Particles in roto boiling flask???

I’ll toss this in a small Mason jar when I decarb my main wash, hopefully tomorrow.

it does the same thing on high cbd hemp. I beleive it is sugars or silicate of some kind. When Snorted and taste tested it wasn’t sweet…

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definitely going to run bentonite first.

I have had this exact thing in my roto, and i think what @Renchi said was correct, bentonite should eliminate that in the future (as well as improve the color as well). I initially thought they were THCa crystals, but lab tests came back detecting only 2 % cannabinoids.

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cannabinoids don’t dissolve in water…they do dissolve in ethanol.

if you don’t have In House analytics, then this simple test is a useful “WTF is this?” test.

dissolves in water? Non-target. who cares!
dissolves in ethanol? Possibly target. Bioassay?

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I just ran into what appears to be a similar issue on an etoh run of some industrial hemp. In the future, I’m definitely going to try the bento route on batches that used questionable solvent. However, I currently have a liter of filtered crude that precipitated some similar water soluble crystals during decarb. It wasn’t until I was halfway through decarbing that I saw the BF that a tech had used had the same thing on the inside.

I’m sort of in the “oh shit” mode right now as this needs to be delivered asap. Clients, am I right? :confused:

What’s the most efficient way to deal with this?

Re-dilute and filter over bentonite? Some kind of hexane/pentane/water wash? What kind of losses would one expect?

Thank you!

Fat globules. If you add some spent kief to a roto it will make them appear within minutes (my guess is that it works as nucleation agend due to amphiphilic phospholipids present in trichomes) and they will keep increasing in size like snow balls. You can filter them out without any problems. The kief tek can be used instead of low temperature winterisation.

I’ve tested these globules and it looks like they have around 1-1.5% canna content)

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I would try filtering over bentonite. Worked for me.
The below post should assist you with doing so. Hats off to @Akoyeh

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Thank you for the fast response @Shockwave and @borysses! I’m not sure they’re sugars. Almost tasted salty but my perception was likely affected by a small amount of etoh laden crude stuck to the crystals. Regardless, they’re definitely water soluble and I don’t have hexane/non-polar solvents/sep funnel/etc… on hand at the moment. I haven’t dove into bentonite/clay filtering, but I’ll be reading my ass off the rest of the day! After I take my son to the doctor…7 month old baby coughs are both cute and scary…jeez.

I just rinsed out the BF with water and it clouded up and stuck to the walls. I think it might be similar to what @borysses said about the amphiphilic phospholipids. Which seems strange because the batch was definitely winterized twice @ -50C.

As far as filtering is concerned, does the bento have decreased efficacy in removing these water solubles when the oleo is in a polar solvent vs non polar? Do the water soluble bastards need to be “solid” in order for the bento to pick them up?

Lots of questions…all the time. I’m so very grateful for everyone here on the Future4200!

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The clouding is more than likely louching. When the water contacts terpenes, they go milky white. The crude pictured above looks to likely still have plenty of terps. It also looks a lot like the sugars I would get from certain strains, though it may be something entirely different.

I have found that getting the sugars to precipitate prior to filtration gave me the best results, but switching to using filtration media instead of filter papers allowed me to eliminate most of the water solubles and other undesired compounds. It’s damn near impossible to push crude through any kind of fine filtration (please don’t try), so make sure you have reintroduced solvent or are performing this step prior to solvent recovery.

If your end-product is something formulated in lipids (mct or the like), you can filter post formulation and homogenization. Coffee filters will catch all of the solidified undesirables. If you are looking at crude as your end product or are going to distillate, I suggest filtering the tincture immediately post extraction through the media of your choice. Water solubles need not be solid to be filtered out. Hell, AC and T5 are great at removing chlorophyll too.

Hope that helps. I know how frustrating it can be to have things start appearing in your process where you don’t expect them. Good job on conducting solubility tests first too!

Hahahahhahahahahaha I’m glad I rechecked this thread

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I have a small batch of MCT droppers that aren’t homogeneous. Trying to figure it out. I’m thinking it’s diatomaceous earth but could be CBD crystal, or plant lipid. I thought I had fully winterized, maybe not.

My questions are would plant lipids typically not dissolve in MCT, it’s about 5%extract to 95%mct. And would/do CBD crystals typically dissolve in MCT?

I can unfortunately admit that I’ve snorted kief before. It gave me a mild buzz and the headache of smoking old pipe resin. I’ve never sneezed so much or so hard in my entire life. Extremely painful. I’ve had 50% sulfuric acid splash in my eyes and that was terrible, but the kief rail was far worse. Gotta try everything once, right?

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Yes, CBD dissolves in MCT.

Sugar does not.

If your crude was made with ethanol, and you’ve got stuff precipitating in MCT, Occam points at sugars

Edit: I made some ~250mg/gram thc in grape seed oil a couple of days ago, and had to filter the ppt sugars out. Confirmed ID by taste test & water solubility.

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Thanks, I wasn’t sure. I haven’t worked with any isolate yet, and thought there could be some spontaneous crystal formation in the extract. You may be correct about sugars, it was partially water soluble and the rest was kinda waxy, greasy not very sticky but it was in MCT so hard to tell. It was room temp etoh extracted. I bought some finer filter paper and it’s very clear now, I’ll have to taste what came out, I did save a sample.

We get that chonky nonsense doing room temp ETOH extractions. That stuff in roto is usally followed buy a very dirty first pass and/or decarn. Tons of black burned pieces etc

We found filtering over a bed of of t5 topped with a smaller bed of carbon makes good work, if not completely alleviates the issue.

We ran out of T5 once and in a pinch used Summits Achromatizing Clay and it did NOT WORK. t5 only for this tech.

I have the same problem…
Can i filter threw the bentonite and keep going with it or is it trash?
If i can filter it out and keep going can i do just a bed of the T-5 or do i need another media bed of some sort?

and they taste salty and dissolve in water and was kind of a grey color when scraped out of globe

hmmm :thinking:

you got any good excuse for having salt in there?

(ie did you brine wash?)

Nope the only things added were Ethanol, silicate, and carbon powder. We use the same medias for all of our post processing and the only time i have seen this is when we ran our last batch of fresh frozen. We even placed a sample on our IR and tested against our medias and it didn’t match up