Iodine CBD to D8/D9

Hi! I’m looking for some expert opinions here.
I found a paper inspired by the 2017 Italian research (DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.7b00946).
Looking at other people’s trials and errors for using iodine in CBN isomerization, it seems that keeping short reactions time (under 60 minutes) could provide a 90+ ish D8 yield.
The main difference from the old paper is that it appears to be a solventless reaction, heating the CBD isolate to liquid form (70 C°) and heating it with at least 0.0005g of iodine w/w.

Schermata 2022-03-13 alle 20.23.04

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It probably can be done, but its not really the most convenient way to make THC from CBD. Sulfonic acids are going to be cheaper and easier to procure than iodine (not that either are that difficult to come by). And, you will still need solvent to quench/workup the iodine so there’s nothing actually gained by running without the solvent to begin with - just my opinion.

Those are just the glaring issues, when you actually go to run that reaction neat it isn’t going to be fun - neat reactions are finicky and tend to be unselective (lot of byproducts) and difficult to control. A big reason solvent is employed is to modulate and control reactivity via dilution (i.e. control the concentration of reagents/substrates means controlling the probability A meets B to produce C) and make the reaction more convenient or safe, in addition to bringing reagents/substrates into solution obviously.

Somewhat unrelated, but refluxing implies you’re running a reaction at the boiling point of the solvent - which doesn’t really apply to a solventless or neat reaction…unless you’re running the reaction at the boiling point of CBD.

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