@cyclopath and I talked about it today to see if I might be able to help. Since you are making a “ketogenic” tincture, you can probably just wash it with water to remove the sugars. I can attest to the fact that I have been unable to emulsify water with that ketogenic solvent. That said, cooling the mixture to precipitate sugar for filtration/decanting is another valid option, unless the CBD content is too high to allow that without co-precipitation of CBD. So is @cyclopath 's carmelization/decantation tek, once the sugars have all crashed out, I suppose.
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Have you tried the Tollen test? This should tell you qualitatively whether you have any sugars (at least reducing sugars) present in your sample and its kind of fun. Great way to make a mirror inside a RBF. By far the easiest way is to introduce a nonpolar solvent maybe ethyl acetate or hexanes and wash that with water in a sep funnel. If you choice the right solvent that carries your compound well then solvent recovery/removal might be as much work as thinking warm thoughts.
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What about a liquid-liquid separation using non polar solvent and VG. Since VG is a sugar alcohol. Idk … I dont know much. Barely passed chemistry in HS lol
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Seems that MCT is hydrophilic enough that just washing against water doesn’t work well here. which is a pity. because that would be a nice simple solution. rather than adding another solvent to the process.
I’m still hoping someone with more chemistry than I have can make it work.
@QGA?
As fas as replicating the carmelizing them in MCT tek from the rice cooker days, I think your biggest issue would be having to decant out of the still.
However, if you look at your still (conical fermenter) you’ll see that there is another exit higher up (racking port), if you treat the ppt sugars like yeast and draw off from above them, you might have a win 
you’d need to do some preliminary saturation tests to figure out how much MCT to add to the still at the start of the run.
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Why are you putting MCT into crude? I make a purified oil first. I then add an appropriate amount of oil and mct to form the proper concentration.
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once upon a time? to get the last of the ethanol out without a rotovap.
now? it is happening AT formulation, and on the shelf.
one way to get around that would be to add LESS MCT, while things are hot, then let it sit for ??? and so encourage the ppt to occur from a more highly saturated solution.
adding the oil before ANY ethanol was removed, then evaporating the enthanol should be no less “pure” than evaporating the ethanol first, and it is arguably less work.
it also works as a transfer solvent. much easier to move 400mg/ml in MCT around at rm temp than 65-70% cannabinoids, even fully decarbed.
the problem may actually be the regulatory framework in OR.
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@cyclopath but wouldn’t adding purified oil to MCT yield a product with far fewer contaminants than just adding MCT to unprocessed extract? When I hear crude I think raw, unpurified extract. Is there a processing step involved prior to adding the MCT that I missed?
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cryo ethanol.filter. recover ethanol. dissolve in mct.filter.bottle. hand to consumer.
vs
cyro ethanol. filter. add some mct. recover ethanol. filter (this time “sugars” are gone). add rest of mct. bottle. hand to consumer.
second is more “pure”.
no?
when I got to the product, it was RSO in Coconut Oil.
it tasted nasty. but it was effective.
by switching to cryo-ethanol & MCT, I achieved a better tasting, and more visually appealing product. one that wasn’t alternately liquid or solid on the shelf.
many of those same cryo-ethanol extracts could be processed as shatter, without any additional purification steps. so “crude” isn’t really a great moniker. although given the higher temp (-35 range) it may be more appropriate than on my watch.
edit: “Full Spectrum” anyone?!?
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“contaminant” can be in the eye of the beholder…
I’ve got some CBD dog treats in front of me that were made by grinding up the dry biomass to a flour, and adding pumpkin pulp. then baked. they taste waaay better than our number one seller mentioned above.
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@cyclopath that is very fair! Haha!
I’m not saying that it’s wrong. It’s just not a technique I was familiar with. But, now that I’m thinking about MCT as a transfer oil I’m thinking of many applications. For instance, we are always running out of our THCA and CBDA oils because in order to dispense them we need to heat them up, slowly decarbing them. If I mix them with MCT they will flow even refrigerated. We only use them for capsules, tinctures, and topicals anyway. Two out of those three things already have MCT in them and the other won’t be a big deal to work in. I love this.
This is great. You have now idea how happy not having to cook away my work makes me!
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same reason I used to add ethanol to my hydrocarbon receiver when done with recovery.
I’m winterizing next, why purge then dissolve?
Transfer solvent and Solvent Transfer (that’s what the the swap is called when you boil off the old and end up in the new).
In the OP’s case, there are regulatory hoops that might make adding MCT before the ethanol is removed a non-starter. which is a pity, because it’s the simplest solution I can see. If he’s lucky he can argue that it is a mission critical part of ensuring a consistent product and get a waiver.
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Did you ever find a good mechanical or chemical means of removing sugars to prevent TFW charring when making distillate?
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The issue I had was with sugar precipitation post formulation of crude and MCT for tincture. After the formulation would return to ambient temperature, over a period varrying between days and weeks, the sugars would crash out and stick to the sidewalls and floor of the keg. It got in the way when bottling (clogging screens on our filling machine) and ensuring there was no solid particulate in anything that went to market.
I was not at the time running distillate, but my refining of our filtration SOP seemed to remove the sugars. Triple passes through AC and T5 bentonite (even seemingly with a single pass) the sugars would no longer precipitate. We nitrogen pushed through 1/8" AC and 1/2"+ T5 on 6" filter plates.
I prefer mechanical solutions to chemical ones, though the processes behind the chemical ones are fascinating. This addition to my filtration process fixed that problem for me, so I didn’t have to (or the time to) dive any deeper. Hope this helps. I do know that utilizing these two media assists with super fine (smaller than 0.2um) particulate in solution as well as color remediation. They can be sourced from @Shadownaught if it is something you are interested in experimenting with. I highly suggest it.
Hope this helps.
I just solved this issue myself
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@Apothecary36, was it using a similar methodology or an alternative? I am curious and would love to hear more.
The sugars dont seem to be soluble in hexane
Interesting to note. Thanks for the info, good sir! Are you extracting in hexane or bringing your (ethanol extracted?) crude back up in hexane and recovering the solvent?
Methanol extract, then LLE into hexane with water added to the methanol.
Otherwise I got major charring and clogged my wiped film feed line. I was pissed.
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I can only imagine! What kind of filtration do you perform? And at what scale is this being performed at, if you don’t mind me asking? I can imagine the fire marshal being none to happy about 55 gallon drums of methanol and hexane en mass, though I am sure it is being undertaken by some.