Ok so My holy grail is CBN
Because i am in europe and most of what i do is illegale CBN is one of the few cannabinoids that has potential on a legal platform
Now heat and time create CBN
But i don t like the idea of producing that way
Chromatography is best but not in mu working conditions
So My setup is
Dissolved 1/10 destillate to etho
24 hour uv light and nano bubbels of pure oxigen at 50 C
Result after 10 days CBN from 8% to 23%
The uv light i use is a pond stiralizing unit
Any sugestions of different tech that Will create CBN faster thx
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Please provide some more information. What was the potency in all cannabinoids before and after the process? Is there still THC after the 10 days or is it all gone?
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I’d love to lock down a procedure for making “compliant” CBN distillate with THC below 0.3%. Possibly multiple carbonic acid washes and an extension on the boiling flask below the head, maybe?
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I haven’t tried it myself but apparently iodine is a good oxidant for the conversion of THC to CBN. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29240420
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That looks very promising. I can’t find any way to download it even for payment. Does anyone have access to what methodology was used?
They refluxed in toluene with with a 2 molar equivalent of iodine for an hour. They then removed the iodine with a sodium thiosulfite wash. The yield was 70%. The reaction is nonspecific and converted CBD, CBDa, THC and THCa to CBN. There is room there to improve yields with optimization and probably an iodine reagent out there that would be more specific if you wanted to dive deep into it.
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Cannabinoid content before was 83%
Of Wich thc was 64%
After 10 days canabinoid content 81%
Thc 48%
Lab Said 3% discripancy is normal
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You wont see me doing that chromotography step here for anything on an industrial scale… maybe to make some cbn isolate
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Also if anyone needs to try this and they need a synthetic organic chemist for a consult give me a shout
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That is the go to method for now. I do wonder if Toluene/iodine can be replaced by heptane/iodine as a C7-C7 swap. Not sure if the aromatic part of toluene is necessary to the reaction.
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So yes, toluene may solubilize your substrates better, however the experimental calls to heat to reflux which for toluene is 110 C and hexane/heptane is lower than that.
I would imagine they tried lower bp solvents because usually you want to stay away from toluene because it is hard to pull out via academic rotovap. Unless you are like me and rig up a high vac rotovap in your academic lab 
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Wouldn’t a taller reflux column help get around the BP energy deficit?
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No because they reflux at different temps does that answer your question?
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Yes. Thank you.
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Iodine is a pain in the ass to procure due to its List I status under federal law. If you want enough of it, you actually have to interact with the DEA. That’s enough to dissuade most from bothering. But its cool chemistry, sure.
https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/chem_prog/advisories/iodine.htm
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Iodine is list 2. Same as acetone.
https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/watched.html
Edit: Posted this before clicking on that link. Egg on my face, I guess those thugs re-listed iodine. 
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Though I’m sure there are pretty easy ways around that. I know a lot of sanitizers in the medical and food/beverage industry contain iodine.
Higher a chemist who has graduate from an acs accredited university. Or someone with qualifications for doing synthetic chemistry.
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My biggest issue with this process is it makes 4mol of hydrogen iodide per mol of THC converted so you’ll be dealing with kind of a nasty waste stream trying to do it at production scale. Love to hear how people dealt with that if they ran this at kg scale. What really is needed is a catalytic method.
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