How do you separate water from oil?! 
Cracked a media bottle in the microwave after 3 years of doing it. It was some fully crystallized CBN and that had a lot to do with it I think.
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Crushed diamonds to mostly powder placed in beaker and put in microwave for 6 minutes, Around 4-5 minute mark isolate began to melt. by 5-6 it was fully melted and began releasing large bubbles for a period.
At a certain point I could tell it had the faintest color change. I let it keep going slightly longer and I could tell what I was seeing was actually a color change and could notice the faintest shade of pink. It seems like for a period of time (several minutes) it was decarbing but as the power was on with out being shut off it seems like it reaches a point where its too much and begins to color shift. I imagine you maybe able to continue a stabilized decarboxylation using a microwave by modulating the power.
Weather It would decarb faster or about the same as just applying a heat source I am entirely uncertain as if we have any evidence to support this yet… but I do always enjoy the aid of microwaves and sonicators when applicable
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If we tuned the frequency to the bond we want broken it would likely be extremely effective.
Pretty sure the tooling to figure out that frequency has be built. Chances are the appropriate frequency can even be looked up if one knew where to look.
@silverstudent is this something your fingertips can access trivially?
We know the bond we want to feed energy into, we presumably know how much we need, and I assume that extant NMR data will reveal at what frequency it needs provided.
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Ooh, I like where you’re head is at. I would recommend an FTIR data for salicylic acid, olivetol or any other polyphenol like that you can find; if you have high enough resolution, you can get ro-vibrational data from that peak corresponding to the carboxyl group, you can then get the microwave vibrational frequencies from the spacing on those peaks. Not sure if NMR data may not be that helpful since radiofrequency won’t do much to preturb that bond in the way you want.
Be careful around those transformers, I know I don’t have to tell you but those kill mad scientists like crazy.
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I’m not super knowledgeable regarding NMR data but I’m sure it’s possible, once you figure out which peak corresponding to the bond you could use the ppm to calculate the frequency.
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A microwave specifically designed for heating up cannabinoid concentrates…thats something, Id bet the research has been done on compounds that have similar characteristics too. Like tar or crude oil.
Is the method using NMR close to the microwave range to get this data? Now I’m curious if it’s a kind of spectroscopy, always great to learn a new one of those.
No idea. Not a chemist, nor willing to play one on the internet.
Just know that NMR can tell you what bonds you’re dealing with, so presumably gives data that is related to the resonant frequency of any given bond.
Feed energy tuned to that frequency => Tacoma narrows action…
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Ah, I see. NMR will likely not be helpful in that case. NMR uses a magnet to align an atomic nucleus (basically any nucleus with an odd number of protons and neutrons; 1H, 13C, 19F etc.) then uses an RF pulse perpendicular to the magnetic field, forcing the nuclei’s’ spin 90 degrees. As the spin relaxes, it induces a current in a coil detector. Higher electron densities can shield the nucleus from this, lowering the oscillating frequency that is detected. Do a Fourier transform and you n frequencies for each unique environment of a nucleus (usual 1H). These nuclei can interact with each other and can peak split depending on the number of neighboring nuclei. These two concepts let you basically build a chemical structure from a radio frequency.
NMR will not tell you how to break that bond, it only tells you the energy it takes for spin states to relax, a few orders of magnitude lower than what we want energy-wise.
Microwaves actually won’t do this either because the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponds to molecular/atomic rotation. What you can do is tune the frequency of a microwave to a frequency better absorbed by carbon-carbon, carbon-oxygen, or carbon-hydrogen bonds. I’m not too familiar with microwaves and how to tune a transducer to change the wavelength of microwaves emitted, but this basically should make it so more of the light is absorbed and it heats up faster. Just make sure you shield it better if you decrease the wavelength (or raise the frequency) since shielding on microwaves is already not great…or cover your balls, does the same thing.
IR is where we can start to help that reaction along since IR frequencies are where we can bend, wag, and stretch bonds. For this you can really just consult an FTIR functional group table; since this is a C-O bond, your IR source should be between 1250-1050 cm-1 (wavenumbers is a frequency, instead of wavelength). You may have to tune it a bit, but this can help catalyze this reaction by lengthening the bond we want to break.
This method will likely induce rotation in the bonds of the molecule (like microwave radiation) due to the non-radiative decay that will occur and you may get the same effect as using a microwave.
Now you just need a strong enough IR light source that emits at the frequency you want and you can likely lower the temperature you need to decarb.
Note that this will not break the bond out-right, to break a bond like that, you would at least need to be in the violet-UV range to do this, since that is the energy required to break sigma bonds, and you’ll get side-reactions galore with UV.
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Clearly been fed distillate 
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Do you put the chunky side or thin side up?
Anyone used a microwave with a probe?
Chunky side up, so that the door opens easier.
Careful with putting metal probes into microwaves. Im unaware of any probe that isnt metal assuming u mean temperature probe.
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Once upon a time most microwaves actually came with probes. Apparently nobody used them…(now they might come equiped with moisture sensors instead)
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CEM blurb: Copy and paste
https://cem.com/microwave-chemistry/theory
There is actually a complete review of microwave assisted organic synthesis papers. CEM makes reactors and equipment …
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Thank you!!
Don’t have to get far in to see that @Neutral was on point & there will be no “tuning one’s microwave for decarb”….
Oh well…learned some stuff.
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I once saw an experimental microwave cavity , power supply and “distillate “ recovery system that was supposed to extract CBD from dried hemp. I did point out to them that the hemp had CBDA and politely ask, do you have an absorbtion spectra for CBDA? I didn’t have the heart to tell the money man, he had some serious and questionable activity going on. The tunable Power supply was big as a s-10 pick up and a similar 3P cooling unit…let us say, minimum of 0.5KK$ and a special building to hold it…power water, etc….I don’t want to go on. Went back to my lab…took out some CBD isolate under the assumption “well may be they can decarb, but then they will have to vaporize the CBD to get it out of chamber”. Popped that isolate into a CEM teflon rxn chamber with the microwave transparent cap and placed in microwave and zapped it. Typical result below:
CEM rxn vessel, 1 min 2.4 Ghz kitchen microwave…container may go from for 74 to 92 F. So that is back ground heating of teflon?
Added 6 year old CBD recrystallized from pentane…
Zapped again same conditions results: rxn chamber temp 96F, CBD inside chamber 87F…still crystal. Will up load photos. Here I am just pointing out that using a microwave transparent rxn chamber will help people understand whether the microwaves are heating the material or the holding chamber. In the later case and prolonged heating of a holding chamber, the heat will transfer to the contents.
Also, under the same condition a gram or two of water would be turned into high pressure steam….as an example of something that absorbs 2.4 GHz
Someone here should look at microwaving fresh dried trichomes…i.e., is there enough water to heat to decarb temperature and compare those results with the same batch of freeze dried trichomes as a control.
Photos:
yes i know the 6 year old material is off color and slightly oxidized!
long story short: i have my doubts about people wanting to heat “cannabinoids” with microwaves… try your specific neutral or acidic cannabinoid under controlled conditions.
i am not saying you can’t heat distilled terp soups in borosilicate glass containers or polyethylene containers. THC might heat.
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Hey! That is the best electromagnetic spectrum diagram correlation I’ve ever seen… * yoink *.
It’s weird that the electromagnetic spectrum is broken up the way it is because the only difference between any range is the wavelength. If you have that thought, then see you see this it makes waaaay more sense. Note you radio waves correspond to things like atomic nuclei spin and movement of charged particles and gamma radiation causes nuclear transitions to occur (light with enough energy to excite a helium-4 nucleus instead of an electron because symmetry), in case you were wondering what was on either side of what was on there.
Diving deeper invites a lot of complexity, so you have to look at very fundamental stuff; at its core these problems are basically the consequences of angular momentum and wave-particle duality on eachother in a 4D universe (that number is up for debate).
It takes a bit of math and derivation to make sense of it (literally doing the math helped me understand why these things make sense), but at its core, all you’re doing is taking Newtonian physics problems and applying quantum mechanics (n=integers only) with some wave symmetry thrown in.
TLDR, light is much more interesting and useful than you think.
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The rosin advocates might like to pop some freeze dried trichomes into a microwave. I tried 1200 watt commercial Amana on a gram or so for three minutes…zip…nada…
But we all know a little infra red from heating blocks and pressure gets the gold flowing.
Non freeze-dried trichomes which can run 5% or so water gives a little action.
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