hello, which catalyst is best to use? i have friend hes doing cbd iso to d9 70%, d8 20% and terpens 10%. im wondering which catalyst hes using, hes saying 800$ per 60 gram catalyst to produce 1 liter converted d9.
thank you!
Your friend is isomerizing cbd to thc
With a catalyst that makes 70% d9 20% d8
And 10. % whatever BUT NOT terpen
As for wich catalyst hard to say
And very sure he is not paying 800 $ for 60 grams
Only catalyst that is expensive are loaded beads and there are 3 that I know of that can get these yields but 60 grams is not close to how much you need for 1 kg and can be reused so initial investment is high but cheaper each run
60 grams in quantity the only 2 reagents that can get a whole kg Isomerized is alcl3 / butoxide or ptsa ( perfect timing almost to perfect ) there are some other sulfonic acids that isomerize a whole kg but they don t give the Numbers you mention
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murphy thinks its residual moisture trapped in the isolate. make sure your gas is very dry and your crc media as well
Moisture has very little if nothing to do with itā¦
PH is easy to fix but you have to use the right solvents.
Send me 10g and I will fix it and share the process as well as return the product that is produced - or gladly accept failure and also provide all the data I get from the process as well as the product.
Have dealt plenty with d9 that is red / etc. Every time it is Ph related.
Edit: 10g is about the smallest amount I can distill in a 50ml round bottomā¦ so thats my limiting factor for amount needed.
Double Edit: At one point it was believed that water caused shatter to crystallize - so I personally put 100g of water on a slab and vacād it for a couple hr and it didnāt nucleateā¦
Shatter is basically high THCa and low terpenesā¦ water has nothing to do with it. You can easily make fire water clear shatter with THCa isolate. The only thing water brings into THCa is pigments.
Triple Edit: In a vacuum oven, WATER is the next thing that comes out of your hash BEFORE the terpenesā¦ just look at a water phase diagram. 
(All terpenes that I have found have a BP that is GREATER than that of water)
To which the evaporating water can co-distill terpenes, but ultimately, shatter only happens once enough terpenes are removed (which means all water is far gone already due to the higher BP than terpenes when it is just the terpenes your trying to remove so its not goop). Otherwise you got pull-and-snap goo.
Final Edit: Though to change the molecular Ph you need to first put it into a polar solvent (ethanol, methanol, acetone, etc) then shift the Ph. It wont work in heptane, pentane, butane, propane, etc.
Send me a DM if you want to discuss further. I am 100% happy to return all of anything I am given (I will even pay shipping). Just want to find a solution so this thread can finally end. I have never found a product that color relationship wasnāt Ph relatedā¦. even with pigments, Ph determines their color. I have Ph shifted THCa/THC and CBDa/CBD across the spectrum. Neutral is what makes it white / clear. Anything else adds color due to the shift in Ph.
Have a working GC with multiple coils with FID, TCD, PID options. Working on getting my MS up and running so I can do GC-MS runs. Lots of CRM on hand in my -30c freezerā¦ Most common solvents on hand (ethanol, methanol, acetone, pentane, hexane, butane, propane, isobutane, DME, DCM, etcā¦). Do have a fairly good idea of what I am up to before I do itā¦ 
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i have done a run that was passed through a bunch of perform 6000 and it didnt turn purple but it took so damn long to do the run because of the powder that it pulled a bunch of fats haha would have been better to do the extraction then re wash it with the perform still would have taken forever so not practical at scale
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Just change the procedure a bitā¦ Heavy wash the mediaā¦ shouldnāt take more than an hrā¦
heavy wash the media? Iām not familiar with that processā¦ would love to be able to run powders quickly. i do like using crx though it doesnt rob or bleach the terps nearly as much
I dont believe this to be true, oxidation happens regardless of Ph if the product is exposed to oxygen. I mean even growing on the plant the cannabinoids oxidize. Red in d9 is definitely oxidation as ive taken red d9 and make it light yellow just by acetylation which removes the quinone double bond on the alcohol
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You do realize that oxidation is just a change in Ph because it āoxidizedā right?ā¦
Oxidation is either loss of Hydrogen or addition of Oxygenā¦ however you want to look at it. But none-the-less its a change in the molecules PHā¦
So therefore, a proper PH shift of oxidized product will bring it back to zeroā¦
Amber trichomes are just degraded d9-THCa / d9-THC / sometimes CBN.
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Oxidation = the loss of electrons
āOil Rigā Oxidation Is Loss of electrons; Reduction Is Gain of electrons.
Oxidation is not a change in pH, but rather it may result in one.
pH will also influence the rate of oxidation.
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It is not a true ph shift but the ph of the product will determine its constituentsā¦ However, forcing a PH shift then distilling it can return it to the golden goodness everyone likesā¦
I have re-distilled some stuff only for it to be water clear during disty and turn red afterwards.
Putting it back into ethanol / methanol / acetone then shifting its ph, then sep/evap then distill has made many kg go from red trash to gold.
The real question is what way to shift it???
For THCa / CBDa basic CRC can strip THCa/CBDa from solution making the media maroon (THCa) or purple (CBDa) while also forming a water soluble salt that reduces your overall potency.
For neutral THC I have found that you need to shift it slightly basic instead of acidic.
You want acidic shift for R-Acid molecules (THCa, CBDa, etc) but for neutral molecules you actually want to basic shift them R-Neutral (THC, CBD, etc).
Edit: by putting it in a polar solvent you can force its H+ or OH- concentration to shift. That is the āoxidationā / ph shift per-seā¦ If you think of it in ultimatesā¦ any time H+ increases the acid number goes up or any time the OH- increases the base number goes upā¦
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This is incorrect, oxidation causes the formation of quinone in distillate which the red layer on top of d9 has been proven in a paper posted around here to be thc-q. This isnt caused by ph but ph can speed up or slow down the process. Oxygen is so reactive that it literally happens when the plant is growing, thatās why people pull earlier to get a better colorā¦. If it was a ph change like you say it is then you could shift the pH using water washes and it would fix it and it doesnāt. Thats why you use color remediation clays to remove the oxidation on the molecule itself which is what causes the color to lighten.
You do realize ph doesnāt exist without water right? So technically you cant alter the pH of a moleculeā¦.
What youre actually talking about isnt what you think it is, purple and pink arent quinones on thc or thca we talked about this months ago in another thread youre welcome for the spoon
Id suggest you go read that thread before replying this has already been covered many many times
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What do you mean āat one pointā?
I still have to explain this to my lab managers on the east coast 
No, the humidity of the room isnāt why the slab keeps sugaring.
ROFLMFAOā¦ I used to make water soluble CBDa salt (zero emulsifiers)ā¦ its not a true quinone as those are made differently.
None the less, oxidation is oxidationā¦ that is a change at the molecular level. Remove hydrogen or add oxygenā¦ pH is literally the negative base 10 log of H+ ions in solution. So anytime you change the H+ content you change the pH. You can call it what you want.
Put hash in a polar solvent like ethanol, methanol, acetone, etc. and now you can change its pH by adding dissolved acid or base like sodium methoxide. Wont do anything in non-polars tho. Have intentionally shifted pH from acid to base back in 2012 when they said A/B chem doesnt work on cannabis. Got all kinda interesting results.
Red disty is easily fixed by putting in a polar solvent and gently shifting itās pH. Too much to either side and its red or an unwanted color.
Not much of a spoon you have to offer here TBH. You guys are still trying to figure it outā¦
But also, you can collect all that āredā top layer and shift it back to clear by doing a simple pH shift in the right solvent, have done it plenty of times. Again, send me a sample and I will fix it for you.
This is very much no different than stripping the red oxidized layer from d8 production. I came up with a method to get fire d8 from disty with a simple scrub many years ago. Kept that shit secret too.
Could be experiencing co-distillation of the terpenesā¦ partially decarbed THCa makes excellent shatter and doesnāt sugar out easily.
Making sugar isnāt much different than cold crashing THCa tbh. You have reached the critical solvent level at temp to initiate nucleation ā crystallization.
I personally have NEVER had an issue with water causing it to sugar out. Even intentionally adding it to a slab. The water boils off before terpenes do. There is no getting around that fact. Look up the boiling point of various terpenes, the lowest one is 105c and go upwards of 300c while water is 100c (at atmospheric pressure).
The water can co-distill terpenes, that is how steam distillation works. (Vapor pressure + temp)
Once the terpenes come out yes it will sugar. So if you are leaving it out where they can evaporate from the slab you will def get sugar nucleation. But that is NOT from water.
EDIT: thinking about it, the humidity may play a role in terpene evaporation rate but would not be the direct cause of the sugar nucleationā¦
I have seen slabs stay perfect and clear for years just by putting them in a freezer.
I have also made THCa salt, which is dark maroon. CBDa salt is a dark purple.
Havenāt really played with any other cannabinoid acids but I do know for an absolute fact that you can salt it by stripping one hydrogen per molecule and swapping it with the correct metal and then it is 100% water soluble. But you have to replace the H+ with the right atom or you can chemically decarb even in a freezer. have made a few kg of CBD crude this way from high potency CBDa crude.
Have done this a fkn lot. hahahaha
It is literally the same reaction of washing your hands with soapā¦
Carboxylic acid + Base = salt + waterā¦
Which again is 100% pH relatedā¦
Base / acid water extraction is literally using basic water to make the R-COOH into a salt form R-COO* that is then water soluble, taking the water layer and filtering all oils from it, then crashing the acids back out by adding an acid like HCl or H2SO4 that turns it back into R-COOH by replacing the hydrogen H+ to the molecule that was removed by the strong base and creating salt water from the metal and process.
Which that process makes it a semi-synthetic molecule since you are literally ripping off a hydrogen, temp replacing it with a synthetic alternate (metal), then swapping it back later with the acid.
Again, all pH related. Same same big dog.
Edit: Carboxylic acids follow simple acid/base chemistry.
R-COOH reacts with base to form the carboxylate salt (R-COOā» Māŗ), and the salt converts back to R-COOH when acid is added.
In polar solvents this equilibrium can significantly change electron distribution in the molecule, which is why pH shifts often change the color of oxidized cannabinoid systems.
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Send me a sampleā¦ I will fix it and distill it and return everything you sent. I will even pay shipping both ways.
Just make sure its enough to do a distyā¦ so bare min 10g, but 20-50g would crush.
I do not have any interest in synthetic / semi-synthetic d9 (gross). You will get 100% of everything back. It will be treated as a borderline hazardous material. I will weigh and track everything to the thousandths of a gram. I donāt think I will don the hazmat suitā¦.
but then again, you never know.
Edit: Even if the batch tests ā~100% cannabinoidā on a potency assay, something like 0.05ā0.2% of a strongly conjugated impurity can tint the entire batch yellow, orange, red, or purple.
This is what i do when you talk about ph and dont even know the definition of it. Tbh im not gonna argue with someone who doesnt even know the definition of the words theyre using.
I will refer people to the thread below
This is a total lie too, youre so far off here idk how youre still talking at this point
Oxidation doesnt not equal pH as pH is specific to a water based solution.
You should go argue with @Photon_noir about pH existing without water, maybe youll learn a thing or two
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pH is exclusive to aqueous solutions, whereas ORP is not.
pH influences ORP, but ORP does not influence pH.
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Iām going to step out of this thread because itās turned into an argument about whether Iām lying rather than a discussion about chemistry.
Iāve worked with red/oxidized distillate many times in production and have removed the red fraction successfully on numerous occasions. I offered to test the method on someoneās material and even cover shipping both ways because the easiest way to resolve this would be to run the experiment.
Since the conversation has shifted away from testing and toward personal accusations, Iām not going to spend more time debating it here. If someone actually wants to test it on a sample in the future, Iām still open to doing that.
