My online study of activated carbon tells me that as a rule adsorption is generally facilitated by longer contact times and lower temperatures and lower PH levels. I do not use activated carbon on the belief that it retains THC equally as well as coloring molecules.
My question is about recovery of THC lost to adsorption on the surface of activated carbon. If I run a filter made of say alumina layers sandwiching an activated carbon layer and do so in a cryogenically cold quick sep funnel, can I then later run hot methanol through that same filter and hope to recover at least some of what was bound to the carbon surface?
Whether this would be useful or not is unknown but has anyone here got any ideas how tough it is to release organic materials from activated carbon once they become bound by it?
Someone on here was just talking about something like this but washing with warm ethanol afterwards.
I looked for the thread but couldn’t find it. It was talking about the loss carbon scrubbing and how he can’t believe people don’t warm ethanol wash to recover the lost thc. If I find it. I’ll post it. But it seems like a logical process. I’m just wondering how much impurities you put back in washing warm ethanol over carbon.
It would for sure be tossed into the reclaim bin but if enough that does add up over time. It might make no sense if not a lot but on the other hand even junky stuff if enough is worth it to me.
Purely anecdotal, but I wash my carbon post-filtration by mixing with 1:5 with iso around 50C and the re-filter through silica and after roto, I am left with a crude that is roughly 50% THC.