This is my first post here. I’ve recently been experimenting with converting CBD to Delta 8 using my 12L SPD and CBleach. In terms of color everything seems to have gone to plan. I’ve achieved pigments ranging from a light rose to light yellow to almost water clear. However upon smelling the distillate it has an odour which smells like an earthy clay. Does anyone have an ideas what this could be and more to the point how to remove it? Would another pass without any clay pull the smell out? I’ve been browsing both here and other forums and I can’t find anyone else who describes this so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Pretty common for 1st pass distillate to have an odor, at least d9 distillate. Not too sure about d8. I wouldn’t describe the normal 1st pass distillate smell as being similar to an earthly clay tho. More of a burnt rubbery type smell?
At least for d9 distillate in my experience, a 2nd pass helps a lot with odor. If you search distillate smell/odor you will find some other ways people have found to remove the smell. Off the top of my head, some of those methods involve an ultrasonic bath, vacuum oven, etc.
Any more comments you can provide on your method? Are you just distilling with Cbleach in the flask? Any other pre or post processing?
I might worry that doing a 2nd pass of d8 distillate would result in a lot of isomerization lowering potency, but I don’t know.
I know the smell you are describing and I’ve had that before with CBD first pass. This is a different smell to that though. I’ve done two separate runs so far. The starting material for the 1st was 3rd pass distillate and the 2nd was isolate. Both finished runs have this clay smell I originally described.
Do a water wash and bump it back over in the spd and you’re done. Filtration isn’t needed at this point. You want to drop the dust or contaminated parts into a water wash and mechanically remove it.
A basic fast pass will then yield no odor or further colors.
Absolutely you need to water wash that oil. Hopefully you’re taking other steps to purify it prior to distillation as well. Check your DMs and I’ll walk you through the whole process.
Your not being patient with your distillation. You can remove all of the nasty smell with low temp high vacuum distillation. Patients and let it run a little further than you might like into the main body. Their are distillation heads that will help as well.
Do you mean that it smell like c-bleach ?
Because clays generally do not have much smell, at least not more than cbd or d8 can have. If you are using acidic clay, you can produce some p-cymene wich smell like burnt rubber, but also at least two other terps with slightly higher boiling points. These also have a rubber like smell, which changes to a cement like smell at lower levels.
Having smelt it again I would definitely say it is more of a burnt rubber smell than a clay smell. So would a water wash and 3rd pass do the trick? I got my test results back today and it was 55% delta 8, 5% delta 9 and 5% CBC. Slightly disappointed in that
Yes this should work. You could even strip them out after or even during the sythesis (which may influence the reaction).
I don’t think you will get much much further than that. You may get d9 down below 2% and d8 upt to 70%, but this approach may likely not lead to full conversion.
This smell is due to a bunch of terpenes, 2 to 3, generated during the synthesis. p-cymene is one of them. Depending on catalyst or presence/absence of reflux, they do not necessarily show up.
