When I ran trials without the zeolite I always ended up with more unknown byproducts. I can’t speak to how well the Zeolite withstands contact with the acid but I can say with certainty that without it I end up with a lower quality product.
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Very interesting. In terms of unknowns, what difference did you see ? Less diversity ? Lower amounts ? Both ? What order of magnitude lower ?
For d8 reactions, with zeolite I get a 5-7% higher TAC.
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yep the zeolite was eating the acid and as it was developed with the zeolite in it if you took it out
there was too much acid leading to greater biproducts.
same happens when I use more acid I get more colour.
Well I suppose that’s possible. Generally speaking I also have more CBD left in a given timeframe than If I had used activated Zeolite. The higher % of CBD and the higher % of unknowns makes me think that this is more complicated of a situation than what you have in mind.
You can convert CBD to d8 with TsOH and a class 3 solvent. If you use isolate, you should get a high yield due to having a high purity starting material
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You’ll get a relatively high conversion, but it depends on your staring material. Distillate? Isolate?
The issue with using clay is the fact that you often cannot identify the unknowns. As @TrueScience stated, if you have a 64% conversion, then you have 36% of other compounds that you may not be able to identify. Since most labs can usually only test for a handful of “popular” cannabinoids, there is a good chance that your lab cannot quantify anything that is not CBD/a, THC/a, CBG, etc. If you resort to using clay as opposed to tosic acid, you run into the problem of remnants of that clay being left behind in your “d8” concentrate. With a bunch of people just running around trying to make a quick buck off of d8 sales, I don’t imagine that care too much about any of these residuals being present.
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any class 3 solvent ?
those classes are for there toxicity to humans not how they effect reactivity of reactants
there is no way that clay is comming over when you distill the product.
I doubt the unknowns are anywhere as toxic as what people think if you have only used sulfuric
acid impregnated clay as the catalyst.
there are so many unknown cannabinoids in cannabis does that mean that we should not
smoke it as we dont know exactly what is in it.
that idea of the remanant clay just i cant shake it.
what do think happens when zeolite is powdered from stirring or breaks down from
acid.
will that be left in it.
most people who are going for D8 are doing so to sell on the legal market.
I would think that distillation is going to be on there list of things to do to it.
a lot of people now and as time goes on will be making D9 for them selves
and the illegal market.
this is where we have to worry.
personally I believe anyone making D8 is only doing it for money.
I would rather smoke D9 any day of the week.
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this can be put down to two things I think.
1 molecular collisions.
if you have a heap of balls in the solution you are going to create more turbelence when stirred
making for more collisions.
this will speed up the reaction.
2 lewis acid
the zeolite is a mixture of alkali metal aluminum and silicate.
when you react an acid with aluminum you get a lewis acid which also works to isomerize
the CBD.
but it does lead me to think that drying is not as important as many think.
what do you think happens to the water when trapped in a matrix when the matrix starts
to be dissolved by acid.
also if water does play a part in converting d9 to d8 would not the breakdown of the zeolite
matrix with water in it releasing the water then make for more d8 than d9.
I still have not done enough tests to know the true effects of water on the reaction.
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I wonder if stirring CBD and aluminum foil in DCM with a little iodine would work well.
of course you would add the aluminium foil to DCM and iodine first then when the iodine colour
is gone add CBD and then stir the reaction at room temp I would think.
pure lewis acid then should make a good percentage D9 if the aluminium iodide does not
catalyze other reactions.
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No, not any class 3 solvent. There are a select few you can choose from, I just didn’t want to fully give away my method right here, haha.
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what about formic acid as the solvent and catalyst its a class 3 
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Adams in his 1941 publication noted that formic acid did not cause isomerization by refluxing in benzene for 20 hours. However, it was not used as the solvent in his study.
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strong HCL + spinning + 18 hr reflux
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interesting I wonder why, its nearly as strong as citric
I wonder if that means only the first carboxylic group is working to isomerize in citric
as it is the only one that has a lower pka than formic.
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Do your mol sieves float all the time or just when you’re refluxing?
Mol sieves always disintegrate to various degrees, even from slow stirring. They shed dust just from pouring them into the solvent.
@Ennui Genuinely makes me wonder how you didn’t know this if you claim to have worked with mol sieves.
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@roiplek I’ve used molsieves making cbn, they neither floated nor did they disintegrate. They were slightly pitted when finished but overall never seen them disintegrate to a powder in my solution even under heavy stir.
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I have a friend who runs HCL and ethanol with or without mol sieve, with mol sieve gives him like 70% d9 without it he gets almost pure d8
@Roguelab posted an exert from the old literature somewhere that says mol sieve helps with d9
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When I do the sulphur cbn reaction they get eaten up as mol sieve is a catalyst used in most dehydrogenation reactions.
You must be using a very strong oxidizers to not need the catalyst to actually work
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