Hello fellow hashers,
I have been doing distillations in my lab in CO for a year or so and i have run into a few occasions where the lab results have indicated high quantities of other cannabinoids besides THC. I have made the lab aware of the THC isomers but they do not have standards to identify these break down components. I am in search of understanding what these stray peaks represent and how they got there.
Background: for months my team purchased trim from source A and used the standard distilling technique taught by summit SPD. we do BHO extractions on the trim and then dissolve the hash into alcohol (everclear). we freeze it overnight at -10F and filter through the 20 micron paper, refreeze overnight, filter through 8 micron paper, and then roto. after the roto we divide the alcohol laden gel into beakers (250ml of gel/alcohol in a 2000ml beaker) and use a heated stir plate (corning pc-351 on setting 2.5 out 7) to decarb the gel. we monitor the temp of the decarbing gel with a laser thermometer until it reaches 255F and then stop the heat. we continue stirring until the liquid cools slightly (about 5 minutes) and then we weigh the resulting gel and pour it into the 5L load ball. We repeat this process until the load ball has roughly 3300g.
With material from source A, two standard passes through the SPD usually gets a potency of 83-86% thc with little to no other cannabinoids. this has been acceptable for making vape carts or smokeable products.
A deal arises for us to purchase trim from source B for a discounted price. the next run i do used half trim from source A and half from source B. After two passes through the SPD the testing results came back at 75% thc and 11% CBC (this is where is need help. i don’t believe that it’s CBC.)
With this lower potency report, we had to use this batch of distillate for edibles instead of cartridges. we quickly turned around the next batch which was ALL from source B. The results came back after two passes reading 68% thc and 13% cbc. I have attached a graph of the mass spec report from the lab and i am hoping some of you can weigh in with what you think this large second peak could represent. The lab director says he doesn’t think its a THC isomer because of its location on the graph. Does anyone else have an opinion about what this could be?
I have another batch of trim coming in today from source A and i will use the same methods for distillation and report back with the lab results. I believe these odd test results must have something to do with the input material from source B. What do you think??
Thank you,
Graham Holladay
Extra background regarding the distillation in question:
This gel was prepared as outlined above, with a watchful eye over the temperatures during decarbing.
The first distillation was done by pulling a partial vac and increasing the heat until the liquids were removed. a collection ball swap was performed to start collecting the solid heads. after roughly 20 minutes the distillate looked clean so a second collection ball swap was performed and the main body collection began. the temperature was set to 220c and the vacuum depth was .098mbar. (about 75 microns). after roughly 4 hours the first pass yielded 1950g of main body with about 700g of darker tails.
The next day the main body was warmed up and then poured into the 5l load ball. The second pass distillation went smoothly with a temp setpoint of 217-220c and a vac depth of .008mbar. the final yield was 1500g. this was sampled and set to the lab. the result was 68% thc and 13% cbc. attached is the graph of the mass spec report.
