Turning THC & CBD Water Soluble

my initial thoughts are about stability: is the water/ethanol/limonene/cannabinoid complex stable, or will the 'noids just crash out eventually? seems like something you would want to mix up fresh

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I think the shelf life of CBD isn’t that long unfortunately

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This is exactly what I was looking for and didn’t even know it. Are there any common ratios that I should be using between lecithin, oil, and water

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ive heard sunflower lecithin is better for emulsions of oil in mostly water. i cant confirm but might be worth checking out

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I followed the liposomal vitamin C formula, more or less, which ended up being 120g THC distillate, about 1-1.5 cups of water, and 90g lecithin. The vitamin C method suggests 2 Tbsp of vodka, which I did not use but would have made the process better.

I stirred with a stir bar which was a nightmare…shear blender is advised. The smaller you make the lecithin particles the better suspension you will have. Even with my half assed SOP I ended up yielding a suspension which tested at 8mg/ml (liquid phase, there were some clumps that did not get tested). A success in terms of the project parameters

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If you degum your crude often enough it is completely possible to generate a hemp lecithin feed stock…a hemp veg glycerin feed stock as well.

Would love to discuss those points with anyone who is game.

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@thedjreese are you looking to create something for commercial uses or for family members?

if it is for family health and wellness the synergistic effects of curica tummeric drops and distillate has been the most effective combination I’ve found for my family members. I’ve had success mixing the two without any additives, I believe the Curica has a glycol base. I’ve got members who use this daily and can swear by it, specially if they have an active lifestyle.

1gram distillate (90%+) + 1 bottle of curica should yield 32 servings at around 28mgs per serving

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Family first

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beautiful link, thank you very much

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I now realized that my discussion about making oil water soluble is right here with more info.
this implies there is some residule solvent before mixing in the cyclodexterin, I thought the point was to infuse mct oil 1st and allow the cyclodexterin to emulsify. Anybody know?

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What did you decide to use?

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Nothing has been perfect :frowning:

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Maybe try gelatin or cellulose capsules? It’s easy to dissolve in coconut oil or something similar like MCT at a precise but concentrated dose and have accurate milligram amounts for capsules?

Thank you @shadownaught for dropping some knowledge on lecithin emulsions. I have always wondered about that.

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I had heard of a method where you dissolve sugar into ethanol, and add distillate, homogenize, and then flash freeze/ distill off the solvent. If it is near saturation conditions, the thinking is that the distillate will become trapped in sugar crystals as they form. These trapped inclusion bodies are supposedly small enough that they form a tiny emulsion. Would probably work better with an emulsifier, but maybe this is a method to consider as well.

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Has anyone had errors using sonication?

Or are we simply coming up with entertaining experimental ways to make emulsions to appear water soluable?

If sonication works as well as its reported why so many other less efficient suggestions?

Excuse my ignorance if sonication does not produce the desired results.

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Are you referring to the globule size in an emlsion? I have found that 100-50 nanometers the beverage appears clear.

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I am just wondering why we keep adding complex experimental designs if sonication is cheap, scalable, and provides good results.

The addition of these increasingly laborious SOPs makes it seem as if sonication does not work.

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We use a high shear homiginizer. Lots of my reading has indicated that ultrasound is a viable method;however, I haven’t been able to source one large enough and cheap enough to meet my needs. I’ve heard of people using ultrasonic baths, although I’m not sure those small tranducers can effectively do the job.

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errors? Not personally, at least not with cannabinoids…but I’ve destroyed recombinant proteins whilst trying to free them from E.coli with a sonic dismembrator on at least one occasion.

why the other suggestions? Price of admission maybe?

Plandai Biotech discovered that sonicating the living daylights out of tomatoes isomerized licopene into a more bioavailable form (in addition to pulping the tomatoes). They wanted to extract cannabis the same way. just throw it in a vat and scream at it until it turned to mush. Nevermind that it randomly isomerized the cannabinoids and pulled all the water solubles as well.

Couldn’t have anyone treating my girls that way :wink:

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Shy of a well formulated SOP for cyclodextrin complexation (which has other benefits such as being able to lyophilize the CDs into a water soluble powder) I think sonication is definitely the best method, but relatively expensive for a nice sonicator. A high shear blender will probably come close to doing the trick and is probably good enough. Not sure how to get a rough measure of particle size though for evaluating the method. Anyone know?

Would be interested in seeing what additives are best for the nanoemulsion and getting an SOP for that. My understanding is that the extract quality can have significant impact on the stability of the emulsion. High potency distillate is going to be the best bet IMO but guess it depends on the application demands.

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