CBD Isolate crystallization questions

I Put my distillate into those food service trays, not sure what they are called, the ones with the lids that you see at buffets, the same as the one pictured.

first i load up the tray with a measured amount of warm distillate, i heat up the distillate via water bath to around 40-45c to make pouring easy. i then add a measured amount of pentane to the tray.

i set the tray of pentane and distillate into a water bath thats around 45C, i put a clean probe into the solution a log temps, i stir the solution intill its reaches 36-37C or so (pentane boils at 37c) usually by this point, due to vigorous stiring, most of the distillate is in solution and has acheived a super saturated state, i can then start my cool down ramp. I should note that i am extra careful to make sure i have achieved super saturation, if i still see small streaks or clumps of distillate after heating i add in a tiny ammount of pentane, ie 100ml, and continue to heat and stir intill all of the distillate is off the vessel.

in my experience if you fail to get all of the distillate into solution, it will still crash, but your crystals will end up discolored and gunked up by the distillate.

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I guess where I’m confused is what you’re doing with the mother liquor? This is how I am understanding it:

So after supersaturation and cooling, you pour the solution into the tray, and the CBD crashes out. Then you have a layer of CBD crystals on the bottom of the tray and a pentane solution with soluble impurities on top.

How are you removing the crystals from the bottom of the tray? Do you pour the contents of the tray (crystals and pentane solution) over the Buchner funnel and then rinse with the cryo pentane, collecting the crystals on the filter paper?

this is a good answer, and something to certainly think about, thanks!

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typically i decant the mothers milk and remove the crystals from the tray separately. i roto vap the mothers milk down and recover the pentane. Still trying to figure out what to do with the mother milk, its too thc hot for me to legally sell.

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Gotcha, thanks for the information! Have you had any lab tests done on the mother liquor to determine how much CBD is left behind? I wonder if multiple recrystallizations on the same liquid is possible.

It gets more and more difficult as you remove the cbd to crystallize. I have results where I can typically get only about 5-10% of cbd left in the final solution and I consider this pretty solid overall yield. It also makes my recovered then treated mother liquor a rather lucrative commodity.

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That makes sense. I’m going to play with some crystallization here in a bit so this is all good info. Do you re-distill the mother liquor following pentane removal? Seems you could have very little waste that way.

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This is something I’ve been trying to figure out myself.

Other than expensive chromatography equipment to remove the thc these are the two possibilities I’ve been looking into.

  1. Using c-bleach to convert delta 9 to delta 8 as described here:
    Delta 9 into Delta 8 - #2 by Deleted

  2. Delta 9 to CBN

Just saw this post from Roguelab about Delta 9 to CBN: Color - #22 by Roguelab

I’m not sure how either of these routes would play with the mothers milk however.

My end goal is to add the cbd isolate back to the remediated mothers milk and make full spectrum cbd distillate that’s thc free.

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The unknown factor for now is that
Conversion to CBN in mother liquer
By means of oxidation treu Iodine and touleen Will.
A change thc and cbd in the liquer
B react probably with more compounds in the mother liquer

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Is that 4:1 ratio by weight or volume?

Weight

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Search this site for THC isomerization methods. You can turn the mother liquor into all sorts of fun stuff that isn’t D9. And when you think about it, you can add isomerized ML back to the isolate until the CBD doesnt crash…

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You can also use under 10% of the “thickener” that the terp companies have and itll prevent crashing.

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Thanks for the idea, I’ll give it a shot, at this point I probably have around 20-30kg of mothers milk sitting around at various states of refinment, so I got plenty of material to experiment with haha!

Do you think that trick would work to prevent CBD distillate crashing as well?

What “thickener” is being used?

Yes that’s what it was developed for. Everyones just using it to cut anything.

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Heres what it is. I fully support both @FloraplexTerpenes AND @TrueTerpenes.

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Thanks for the link!

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