Ultimately the fact that it’s a blob can’t give much info here. Without having the GCMS in front of me, I can’t really inspect it much. I don’t want to speculate about the nature of this product anymore based only on peak shape; I just meant to lay out some advice on how we might get a better quality scan.
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This statement is not geared towards this forum, which is very small and has a specific draw. There are much bigger players in the game now with a less knowledgeable base.
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@TrueTerpenes: “So, how does one easily tell the difference? Touch it!” 
“Mineral oil is greasy and does not penetrate the skin, even becoming sticky. Conversely, Viscosity is absorbed and disappears very quickly.
Given the other similarities, this is actually a pretty easy tell. Please use your best jugdment when handling undiluted products.”
SDS for Viscosity by @TrueTerpenes: "First Aid Measures: Skin Contact: Wash off with soap and plenty of water. Consult a physician."
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THought id make a account here. Will post a few comments soon. Not going to spend much time here but wanted to pokek my head in and correct a few statements, point out a few flaws in TT’s statement, and give an update to the 6-7 new tests coming out in the next couple weeks, inclidiing from a lab specializing in petroleum distillate identification.
Here are two tests Ive had done the next will be in the next post. What do you see?
Viscosity Extract Liquifier 18129601-1.pdf (341.7 KB)
Viscosity 3rd GC-MS test results.pdf (147.8 KB)
From G.O. Joe, chemist who works with Gray Wolf. I will follow his suggestion for the next test Im doing on Viscosity
Perhaps your fourth lab should be someone who tests petroleum distillates? They may use a different column/method that gives better peaks for the heavy alkanes that define mineral oil, and have a more authoritative voice, and more importantly a better data library for peak/fragment ID’s.
Not that I doubt that any difficultly separable mixture of many similar heavy hydrocarbon alkanes is mineral oil, but apparently others do.
The labs you’re looking at would have wonderful abilities to identify essential oil peaks in seconds, but mineral oil not so much, I suspect.
Also from G.O. Joe replying to @drjackhughes
drjackhughes for instance is a little off. Naturally occurring terpenes can be alkanes but very rarely are. Note that pristane is a skin irritant toxic by injection. But not orally. Probably because it isn’t absorbed, but inhalation would be a different cat.
The author of his cited article does not call the found alkanes terpenes, because they aren’t. Nor is there any reason to think that inhaling heavy alkanes or alkenes whether natural or not is really a good idea, which is why those in the nicotine vaping industry who don’t want to get sued don’t use them.
drjackhughes speculates about the presence of alkenes, but it’s quite easy (for someone smart enough to operate a GC) to determine (without using one) whether there are even traces of alkenes in the sample by simple, fast, basic, obvious chemical tests for unsaturation such as decolorizing weak bromine or iodine solutions, or forming color on shaking with warm concentrated sulfuric acid, or (more generally, for all oxidizable functions) reducing potassium permanganate solutions. (mineral oil and other purely alkane hydrocarbons react with none of these in the slightest)
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Wait…Mr. Chemical test thinks this is mineral oil? So TTS official statement is complete fiction? Go get your sophomore o-chem bromine and when you get a positive test out of a mixture, we learn what?
I cited the paper about alkane content in cannabis not because I think Allanes are terpenes but because there are heavy alkanes in Cannabis. Some people didn’t know this.
I’ll have my 1880s lab reagents ready when using them doesn’t compromise the licensed facility where I do my work. We have no “lab” space proper yet. Soon enough, then I can actually do what I consider chemistry.
I’m over this. No one has enough info to say anything certain. Let’s wait on the results from future4200s junket and let him put an end to this.
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Pretty much, its useless text without proof or info. Waste of space. And they didnt even care enough to have a high level officer sign it, that sayas a lot.
From their statement they are saying its squalane. But its likely not only one substance, it a mix of substances WITH mineral oil. Maybe there squalane in there, but the 3rd lab I used doesn’t think so. D. Pappas said there’s no squalene in there and so did the 3rd lab.
The 3rd lab said the following about pristane in Viscosity. Also see what G.O. Joe wrote about vaping pristane I quoted before:
Not that we could identify, could have been buried by the hump though.
Here’s what the 3rd lab wrote when I asked if they found any signs of squalane or phytol:
No the only identifiable things we found were the mineral oil humps. There didn’t appear to be anything else in there.
You can’t be serious. Well wait for Gray Wolf’s test results, including test results from the petroleum disslate labs. Not Futures but not offense to Future, hes just very wrapped up with TT. Ill post later about the upcoming tests we have planned from trusted independent 3rd parties (Gray Wolf and Old Gold).
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Ok. This is where we agree. It could be a mixture that comprises a mineral oil fraction with heavier terpene(s). And, I also agree that testing won’t hurt.
My point about future4200s junket is that hopefully he comes back with hard data to help solve this.
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Well, like I suspected, the scans are bad and the first and third one didn’t even find anything. The 2nd one sure looks like petroleum components. At this stage it seems clear enough that the sample you submitted was mineral oil. The mere fact that it’s a mess of peaks shows it wasn’t a product made of carefully chosen individual compounds. I suppose the counterargument of TT would be to claim it’s a conspiracy and you actually gave mineral oil to these labs, not Viscosity.
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Thank you. That’s what I suspected. And I wish that wasnt the case.
It’s now clear and irrefutable that Viscosity is or last least does include considerable mineral oil. So so evil.
I was planning to research all the compounds identified. Thanks you for taking the time! I’m sending a 4th sample of Viscosity to a petroleum distillate identification lab like G.O. Joe suggested this week.
And great news that the other tests are coming soon, so its not just me as a random person making thsese claims. Gray Wolf purchased samples from hydro stores around Portland, and he ordered samples from TT online. That way we get older samples and newer samples.
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6-Methyldocosane
3-Methylheneicosane
5-Methylhenicosane
2-Methylnonadecane
4-Methylnonadecane
5-Butylhexadecane
4-Propylheptadecane
5-Ethyl-5-methylheptadecane
9-Methylnonadecane
3-Methyloctadecane
5-Methylnonadecane
These substances have been “identified” by the GC report. PubChem says they are nearly all related to squalane. I dont know how the relation works. (Im not a chemist) I noticed that thier chem structures were all similar (C20H40, C22H46, C17H36…) And the retention times of the peaks- I dont understand the unidentified areas between similar compounds. It seems like a gradient to my uneducated brain, a gradient of compounds with a smaller structure of Squalane (C30H62). Is it degrading ? By “It” i mean Squalane
Thanks
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The empirical formula doesn’t anything. Squalane is an alkane, so are these things, nobody knows safety of inhaling any of them including squalane.
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@MagisterChemist any thoughts on this?
G.O. Joe wrote this.
In my next testingn Im going to “find the iodine or bromine value and the boiling point and try too get the general number of carbons that corresponds to the range on the chromatograms”
Distinctive Patterns of Autoimmune Response Induced by Different Types of Mineral Oil.pdf (355.4 KB)
The GC column, temperature program, and results there are typical for mineral oils. It would not matter if the same alkanes came from plants instead. What do I care? Even if Mr. Ninja is an unsavory competitor switching samples, I get the cold feeling of shade around Mr. Terpenes. I often find that true around highly respected persons in the cannabiz, so maybe it’s me.
Viscosity is marketed as an organic, flavorless, odorless blend that is naturally derived from plants. We’re proud to say that indeed it is. It is a beloved product whose secretive and hard to pinpoint formulation have lent it to being falsely accused of originating from sharks, humpback whales and now, mineral oil. Viscosity is actually derived from very common plant matter. We do not source from petroleum, period.
Now it can be vegetable oil or wax.
It’s actually not surprising to see how mineral oil would pop up as a possible conclusion. This actually contributes to our perception of the quality of the analytics. After all, Viscosity shares a few key molecular similarities such as weight and structure.
Some of the component parts of Viscosity have a similar molecular weight to those found in mineral oil. They also share similar densities and structurally, they are both predominantly long saturated hydrocarbon chains.
What happened to:
made from a blend of 100% organic terpenes. It does not contain PG, VG, PEG, MCT, Coconut oil, or any other non-terpene ingredients. No shenanigans, wordplay, marketing gimmicks, or Tom-foolery. Seriously, we only use terpenes.
That’s quite a change. In other words, expect shenanigans, wordplay, marketing gimmicks, or Tom-foolery?
What’s interesting as well is that more than a handful of compounds found in mineral oil are also found in plants! Just as Alpha Pinene can be found in both cannabis and pine cones, heneicosane, icosane, octadecane, nonadecane, tricosane and many more aromatic compounds are found in both plants and other petroleum based oils.
Maybe Mr. Terpenes should look up what aromatic means since none of those are aromatic. He already knows what terpenes means - $$$. The melting point of those alkanes is 86-117 F - they’re usually things people take some trouble to remove from their extracts, and deliberately adding them would be considered adulteration and unhealthy 100% of the time. Does anyone have GC of winterization crud? I have a feeling that such a mixture would actually separate into its components much better on the GC than mineral oil.
Refined mineral oil’s most defining feature is being a difficultly separable mixture of of all kinds of alkanes that cannot be refined further. This is a characteristic of petroleum refining, and I’m not so sure that mixtures of dozens to hundreds of alkanes inseparable by chromatography or distillation are met with outside of the petroleum world.
Originally Posted by CannaRed
I want to know if there are any terpenes. And if there are only terpenes.
I’d like to know the iodine or bromine value and the boiling point. These are standard lab tests that can be done at home. There are simple chemical tests using hardware store chemicals that can rule out the presence of anything but alkanes or can strongly suggest terpenes and especially the -ene part of terpenes. Mineral oil from the drug store is 100% alkanes, perhaps even sesquiterpanes and triterpanes, and can be used ironically as the solvent in these tests. I’d especially like to know the general number of carbons that corresponds to the range on the chromatograms.
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And that’s what i’m talking about. Everyone has zoomed in on “mineral oil” and the vibe i’m getting is that if it turned out to be vegetable oil, everyone would be ready to exonerate this product. What happened to everyone being afraid of lipid pneumonia? People shouldn’t be like “my god, I might have been smoking mineral oil this whole time”, the problem goes back well before that point. They should have already been saying “my god, I’m smoking some concoction of completely unknown materials, with no assurance of their safety other than being ‘plant derived’.”
We shouldn’t accept “it’s proprietary” as an answer when it comes to things we’re inhaling.
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Cost on terpenes are $20-$150 a liter. Truterpenes gets $2500-$5000 a liter. When you have it like that hard to believe they would put something else in there to save money.
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Some preliminary test results from anresco…
Edit: These were submitted to the lab by TT and were given to me to make public their baseline tests.
Someone can easily run the same parameters on an anonymous sample and see if they changed shit up on this batch.
With them concluding that “the two samples are not the same”, ie Viscosity is not mineral oil.
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These test results look good, but I’m more concerned that the manufacturer, in the other forum, was unable to do anything with the lot number OP provided.
I’ve worked in an ISO certified manufacturing facility. If you’re doing proper quality control in your manufacturing process, you should be able to trace a lot number to a batch number and be able to know whether or not that lot/batch conformed to your product specifications.
That they responded to OP by questioning chain of custody, or by implying he was organizing a smear campaign shows me that they didn’t have any lot/batch information of their own, relying only on their supplier.
It’s great to do business with ISO certified manufacturing partners, but it seems that TT themselves have no QC procedures in place internally and would probably not pass an ISO audit of their own. That’s very concerning for me.
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