The Pitfalls of Blending Distillate and Terpenes with a Hotplate Stirrer

When manufacturing cannabis distillates, such as CBD or THC, processors have discovered it makes sense to reintroduce an appropriate measure of terpenes. Blending distillates and terpenes helps make a more appealing product. It also happens to make a substance that’s easier to work with during processing and packaging. That’s because natural cannabis terpenes help reduce the viscosity of distillates, making them more manageable.

Hotplate Stirrers are Excellent for Temperature Control During Processing

Manufactures also know that when it comes to blending distillate and terpenes, it’s crucial to heat these highly viscous extracts in order to facilitate mixing and processing. Sixty-five degrees C is typically recommended. It’s important not to heat cannabis extracts too far beyond this point, or damage could occur to your carefully harvested, painstakingly extracted compounds. That’s why savvy manufacturers use digital magnetic hotplate stirrers to achieve this level of precise temperature control.

But some manufacturers have learned the hard way when blending distillate and terpenes, while useful for precision temperature control during manufacturing, magnetic hotplate stirrers are not capable of thoroughly blending these challenging substances. If you insist on using a magnetic hotplate stirrer alone, you risk achieving non-uniform distribution of terpenes throughout the distillate, which will inevitably result in a substandard product featuring inconsistent dosing per unit.

Blending Distillate and Terpenes Requires More Than a Simple Stir Bar

Of course, these simple devices are extremely useful for simple stirring operations that involve dissolving soluble solids in liquids, or disparate liquids in liquids. But they are typically not up to the task of properly, thoroughly blending challenging solutions, such as distillates and terpenes. For that task, it’s crucial to invest in a more sophisticated blending device.

You will need a high shear homogenizer. A lab homogenizer is a robust, well-engineered rotor-stator homogenizer capable of reducing all the particles in your liquids to uniform size. At the same time, these handy benchtop devices make short work of thoroughly blending distillate and terpenes.

A magnetic stir bar at the bottom of a beaker may suffice for dissolving salt in distilled water to make saline solution, for example. But it will simply not be capable of achieving the uniform particle size reduction you’ll need to achieve true, thorough blending of distillate and terpenes.

Call CAT Scientific if you’d like to learn which laboratory homogenizer will best fit your requirements.