BHO Color Remediation using ethanol?

[Curious_Roberto]

EHO Color Remediation

I’ve been following the BHO color remediation tek thread pretty religiously these last couple days and am very impressed at how much progress those members have made. Admittedly however, I’ve been feeling a bit envious as my home extraction days are far over and have unfortunately never extracted with hydrocarbons in my commercial career. With that being said… I figured why not start a thread for the exact same purpose for all us Ethanol or Co2 folk that post-process in EtOH ! From wha…

Here’s a thread @Goldendawg, it hasn’t had too much action in awhile, but if you dig, you should find some helpful info.

[cyclopath]

Extracting stuff you don’t want, then trying to get rid of it after the fact is one approach…

IMO you want to do a better job on your primary extraction.

Colder & faster.

See: It washes the cannabis and then it washes the cannabis some more for some well made crude.

See: Washing Machine "Salad Spinner" tek for how you might start down that road.

Then read of QWET…

Edit: #%>*#<€. There seems to be more to this confusion…if you’re trying to remediate BHO using ethanol you’re doing it ALL wrong. It’s much easier to remove the color while still in hydrocarbons. See: CRC

[cyclopath]

@Goldendawg

I had no prior knowledge of a difference.

No worries: look at it this way:

You’re “recovering solvent” (removing it from your desired product). Yes, you are distilling off the solvent, but, the “product” doesn’t become a gas & then a liquid again, it stays in your pot.

Get more sophisticated (buy an SPD), and distill your cannabinoids, and the product is what goes through the double phase change (and is called “distillate”)

[PolyC]

Hi there,

It is much harder to remove pigments out of extract that is dissolved in ethanol than it is when dissolved in something non-polar, like butane or pentane. You will see limited results if you purchase those powders with the intent of removing colour from dry BHO dissolved in ethanol. As @cyclopath said, reducing how much pigment you extract during the extraction will be easier. Butane would be a good solvent to remove pigments, but this is really not advised when open blasting.

Do you have access to pentane, and more importantly, do you have the proper laboratory requirements to safely handle pentane?

[cyclopath]

@PolyC

Butane would be a good solvent to remove pigments, but this is really not advised when open blasting.

The tek for this trick IS posted. It is NOT advised. OP of said tek is fortunate to still be with us imo…

Edit: without @Waxplug1’s (completely insane) pioneering work, and goading of the community to figure out what he was doing, CRC would have remained a trade secret of a select few.

[cyclopath]

B81 powder, anybody try this yet?

This was very much appreciated and timely as I will be running older biomass… Thanks. I’m just looking to clean up some etho/iso extract for shatter.

Not because B81 is relevant.

Just to tie two “trying to polish in EtOH” together to make exploration easier on those that follow

[Waxplug1]

Is the color in the mother liquor or father rock?

[Waxplug1]

When redissolving extract, what dissolves first?

[Filterman9]

Hi Goldendawg, we supply carbon media imbedded in Cellulose/DE material. We have had good success working with extractors looking to remove color. Our product is not lose so it helps remove the mess from the application and you don’t need to later remove the carbon. Let us know if we can help. Thanks, Greg

[Apothecary36]

@Waxplug1

Is the color in the mother liquor or father rock?

I think you just coined a new term haha

[GroovyOctopusLabs]

Here ya go and you’re welcome

Filter size for filtering winterized material?

Finally, go to this link and click on the seven more when you see the links posted in the thread. That thread and all those links is everything else you wanna know about winterizing https://future4200.com/t/eho-color-remediation/12117 [Screenshot_20210309-135919]

Ik those are all eho but it’s mainly color remediation and you’re working with ethanol.

Welcome to future4200

[Waxplug1]

If the extract is loaded with media together, and then add solvent, shouldn’t it remediate the mother liquor first as it’s the first to dissolve?

[Eeeugene]

Make you a 1/4-1/2 inch silica cake for your buchner,
Use an aquarium heater to warm up your ethanol bho mix, put some carbon in (amount depends on clarity you’re looking for) stir, let sit for 20-45 min and warm
Then run it thru the Buchner.
Repeat as needed
Edit* DONT waste money on other chemicals, they’re mostly ment for bho/other solvent remediation not ethanol.

[OvertheEdge]

Any updates on how this is going? Someone had mentioned dissolving the BHO in pentane (or other hydrocarbons) rather than ethanol, why is this, does this effect the terp profile? What about heptane as an alternative?

Would these other medias perform better with a hydrocarbon solvent vs ethanol?
What about a winterization for BHO dissolved in ethanol or hydrocarbon solvent; any benefits there?

This community rocks!! I am so grateful to be apart of it, knowledge is power and there is tons of muscle here

[PolyC]

Any non-polar solvent, including heptane, should be effective at colour remediation. Ethanol is too polar and minimizes the interaction between your pigment molecules/things you want to remediate and the adsorbent.

Winterization works in methanol or ethanol due to the difference in solubility of waxes in those solvents at room temp (soluble) vs -40 C (insoluble). Waxes are soluble in hydrocarbons at lower temperatures which is why they are less effective for winterization.

[StoneD]

bho would make the easiest oil to clean up imo

Just simple cold bho crc run then a full decarb…hmu Im open to help. Bho gets all target molecules and it just seems this would be easier to distill…I bet first pass woukd be light as can be w one pass. No winterizing needed if you can maintain temp cold enough

[OvertheEdge]

Thank you both @PolyC and @StoneD for the explanations, I am excited to use an alkane instead of etoh to clean up my BHO!

Here`s the boat that I am in; I have received BHO in the form of a saucie mix that has really separated into a viscous liquid layer on top and a more sugary gritty sauce on the bottom. It is very dark in color and this is what id like to remediate. If I want the end result to have the same kinda sauce consistency will winterization impact this for the better or worse?

Is there a time where I would not want to winterize - lets say I have a nice stable shatter but I just want to color remediate it, if I was to winterize this shatter, would that impact the ending stability of it?

[BigM]

Sugar and sauce sounds tasty. I’d probably just live with the darkness if the taste is on point.

Separating the sugar from the sauce would be the first step in remediating something like that. Then wash your crystals and do a recrystallization.

Clean up the color on the sauce portion separately. I’d still want to avoid etoh to do that, if possible. Then again, if you have sugar n sauce to start with, you can probably afford to lose some terps along the way.

[StoneD]

@OvertheEdge

Is there a time where I would not want to winterize - lets say I have a nice stable shatter but I just want to color remediate it, if I was to winterize this shatter, would that impact the ending stability of it?

Yeah when running a bho rig at temp…the larger the rig the harder to maintain temp

[cyclopath]

@BigM is probably correct, just run what you brung. Worrying about color often just wreck great extract.

Ethanol would be the wrong choice.

If I was asked to perform this trick, I’d let it finish crashing, centrifuge it to separate out the thca, then bring the liquid layer up in 10volumes of -20C (at least) butane. Then filter over about 1g of baked opaline silica (magic dirt of your choice) per 20g of extract.

Recover solvent gently. Purge under vac for a couple of hrs. Add back to THCa