Yeah the suspected isomerizing compound was the surfactant used.
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My reaction is to say that the level of microbial growth present on the material at time of extraction would need to be massive before the mixture might see pH trending up or down.
It seems very unlikely
Does your wash see any CRC type treatments? or get stored for long periods before solvent recovery?
The material does get scrubbed with celite and neutral AC. It is certainly possible some celite got to the RBF but the quantity would have to be fairly small to escape notice…
This is probably what’s causing your isomerization. Try neutralizing the crude before you distill it.
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Fascinating. Is this something inherent to CO2 extraction? I’ve had batches with no isomerization but several with.
do you know how limestone caves happen?
same issue. CO2 + H2O => carbonic acid
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Especially supercritical CO2 has the ability to extract plant acids into the crude. Depending on how the plant was grown, it can affect the relative pH of the extract.
After several lengthy conversations with the manager at the analytical lab, we worked out isomerization being the cause of <90% results on distillate I was making. Crude analysis proved varying levels of acidity based on the source of the material.
Balancing the pH allowed for 94% TAC distillate. Although we deemed the time and effort associated with the cleanup not financially significant.
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Very interesting. I very much appreciate all this input. I’ll be doing a lot more reading. Our isomerization issues are quite significant…as in <5% d9 after distillation.
This is most certainly a possibility as well, I was never able to confirm or deny that despite trying. My test was to use the same source material at various levels of moisture content, which despite having more water volume extracted, did not affect the pH between batches.
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Very, very little H2O present in our old trim where I saw isomerization. What kind of quantities are we talking for massive conversion (70-80%)
no clue. I haven’t managed to wreck distillate by getting the pH on my crude wrong yet.
- I don’t process with CO2
- I avoid dropping dry ice into the ethanol I extract with…because that has also been reported to be problematic (although we’ve got a couple of folks who don’t see issues). Anyone use dry ice for winterization [direct contact] ? @Roguelab, @Demontrich
@ExTek90 has seen the problem specifically with CO2, and isn’t convinced that water is the primary issue.
Edit: don’t take offense at “…wrecked distillate…”. I often refer to extraction as “destroying cannabis”… because every now and then that’s what happens 
No offense taken. To me, it is wrecked. Just trying to narrow down the possibilities.
I’m getting around 70-80% isomerization it seems to me (lab doesn’t currently test for d10, CBC, etc,–so it’s an educated guess that’s where my THC ran off to)
Also these runs were being decarbed post-extraction.
I specialize in therapeutic cement.
Mostly CBD infused.
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I’m not familiar with that product??
Do you have a CBD-infused bridge to sell me?
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I looked at 2 prior lab results. On the 90% tcc run, 0 d8, 1.5% cbg, .5% cbn, 1.54% thcv.
Direct biomass and etoh contact with di.
Edit
I did check ph of my etoh. 3.5ph.
This was months and months back. 4x washes with the etoh and ran thru rotovap.
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nah, but if you lie down on that green stain on the floor, I’m sure you’ll agree…
Nothing quite like therapeutic cement.
The green stains on the floor always seem to turn brown before I get a chance…
Weve been seeing more D10 lately and one theory is that, yes the biomass is a possible culprit.
D8 IMO has more to do with catalysts/pH, etc in the boiling flask during distillation
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Very interesting. Is there anything specifically about the biomass you believe to be the culprit or just a hunch? @manGIANT8950