Add Acid to etoh

Since you mention the subject i always ask me some things in this matter. After the extraction with NaOH 0,1 N water, the reamainin organic phase with the terps are useless? Or can be washed with acidic water to neutraliz purific and use in future. There are so bad the yields in this procces? When i was doing this, after evap the pentane of the thca phase it looks like destilate, very clean and hard, and the remainin organic phase whit the terps(cloudy) when evaporate smell pretty well.

edit, i remember when i precipitat with HCI theire form an abundant offwhite mass of thca, maybe was to much hcl but…was beautyfull that mass (to me with naked eyes not wass too bad the yields)

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If you do it, make sure you shake well, then repeat.
there is a lot of “color” left in organic phase…
I dont really know what is left. The THCA should be in Aqueous.

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So we dont know whats happen to the terps, always i ask me this, if is viable and profitable purific separately. Destil or remediate terps and then recombine with the thca crystalizated.

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thanks for the replys and you amiability

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Sorry , the terps! It all depends on what your first step is: fresh, fresh frozen, dried
and or predecarboylated…and strain…to begin.
Each first step solvent will be different.
But if you just what we are talking about here…what ever terps you have
left probably stay in the organic phase when extracting into pH 13 H2O.

The water process for THCA simply produces a clean (to some extent)
product, amorphic crystals…when vaped…people say it is kick ass hyper speedy,
but no one likes the taste. It doesn’t produce a product that relates to your past taste
experience with marijuana products. Why would it ? Its a water processed product.
So to answer your question: The terps are gone… Yes, I think people may market products that have terps reintroduced.
BTW…I havn’t got to the Ascorbic acid yet…
best regards,

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It is truly a delight to see so many brilliant chemists chatting here! And yes, @Vegeta , you ARE a chemist! You have some very keen insights that take you out of the category of “layman” when it comes to chemistry, so I believe you have the soul of a chemist, even without institutional education in the subject.

To answer your question, there should NOT be anything hazardous in the product after having done what you described. Therefore, I would recommend to taste the product, about which I believe @mitokid asked you. In this case, “TASTING” means licking the solid product with your moist tongue… not necessarily vaporizing and inhaling it to “taste” the vapor.
To determine whether or not it contains any residual ascorbic acid (which I believe it may), you “will do some tasty test” :yum: with just a tiny chunk (maybe the size of 1-4 crystals/grains of table salt or sugar) to look for SOUR FLAVOR. Sour flavor means there is something acidic present. To be more certain the sourness you may taste in your product is actually the ascorbic acid you added, you may also taste an equally tiny amount of the pure ascorbic acid.

If your product DOES contain (tastably “too much”) ascorbic acid, you will need a few supplies to clean it up, properly. Here is the procedure I ALWAYS recommend to achieve the perfect pH for cannabinoid products that have been treated with acid or base at some point in processing…

MATERIALS:
• product dissolved in alkane or similarly hydrophobic, aprotic solvent
• pure distilled water… Fyi, Reverse Osmosis [RO] filtered water is usually not good enough, so purchase jugs of distilled water or just make your own in a clean rotovap!
• pH litmus paper, full range or designed for pH 5-9
Or
• calibrated digital pH meter

PROCEDURE:
1. Measure & record pH of pure distilled water (straight out of the jug). It should be 6.2-6.8 pH at typical room temperatures.
2. Wash the non-polar solution of cannabinoid with 1/3rd its volume of that pure water… mix the liquids to emulsion perhaps 7 minutes.
3. Allow complete partitioning of the liquid layers. If the lower layer is the aqueous, drain a decent sample of it into a clean & dry glass vessel, without any emulsion (mid-layer “scum”) on its surface. If the upper layer is aqueous, it may be sampled as-is, without separation draining.
4. Now, measure & record the pH of this water again.
The difference between the pure water pH (step 1) and the post-wash water pH (step 4) tells you how close you are to the equilibrium pH…:arrow_heading_down:
(A)cid ~ If the previous wash used acid (e.g. citric or ascorbic), and wash pH is at or further than -0.3 BELOW (i.e: more acidic than) the pure pH, simply wash again with another 1/3rd volume of pure water, and measure post-wash pH again.:arrows_clockwise:Repeat until wash pH is within -0.2 of or at pure water pH.:white_check_mark:
(B)ase ~ If the previous wash used alkali (i.e. a base like sodium bicarbonate), and wash pH is at or more than +0.3 ABOVE (i.e: more alkaline than) pure pH, simply wash again with another 1/3rd volume of pure water, and measure post-wash pH again.:arrows_clockwise:Repeat until wash pH is within +0.2 of or at pure water pH.:white_check_mark:
(C)orrect ~ If wash pH is within +/-0.2 of pure pH, it is acceptable. Ideally, the post-wash pH should be EQUAL to the pure water pH.:white_check_mark:

It is better to reach a “water equilibrium pH” this way than it is to bounce back and forth between washes with acid & base (aka: “titration”). Perfect titration of acid with base or vice-versa is nearly impossible without some means of continuously monitoring the pH, such as a colored indicator or a benchtop digital pH probe in the solution.

Best of luck, and thanks for sharing this! :wink:

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This is why I brought up acetonitrile. In the case the crystalline material DOES taste like as if it contains ascorbic acid.

Sometimes in preparative organic synthesis, you encounter situations in which there’s this one special solvent that just too damn well suits the problem at hand and becomes hard to disregard.

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Thank to you very much for your suchs inspiring words…really apreciate in this moment. I am bulding my own little lab step by step for organic extraction and formulations of phytomediciness mixing concepts of all cultures and times. And i will work with academic people for the analisis and to give me green ligth of the formulas.
Thanks a lot :pray::pray::pray:
Love💟

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Yes after the water extraction and precipitation of THCa no terps. My real question is if the terps that left in the first step and remainin in the organic phase there are broken or useless after “wash” with the PH 13 water.

Thanks :pray:

Bombastic thing developing here…
Dont stop there…

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And for CBDa this benefit still be the same, no?

If the addition of ascorbic acid truly promotes precipitation of THCa, I cannot see why it also wouldn’t be beneficial in the case of CBDa.

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Well, yesterder i do a mini test in some shit material, bad storage,material after a seeds harvest and some trim from tropicanna that was red dark asf.
I put 500mg of Ascorbic Acid in one liter of etoh stir until all disolve (take some minutes) and chill below -70( i be afreid that the acid precipitate at this temps but i dont see nothing in a short period time). Soak 3 to 5 minuts, only one pass, then i add another 500mg of AA (i want to try an exces) stir until all disolve. Roto vaped in vacum at 24 Celcius and a precipitate water this time with a pink color, i see this color before in others experiments’?. I add brine water to the rotoflask and start to swing until all the oil stick in the glass… and can take out the water only to read the PH and put the nose there,smell a mixture of rancid and bubblegum( The oil in the flask smells like bubllegum). I forget to basific the pink water to see whats happen.
Then i add ether to the rotoflask and put in the Sfunnel and washing. Dry and done. I put in a mini jar add little heat and turn off. They finish dark in comparition with fresh frozen, but still have clarity. Maybe the acid prevent oxidation when this never happend. But for shit old and oxided material is not a miracle.i throw a nano pice of a dry oil that have in a sryngle to see the satursrion, now is start to sugar, i cap and i put a little warm.





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Hmm interesting as heck @Vegeta

Vegeta…did it crystallize?

Ethyl acetate and pH’d anthocyanin was a hypothesis of mine for blue diamonds. Very interesting work!

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Ohh Yes i forgot to share. I do hot cycling and start crash in 2 days, but i need to use the oil… so abort the test.

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@vegeta, @mitokid. @Photon_noir

The ascorbic may be acting like a classic Hydrotrope.
With regards to THCA vs CBDA….(above)…of course
There is no harm in trying…but the solubility of THCA vs CBDA
In aprotic solvents is so different…especially when THCA is at
pH 2-3 …THCA exhibits some carboxylic acid Intramolecular or intermolecular bonding at low pH that shields the polar surface area . CBDA does not exhibit this phenomenon….most like likely due to the rescorcinolic OH (resonance or distributed pi system?)
I am sure Mito can comment in an intelligent manner.
So bottom line you can give it a try with CBDA…but do not get your expectations to high.
@Photon_noir …nice work up procedure for the H20 LLE wash…
I missed that post…when it first came out….
I’m going to look closely at it first chance I get.
Do you scrub the water out of alkane with sodium sulfate before the final crystallization step?

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Hi moro, Yestsrday i am very active in reading, was follon sleep and the phone falls in my face and i touch something in this thread jjaa, you have a notification or something? Well No matter anaways. For the question, i always dry sodium sulfate before yes, only one time or two scrubing, always was a gentle agitation. In a month i Will harvest some Thc and i want to make a few test more in this matter,

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Very interesting!