3 Processing Practices To Apply When Using A Vacuum Oven For Manufacturing Cannabis-Derived Oils
Posted on: 25 January 2017
Share
If you run a business that makes medical cannabis-derived oils for one of the states that allows the legal sale of medical marijuana, one of the tools you are going to need in order to make strong and pure cannabis-derived oils is a small vacuum oven. Here are a few of processing tips to apply when using your vacuum oven for the purpose of making cannabis-derived oils.
#1 Make Sure You Get The Heat To Your Product
When you use a convection oven, fans are used to ensure that the heat created by the oven is circulated evenly over your product. When you use a vacuum oven, there are no fans inside of the oven to distribute the heat to your product. In order to distribute the heat to your product, you need to make sure that you are using the right types of shelves inside of your vacuum oven. Aluminum shelves are the best way to ensure that the heat that your vacuum oven generates is transferred to the cannabis oils that you are creating. Try to avoid stainless-steel shelves, as they don't conduct heat as well.
#2 Select The Right Type Of Pump
You are going to be trying to extract the water from the cannabis oil so that it is as pure as possible. In order to do that, you need to make sure that you have the right type of pump installed in your vacuum oven. The best two pumps for your vacuum oven are either an oil-free pump or a dry pump. Oil-free pumps will not be negatively affected by the water that is being pulled out of your oil. Pumps that are oil sealed will not withstand the process of removing moisture from your mixture as well.
Dry pumps are also great for removing water from cannabis oil. When they run, they do not discharge any additional oil into your oven like a rotary vane pump would. They run clean and will not mess up the mixture that you are trying to create.
#3 Keep Things Open
If you want to get the water and gases out of your cannabis-oil product, you are going to want to make sure that you keep the vacuum valve open and the pump on as you are working. This will help keep the water in a gaseous state and help remove it from the oils and from your oven. When you keep the vacuum valve closed, the water that you are trying to remove will take longer to turn into gas and be removed from the oils. When the pump is off, the gases that you are creating will not be pulled from the oven and your cannabis oil solution.
To learn more about small vacuum ovens, contact a company like Certified Material Testing Products.