Hey friends
I’m just going through all my odds, ends, heads, tails, contaminated jars, etc. I’ve got some stuff contaminated with vegetable oil.
Wondering if anyone’s got any extra tips for me to clean all this junk up for one big final distillate run.
Was thinking of dissolving everything into hep/hex, hit it with a low pH (2ish) water rinse, then high pH (12ish to saponify stuff) water wash.
Then run a bunch of parts of methanol through (to leave fats and junk in the hex).
Then maybe condense, winterize (throw into freezer, float little layer of alkane on it).
Then evap and distill.
Anyone got any other steps to deal with the mankiest of manky stuff?
Gonna try and keep everything cold-ish to avoid isomerization. But not sure what else to do.
Do we think the water washes will kick out some of the extra gnarly stuff?
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Diluting ur tails with cooking oil is a great way to split off some good disty.
It will need to be run again
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I’d just do an lle starting in a hydrocarbon with methanol. Methanol wont dissolve vegetable oil. I wouldnt worry about trying to saponify it
I’ve done an LLE on it already, still getting traces of it and the distillate is pretty soft. Although I had a helper do it, maybe he mucked it up lol.
Could it be soft because of cbd? Are you sure its all thc?
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I find saponification is more trouble than it’s worth. The only reason to do a saponification is if you went halfway accidentally and you need to finish it off to break a horrible emulsion. Isomerization risk is high though and I tend to run neutral water only if I can help it since acid/base washes ten to leave me with ~5% isomers even when I’m careful.
If it’s contaminated with vegetable oil, I would dewax first in methanol (to make LLE easier). Then do an LLE to pull any water-soluble crap. I know it’s popular to do methanol/heptane LLE and that can work if you procedure is good, or if you don’t want to evaporate methanol (since its slower).
I prefer to do them separate because I can reuse my solvents much more and I have enough evaporation power for my scale. Can’t imagine trying to reuse heptane-methanol mixes.
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