So this may be a stupid question, but I can’t seem to find any information on it.
If I centrifuge out THCa from my concentrate, redissolve in ethanol, and let the ethanol evaporate over time or even in the oven at a low temp, what would I be left with?
I’m curious if the THCa will bind together into a larger structure still because it’s been broken down, or will it just slowly reform into small sugar crystals again?
Alternatively, if I have close-to-pure THCa with no terps, are there any ways to force it to resolidify into a larger form without facets? Other than just heating it in the toaster oven like the solventless diamonds Tek.
You will end up with some really really cool looking shards of THCa. More glassy diamonds grow with nice terminations when ethanol is added, though it’s slow.
If you just have ethanol and thca you may need even less ethanol than 1:1 to force crystallization
Those nice shards can then be grown bigger in pentane, which is better at growing larger rocks. The crystals will maintain the nice glassy and sharp shape but will get bigger faster than continuing to grow in ethanol
I’m talking about just putting ethanol in a jar with THCa and letting it sit at room temp until the ethanol evaporates. Can’t find anything with just that simple process, without any mention of using some expensive tools like a rotary evaporator or vac oven. Once I get some ethanol available to me I’ll just try it on my own of course but while I don’t I figured I’d ask since I can’t find anything.
Thank you for the info! I’m also wondering if this is possible just with room temperature, letting the THCa sit in ethanol until it evaporates? Then purging the rest off in a regular kitchen oven. Or does it still require pressure, even just for resolidifying THCa without it recrystalizing into big facets?
All I’m seeing is, supersaturate your ethanol, freeze to cryo, and allow to evaporate over time. I can’t get things much colder than your average freezer, is this still possible?
I’d definitely prefer using pentane and will get there eventually, but I also don’t feel fully comfortable dealing with that dangerous of a solvent for my first attempts at recrystallization
in general, the size of the crystals is inversely proportional to the time it takes to crash, so if you do a THCa crash at room temp in EtOH you should get nice crystals.
Good to know, maybe I’ll look into grabbing some pentane to try some similar experiments of just letting it go from refrigerated to room temp in the basement. Thinking of just covering the jars with a micron screen too to see what would happen if I “rapidly” evaporated the solvent. But would also probably want some sort of outtake so I don’t fill my basement with fumes lol. And then also keep a couple lids closed and just burp them over the course of some months and check out the results.
Room temperature is fine if you can successfully supersaturate
A rotovap is an easy way but you can also just leave it out with a fan blowing over it. That may add some particle contamination to your crystals from the air
I was thinking of covering it with a large 25micron rosin bag rubberbanded around it! As for supersaturation, I was going to put a jar of ethanol in a warm water bath while I add the THCa, but that’s about the best I can safely do
I don’t have access to any real lab equipment, this is more just a fun at home project for me for now. If I can master anything and get it testing clean for residual solvents, that would be awesome though
For now I’m happy enough with my reheated THCa lol
Yeah honestly I made the mistake of trying it in a jar and then transferring to ptfe flat after figuring out that wouldn’t work lol. instead of just laying it as flat as I could from the jump. I had the heat too high from it being in the jar probably, so I think that should help. And I think excess terps that are tough to centrifuge out will also cause some of the bubbles, so gonna try and centrifuge this next batch extra long.
