Ethanol crystals

Just some thca using good old ethanol

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Niceā€¦ Did you crystallize and purge it in a sealed jar or pyrex like this dish?

Thank you

You can Roto-vap at 35 C

i really wish i could share how we got these results but unfortunately i signed an NDA. all i can really say is patience is key, and donā€™t rotovap ALL the ethanol out lol. btw have you ever made rock candy with a SSS of sugar and water?

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I have never actually made rock candy but understand the science behind it. I think I should make some.

If you can share , do you recommend leaving the container capped or uncapped while waiting ?

Thank you for the reply

would you call that diamonds?

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Sugar. Crystals. Just littleā€¦

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What type of container did you use prior to the jar? Or do you have it in the jar and just cap it when the main bubbling stops?

I was confused during this commentā€¦ My comment is butane comment. This is ethanol subject

Disregard anything i said bc itā€™s off topic

Okay. Thanks

Without violating your NDAā€¦ Iā€™m trying to make eth diamonds and Iā€™ve done my extraction at -60 and have a great golden look extract. I then roto vap and leave some eth in and I roto vap at 55 hot bath. Once I add to the jar I seal it tight and then put in vac over at 90F. I am thinking about taking to freezer at -60c for 48 hours and then oven at 90f for 2 weeks. Am I on the right track? Thanks for any info you are able to give.

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I got some nasty sulfur rocks and sauce that the company wonā€™t take back nor will they even own the fact that there batch is tainted severely. They gave me a nice discount on the next purchase and handled the hole ordeal very professional aside from the denial .
So just for shits and giggles and a neat lil experiment Iā€™m going to dissolve and introduce fine copper mesh cleaned of course and see if I canā€™t get the majority out. Then Iā€™m hoping to recess in the solution in a neat lil trick Iā€™ve used in other small batch experiments.

Those two layers look suspect. Is the top layer ethanol?

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Hello Future Friends, the facility I work at is currently revamping our ethanol Sauce. I donā€™t really need help with the crystallization aspect of the process because I have a very talented @THChemist working on that portion of the process. What I am more focused on is the Terp fraction that accounts for about 40-60% of the overall leftover material. I am currently trying to get the ethanol off, below 5000 ppm of the over all formulation (state reg), while also decarbing and saving terps. Its my plan to then take these terps and blend them into vape pens for a more flavorful strain specific cart. We have tried hot plate with a stir bar but this beats up my terps so bad that they are a poor excuse for Strain specific.

My current set up is a heating mantle, with a round bottom attached to a reflux condenser. I have a pretty nice chiller that I can set to basically any temp I want. So far I have tried setting the condenser to -5 C, -1 C, and +1 C. I typically heat up the terp fraction to 80 C and allow it to run for about an hour. I have a GCMS that I use to monitor the ethanol levels but as of now I have seen no change in ethanol content. Has anyone else used this type of set up to remove ethanol while preserving terps? Are there other set ups that I could try and rig up to achieve the same goal? Any constructive ideas would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!

Edit: @Photon_noir @cyclopath @future please help

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Do you have a vacuum oven? Thin filming could help. Treat it like youā€™re trying to make slabs, and youā€™ll have better luck than with the flask, at least for terp preservation. Maybe @TheLostBiologist could offer some greater detail from the techniques he utilized (utilizes). Decarbing is going to remove terps, no matter what. How long, what method, and at what temperature will determine how extreme those losses will be.

Also, @cyclopath how you gonna like @CannabinoidChemistā€™s post then not reply? Haha. I know youā€™ve got something in your head that could help.

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Yeah we got hella vac ovens Iā€™m just really trying to preserve terps and decarb efficiently. We do have some pretty big Pyrex that might work. You have now given me a few new things that I can try with not only vac ovens but hot plates aswell.

@Akoyeh you didnā€™t have to call him out like that :rofl:. Maybe my question wasnā€™t tough enough for the almighty @cyclopath. Here is another I pose to the community. How do you effectively remove ethanol from Cold Trap Terps? We use a wipe film VTA and I suspect there is ethanol that could be contributing to to the over all PPM in our vape products. I was thinking 5au sievs since ethanol is .44nm? @THChemist mentioned fractional distillation but I was worried the terp alcohols might get tangled up with the ethanol. I do have a short path with a fraction finder attachment but I donā€™t know if I can use it for terp fractional separation. Thoughts?

Heā€™s a dear friend of mine, and I know he would happily do the same for me. Haha. :smiling_imp:

As for your current question, that is not something I have attempted or spent much time thinking about. Are you trying to capture them for use or just remove them?

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Ahh I see the relationship thickens. So I have kilos on kilos of cold trap terps. Literally an abnoxious amount. I just want to clean them up and remove the ethanol from the cold traps with little to no loss of terps.

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I donā€™t work much with ethanol but it sounds like the big issue with terps and ethanol is that they form azeotropes. @tweedledew had a great thread about how to solve the problem and is generally a pretty smart guy, maybe he can lend some insight. I know there was discussion about using different zeolites for a ghetto kind of adsorption chromatography to exclude the EtOH but thatā€™s getting pretty involved.

The other option I guess would be pull mega deep vacuum on a very very tall packed column to fractionally distill them below the temps where they degrade

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I dont know if they actually do form azeotropes but thats a good thought to follow up and do some research on. Ill try and look for that thread your talking about and see if I can learn anything from it. Im not going to do columns at work unless its a last ditch effort. Mega vac seems harsh and like I might lose a lot of the sesqui terps. But no ideas are bad ideas at this point! Thanks for your insight.