Diamonds turning into chalk post separation

pH is only applicable in aqueous environments or protic solvents. pKa (pH at which other acids dissociate) similarly describes the ionization state which also requires protic solvents. Substances can be protonated or deprotonated in an aprotic solvent but they aren’t likely to change that state in the absence of H+ or the conjugate base in solution.

disclaimer: not an organic chemist but I played one once or twice

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“What form of thca does butane extract” um ok bro, I think your missing the point, people have been using butane and the same methods to make diamonds in mason jars or miners the same way for a long time now. All of a sudden there’s these “chalk” diamonds. So what’s up with that? You got answers to the problem or just like to sound smart?

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He’s pretty quick gonna be my second ignore after thumper. He definitely enjoys reading his own… somewhat nonsensical diatribes. So far, the most useful thing he’s offered is that the solvent might be more pure now than before.

I’ll let you be the judge of that… “suggestion”. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a troll with an o chem textbook.

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Swet:
when it comes to diamonds, mason jars and chalk…
the concept of:

“the waning abyss of ignorance and speculation” comes to mind.

I really can’t help you out…
but if you read all articles I reference in
“butane works but no theory”
and fully understand addendums 1-4…
you will come to realize that butane extractors
thoughout the world really have no idea what the fuck they
are doing.
Then you can begin to speculate on what a diamond is and what chalk is…

other than that…yes, butane works…
and yes it is unfortunate that only the chemists know what I am talking about…but soon or later the info will trickle down.

best regards

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Sure. Whatever you say.

Best regards

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I wish…

the first step is “I don’t know.” That I got in spades.

then there’s reading. unfortunately it’s chemistry. which means there is so much damn background that must have gelled appropriately before you can make heads or tails out of what you’re reading. AND you’ve probably got to actually test much of that “background” in real world situations (just like everything else) to know that you (mostly) know what you’re claiming to have a handle on. my minor in chemistry was more than 30 years ago.

I’m certainly of the opinion that those solvent filled balloons the plant is holding up are “special” as far as having an environment that is both conducive to enzymatic synthesis (traditionally thought of as requiring an aqueous enviromenet) and accumulation of cannabinoids (piss poor solubility in an aqueous environment without taking it a fair ways from traditional enzymatic optima).

I certainly intend taking a stab at the papers @moronnabis has posted over here: Butane works but no theory! A few dozen hints I don’t actually expect that I’ll get much past “I don’t know…”

which I believe was where @moronnabis was trying to get us to start.

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The answer is very simple… You’re buying gas from people that don’t care about fractionating it to the degree that we need it. But anyway and I digress

I can’t wait to meet you @cyclopath. I’ve got a huge hug, and open ears for you

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So when THCA (either form) loosed it’s acidic proton (H+) to the solution it will be an anion with a negative charge THCA(-). Then if we have some cations like Na+ or Ca++ they will form a salt with the THCA(-) anion. We might have some of this going on and forming the chalk like stones. Chalk is a salt of Ca++ and CO3(2-). @moronnabis please correct me if I’m wrong. It is possible that this is going on but I would think that would involve high pH or basic conditions and there would have to be some cations to form the salt as well. Not sure how butane would extract those or how that works out in a non-aqueous solution. I have never taken a pH reading of any extract (or any non-aqueous solution) but it would be interesting to see where we are during the crystallization process.

The dimer would be that 2 THCA(–) anions could dimerize with a calcium ion Ca++ in the crystal structure.

My questions are how do we find out? and how do we prevent it? Fixing it would be simple enough just do an acid wash but that defeats the point of one run diamonds. Also if it is a problem of pH why doesn’t it happen when recrystallizing with pentane?

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pH is generally thought of in aqueous solutions because water can and does take place in the reaction of an acid and a base in those solutions. In a non-aqueous solution it is more difficult to predict since the solvent will not react with the acid and base in the same way as we are used to. But to answer the question yes a cation needs to be involved for a salt to form. A salt is defined as the product of an acid and a base reacting with one another or neutralizing each other. Personally I have no experience with pH in non-aqueous solutions but I am looking into it now.

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Interesting, and thanks for saying

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pKa is the negative log of the Ka which tells us the ratio of the products of the ions formed from the reaction divided by the products of the reactants before the reaction. pH however is the negative log of the concentration of H+ ions in solution. So you cannot very easily measure pKa or Ka but can measure pH quite easily in aqueous solutions. The answer is yes there would be a different pH of the chalked crystals if they were the product of neutralization and were in fact ionic dimers. That could be a good test.

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Does your lab do testing on pH of non-aqueous solutions?

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No, but plenty of people mix with water and attempt to take a reading. I don’t find that method reliable enough to report, but we’ve tried it on occasion internally. The washes being performed are removing the acids and bases. The colors are (edit: usually) due to oxidation products.

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@cyclopath The enzymatic syntheses are believed to occur in the disc cells at the base of each balloon. They are aqueous inside. The cannabinoids and essential oil compounds created then migrate through the cell wall into the envelope between the wall and the outer membrane (balloon). Or this is the prevailing theory, I believe.

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So we got our x13 beads. Just did a distillation run and the vapor coming out of the mole sieve going to my heat exchanger was hotter then it ever has been. Our hot water is only 95f but the vapor coming out got so hot that I could not touch the top of the heat exchanger. This was fresh solvent so there should not have been that much moisture to get the beads that hot. Could this be the impurity causing the beads to warm up so much? This only happened on the first half of recovery. After that temps went down to less then body temp as it felt slightly cool to the touch. there was possible a little bit of n2 in there as I cleaned out a previous run from a column and pushed some solvent over. Would n2 cause x13 to get crazy hot or was it something else? Are the beads no good after they get that hot?

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I did note my 13x get hot af as well. Hope they work to prevent the problem for you!

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I have not noticed this before. I am going to investigate now

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Heat is generated due to adsorption, what probably happened is you just adsorbed a lot of solvent into the beads.

The pores on 13x Mol sieve are definitely large enough to fit alkanes and alkenes.

You dint normally see this amount of heat being generated with normal 3a Mol sieve because there’s never actually alot of water being adsorbed onto its surface when you’re trying to dry your solvent. If you put some beads in a small beaker and poured water into it, the water will get like 160F+ very quickly because adsorption is exothermic.

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Franklins right. Fresh 13x beads are going to grab everything that will fit on them, and the grabbing process generates heat. As the bead surface moves toward saturation, it grabs less and eventually is clogged and removes nothing.

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