Color

Iodine and toloeen under reflux change cbd isolate or thc Distillate to 70+% CBN

6 Likes

yes, that’s the oxidation reaction.

1 Like

O and cbd quinone in 95%+ is red
In My findings

1 Like

What exactly do you mean by iT? Iodine in toluene?

I have often noticed a color change from light tan to deeper brown and orange when breaking vaccum to harvest rhe cold finger. Within minutes the light tan THC oil gets darker. Then when I put the cold finger back on within minutes the color in the flask returns to light tan. The collected disty is generally water gel clear but light yellow seen from the side.

I have wondered for a long time about this. I have slides showing this change. The very best I can come up with about how this might occur or what might be happening is found at this link. It explains a lot in regards to how color is perceived. I am not suggesting that cannabinoids exhibit thermochromism but then again I think it seems reasonable that my explanation lay somewhere in the information in this link.

2 Likes

Beaker the experiment is to leave your distillate under vaccum, but let it come to room temp. I suspect the darkening is due to oxidation.

Well oxidation might be but don t forget that most of our oils When water is present also change color so Maybe When @Beaker opens the cold finger a compound atracts water from the air And once in changes color
:man_shrugging:

2 Likes

Sorry sir ,
IT is CBN in this case
And Iodine and toloeen are the basic chemicals needed acording to a paper
To make CBN from either cbd or thc
:+1:

2 Likes

The oil temp deviates because there is so little sinking effect from glass just to keep the uprake path and downtube heated up. There rewlly is no “uptake” path because the path is about one inch from boiling puddle to collection point. Very little glass forms a thermal reservoir and so the mantle temperature is set pretty low which is key to high rejection rates for the fractions.The yellow meter is the oil temp as measured through the glass and coupled tightly between glass and mantle.

I too suspected oxidation was the cause of the transient color shift. The odd thing is how fast the color shifts to the reds/orange from oil started as tan but then return to the original hue. In these pictures the photos show a change from darker to nearly water gell clear. The point of interest is just how fast the color shifted from darker to near clear. It takes a long time for the oil to darken from being out of vacuum but once set up again to run the dark out it then once temp hits those indicated on the yellow meter.

Here are are photos separated by time just enough to harvest the cold finger. Just a few minutes.The photo with dabs on a silicon mat represent the third run disty and the same plant extraction but after being exposed to atmosphere. Interestingly the oil will darken up again once it is opened but then reverts back to the redish orange once temperature is up to target. Final photo is just seconds out of vacuum.

The cold finger from the moment the extract becomes a gas until it is harvested is held below room temo by ice water so any heat changes from heat simply do not show up on the cold finger which should be noticable in these shots.

Here they are in order. The room light is decent and remained unchanged so my iPad Pro is the limitation here but if you follow the sequence you will see the compound lighten up to water gel clarity as the cold finger harvest commences.

Two dabs - the extract was split into reclaim and third run disty (just a tiny dab but useful and potent) are side by side to show just how dark it can look. Laid flat the color looks much lighter. Flavor sucks as well as potency when it finally gets to that color. I call it CBN but have no desire to debate colors and theory and such when my focus really should be focusing on better potency and water gel look.





This apparatus has no glass uptake path so anything contaminating the gas fraction would not be subject to hold up. Without an uptake path or down tub there is no contamination inherent in a vertical stand along unit using standard techniques.

The OP was about color swings but my photos are just lab notes and were not set up as a lab. Next lab I will document the color and temperatures in a controlled fashion to more fully illustrate temporary color change of a volatile oil based on temperature. I used to get concerned when the oil so quickly shifted to red/orange but upon boiling dry there just is not that much left as a trace so I became less concerned with product loss.

5 Likes

This is fascinating, albeit frustrating, I’m sure! Thank you for sharing! I, too, have seen what appeared to be reversible thermochromic changes, but in a different context. Namely, this was after reacting CBD in hexane with p-tosic acid to make Δ8-THC, washing out the acid with alkaline and pure water partitions, then evaporating the hexane to get small slabs of nearly pure Δ8-THC. The hexane solution was gold colored after reaction, and the THC became a salmon pink color as the hexane evaporated under vacuum. Storing the dry slab in refrigerated air, it turned back to gold color… but after removing it and letting it sit over night at room temperature in air, it turned salmon pink again. I feel like this has something to do with water condensing on the material from the cold condition, and subsequent drying after a while at room temperature. Strangely, this happened with some samples, but not others. Unfortunately, those samples disappeared, so I was not able to do more experiments with them.

6 Likes

I may have the answer to phenomena you witnessed. our eyes are actually more like sensors picking up distortions of frequency. When the sun shines on a piece of sapphire; photons excite the valence electrons in the d-orbitals of the aluminum molecules in the oxide matrix. the excited electrons break out of their orbital and jump to other d-orbital confirmations (there are 5 different d-orbital confirmations. We see the color blue because blue has the frequency range 450–485 nm the distortion of a d-d orbital transition in the case of sapphire.

In other terms the gradation of color you witnessed was more of a shift in frequency occurring in the material due to the reaction…and some scientists don’t believe in magic.

2 Likes