GH
 

BigJohnny

Member
Big Johnny,

I would agree with the lower and slower assessment as stated above. The other tip that comes from Carla Kay is to make sure your shelves are up to heat, then put the slab on the shelf and allow it to come up to heat, and then add the vacuum. You may be doing this already, but if not, that might be something to try out.

GH


We do let them sit on the shelves for about 30mins before we hit the vac, but I'm noticing that when we set the temp to 110, the slabs will only be about 97 and it takes maybe an hour or so before they are actually close to the set temp.
 
I'm game for using lower temps, my asshole coworker is not, so I won't likely get a chance to try that for a little while.

But I'm inclined to believe it is temp related because it seems like if you get the temp right, you end up with a nice spiderwebby looking product, but if it's too hot you end up with puddles.




We recover to -12 or so, so it isn't pourable, I use a spatula to scrape it out.

And before you start telling me that scraping causes waxing too, we have produced a number of perfectly clear slabs using the same method we've been using for about a year now.

I would agree with you scraping is capable of producing clear slabs but given that clarity is a multi facetted equation one case of waxing is not always equatable to another so do not rule it out simply because it has "been done successfully before". However, as GW has pointed out on a thread recently opacity comes at presence of nucleation points within the oil such as fats, lipids, waxes, and very often water. I watched a very similar phenomena happen to a crystal clear slab (much to my dismay is was really pretty grape stomper) have just a drop of water fall onto it from another piece of equipments condensation and the slab went from clear to cloudy to budder over the course of the next twelve hours of purging. So perhaps your material was a little wet, or your tane has picked up some water and needs to be bled. I agree that most of the suggestions above could all in theory produce these effects in there given arenas.
 

CannabisTHC

Member
When you scrape your oil from the collection tank what temperature is it at? I'm assuming your scraping the oil when its a bit too warm and this coupled with butane in it leads to nucleation points and waxing to start occurring. Try freezing the oil before you scrape it. I would also think that you may have to watch for this in your oven as well, causing the least agitation possible in the beginning when purging ie warming up your slab before vac or after. I just dealt with this my self and that is how I fixed it.


BTW SquattingBull, I just went to retrieve my collection tank last night out of the freezer only to find that I had cut the power to the freezer and found my oil sitting in a puddle of water. I turned it upside down and let it drain out then I patted it dry as best as I could with a paper towel. I froze it and then scraped it onto parchment and it came out beautiful with no nucleation points or waxing. I would have thought it would sizzle when dabbing but I put it under vacuum a bit longer than normal to pull any moisture away. Glad I saved that slab.
 
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When you scrape your oil from the collection tank what temperature is it at? I'm assuming your scraping the oil when its a bit too warm and this coupled with butane in it leads to nucleation points and waxing to start occurring. Try freezing the oil before you scrape it. I would also think that you may have to watch for this in your oven as well, causing the least agitation possible in the beginning when purging ie warming up your slab before vac or after. I just dealt with this my self and that is how I fixed it.


BTW SquattingBull, I just went to retrieve my collection tank last night out of the freezer only to find that I had cut the power to the freezer and found my oil sitting in a puddle of water. I turned it upside down and let it drain out then I patted it dry as best as I could with a paper towel. I froze it and then scraped it onto parchment and it came out beautiful with no nucleation points or waxing. I would have thought it would sizzle when dabbing but I put it under vacuum a bit longer than normal to pull any moisture away. Glad I saved that slab.

Nice, I tried a similar maneuver on our slab (thankfully it was a small piece that was from the edges of the spool and not the bulk of the material) and it unfortunately didn't save it from the autobudder ha. Granted it still smoked great and tasted fine, just wasn't the super pretty slab status the rest of that run turned into. It was also already on a piece of PTFE sheet and spread thin so perhaps that had something to do with it. But man good save that must have been a really unhappy moment ha. Freezing it and pouring it off was definitely a good move.
 

CannabisTHC

Member
Nice, I tried a similar maneuver on our slab (thankfully it was a small piece that was from the edges of the spool and not the bulk of the material) and it unfortunately didn't save it from the autobudder ha. Granted it still smoked great and tasted fine, just wasn't the super pretty slab status the rest of that run turned into. It was also already on a piece of PTFE sheet and spread thin so perhaps that had something to do with it. But man good save that must have been a really unhappy moment ha. Freezing it and pouring it off was definitely a good move.

Yeah it would not have been good to have messed up my buddies slab! Got away with that one, hopefully never to make that mistake again lol.
 

Dablord

New member
Ive noticed it nucleates when it stops reacting so if you come back and arent getting any reaction its already melted down seems to be when it happens. I use lower temps and have been getting better results. 98 or so on the pid has been working great
 

OregonKushFarm

New member


Condensation can build up inside the tube unless it under a full vacuum when in the freezer. Try an inline dewax column. -40* should lock up those fats and totally freeze any water in the material.
 
I would try to re-distill all of your butane, not pulling a deep vac and hopefully leaving any water from the tank behind. I dewax and have noticed that water seems to be the culprit in my situation. I dump my whole tank into my empty system and recover to -10Hg and it fixes the problem.
 
Condensation can build up inside the tube unless it under a full vacuum when in the freezer. Try an inline dewax column. -40* should lock up those fats and totally freeze any water in the material.

There is no moisture in the air of a freezer brother and a dewax column isn't going to insta freeze the center of a larger diameter column either. There is a reason you don't see many folks using the dewax column's they're not needed with proper preparation of material in the column.

Hash I agree he may very well have some agua in his tane but dumping the whole amount into a system depending on the size could/probably is dangerous. If he is to distill he needs another tank to vac down and be emptying into rather than circulating, as in the butane distillation thread floating around right now talks about. I believe the recommendation was about two and a half pounds at a time, or up to 30 psi. Or if it is just water he can get his tank nice and cold and invert it to bleed of any excess water/ check the integrity of his tank for rust all at the same time.
 

BigJohnny

Member
When you scrape your oil from the collection tank what temperature is it at? I'm assuming your scraping the oil when its a bit too warm and this coupled with butane in it leads to nucleation points and waxing to start occurring. Try freezing the oil before you scrape it. I would also think that you may have to watch for this in your oven as well, causing the least agitation possible in the beginning when purging ie warming up your slab before vac or after. I just dealt with this my self and that is how I fixed it.

BTW SquattingBull, I just went to retrieve my collection tank last night out of the freezer only to find that I had cut the power to the freezer and found my oil sitting in a puddle of water. I turned it upside down and let it drain out then I patted it dry as best as I could with a paper towel. I froze it and then scraped it onto parchment and it came out beautiful with no nucleation points or waxing. I would have thought it would sizzle when dabbing but I put it under vacuum a bit longer than normal to pull any moisture away. Glad I saved that slab.

Our pot and bho would be less than 85F, because that's what the water temp is set to for recovery.

There is no moisture in the air of a freezer brother and a dewax column isn't going to insta freeze the center of a larger diameter column either. There is a reason you don't see many folks using the dewax column's they're not needed with proper preparation of material in the column.

Hash I agree he may very well have some agua in his tane but dumping the whole amount into a system depending on the size could/probably is dangerous. If he is to distill he needs another tank to vac down and be emptying into rather than circulating, as in the butane distillation thread floating around right now talks about. I believe the recommendation was about two and a half pounds at a time, or up to 30 psi. Or if it is just water he can get his tank nice and cold and invert it to bleed of any excess water/ check the integrity of his tank for rust all at the same time.


Some good ideas all around here. If I can find some time I'll have to try and redistill the tane.
 

BigJohnny

Member
Yesterdays run was in the oven around 6:30pm @ 112F. the vac was turned on @ 7:40. IME the slab would be right around 97F but I wasn't the one who turned on the vac so I didn't check slab temp.

Around 9pm maybe 9:30 Iturned the heat down to 100F and kept the vac running all night long with the temp set to 100F.
This morning around 8am I turned off the vac and checked it. I left it under just heat until 9am when I hit the vac and pulled it down to 500 torr (our ovens have the odd gauges.) it's now just sitting there under mild vacuum to help remove the rest of the remaining bubbles.

My "bitch stewie" partner isn't here for a while :)

so the question is how long should I let it purge at this temp?

I'd like it to be as hard as it can get and I've noticed that longer purge times seem to help harden the slabs a bit, or is that just my imagination??
 

Lefthand

Member
had the same problem before when i used to freeze my columns. When i stopped freezing my columns and starting running -20ish tane the problem went away. I think the warming of the pre chilled column/material while loading it onto extractor was the culprit..
 

BigJohnny

Member
had the same problem before when i used to freeze my columns. When i stopped freezing my columns and starting running -20ish tane the problem went away. I think the warming of the pre chilled column/material while loading it onto extractor was the culprit..

Shit, that kind of makes sense. Like when you freeze food, if there is moisture it will crystallize and form frost.

I could see that happening with a frozen column. If there is ANY moisture (which there likely always will be) it could crystallize when the tube thaws a bit.

Our tank is in a freezer and I think it sits around -17F.
 
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