Vacuum Purging Extracts

When degassing solvent from your essential oil extracts, a low temperature environment is crucial to prevent decomposition of the extract’s volatile active compounds, THC/CBD and terpenes. Terpenes are the compounds that give an extract its aroma, flavor, and other unique properties. It does not take much to evaporate terpenes, which is one of the reasons why you can smell them so easily. If you degas at too high of a temperature these compounds will decompose, leaving your extract with less aroma and flavor, and significantly reduce the strength. Michigan Extraction’s vacuum oven gives you the precise atmospheric control needed for maintaining those delicate ambient temperatures. The use of a vacuum oven also prevents oxidation of the terpenes during the purging process by eliminating the oxygen and lowering the boiling point of your solvent, whether it be butane, hexane, ethanol, or isopropyl alcohol. Doing so ensures that you have a repeatable process that always produces clean, solvent free extract.

Shatter is accomplished by purging off your solvent in a vacuum oven at a low temperature. For a clearer shatter, a dewaxing process is necessary to remove the waxes and lipids which cause your extracts to appear cloudy. Nitrogen backfilling your vac oven after your shatter has been fully purged can help stabilize your product even further, allowing your shatter extract to settle and cool down in an inert, dry atmosphere.

If you desire a more waxy crumble product, a higher temperature is typically used during purging. The goal in producing a crumble THC wax, is to keep the waxes and lipids intact, and allow them to emulsify into the extract. Whipping your product throughout the degassing process helps with fat emulsification, which leads to a fluffy crumble extract.

Used in conjunction with a Terpene Trap, or terp trap, many processors are able to produce a more flavorful extract by collecting the off-gassed volatile terpenes and then reconstituting them with their extracts.

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