Quick question. Have some distillate of combined material that is testing around 50% CBD and 15% CBG. If taken to crystallization, what do you think will occur? Will both crystallize into a blended isolate or is there a way to crystallize just the CBD?
could you dump some melted CBD isolate into the mix to get it well above 60% and then cold crash it with pentane? also curious but dont have an exact answer
It depends, you may have a hard time crystallizing that as is since its not very concentrated. Most likely the CBD will crystallize first because that is the most common, then you will have a CBG enriched mother liquor (note, you will likely still have a lot of CBD with it 1:1 best case scenario). However, CBG has a pretty high melting point and loves to crystallize so it could co-crystallize. It could also not crystallize at all because CBG is a pretty good crystal inhibitor for CBD.
I would consider distilling again to get your total cannabinoids to >80%. at 65% CBD 20% CBG, you’re more likely to be able to crystallize CBD on its own. When you do this, start your crystallization very dilute and be patient (cool it very slowly or evaporate it very slowly). Going too fast will allow for cocrystallization.
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Distill it. CBG has a much lower boiling point. It will start sugaring during distillation. As soon as you notice it doesn’t switch your receiving flask and the rest will be mostly cbd. It needs some time to cool off so ideally you’d want to use a simple distillation head and a 20cm air condenser.
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CBG is notably less soluble than CBD in hydrocarbon at room temperature (2-3% vs 10-14%). Thus it is possible to remove CBD from CBG isolate by iterative crashing. But not the other way arround.
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Could you provide any references on this statement or talk me through the logic possibly?
The principle itself doesn’t need a reference, many impure chemicals will not crystallize because they are interrupting each other’s lattices. CBD distillate that is 3% THC takes weeks to crystallize whereas CBD isolate takes hours. Think anti freeze, ethylene or propylene glycol have a freezing point of 10C ish and water is 0C, but a 60:40 ration has a -60C freezing point. Depends on the system though, some things don’t interrupt each other at all.
I don’t have a reference for CBD and cbg, I just have my experimentation.
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