Turning THC & CBD Water Soluble

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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Here you are:

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Go to isolateguy.com
we have some guidance on there

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Where ? I looked couldnt find anything but info about cbd

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Try reading the whole website…

Hi people. I siged up today just to join this thread.

I am looking for a good formula to mix CBD ethanol extract into water for an emulsion. Must be 100% natural and non toxic so Tween/cyclodextrin/etc as surfectants are all out of the question.

I currently provide a CBD in MCT oil in dropper bottles that is very good but am looking to get into emulsions for water soluble application as I believe this will be far more efficiently used by the body making a more powerful, economical and immediate product.

I have just acquired a CAT 1000XD homogeniser and my first batch curdled baldy and left lots of greasy lumps around the glass pipette in the dropper bottle. I looked into ultrasonic homogenisation but the best deal I could find was a cheap unit for about $4500 that would do 300ml at a time. And as had been suggested there is no real hard evidence that such small particles are better for absorption yet. I’ve also hear claims that they leave particle so titanium on the emulsions are not good for internal use, but that could be a smear or attack.

Formula was (approx):
5% CBD extract
5% sunflower lecithin
10% MCT oil
80% water
small amount of Vit E powder for preservation

I did not blend the oil mix into the water/Lecithin gradually, I was in a hurry and just tried to mix it all up together, not good. Getting both liquids at around 50-70F degrees is also advised for a good emulsion.

I am not a scientist, more a basement alchemist without formal training, so I’m hoping people on here can help guide me to a tried and tested formula, or at least we can share knowledge and work something out together.

I haven’t read through all the links yet, time is short right now.

Just wanted to jump in and introduce myself for now.

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Also interested to know where I can get my products tested for CBD particle size.

welcome @ArtOfUndoing! You need a microscope with a measuring lense. How to Make Measurements with a Microscope Reticle
It will take some trial and error/stability testing of your emulsion to really get the ratios correct. You may want to incorperate a surfactant/emulsifying system that has 2 ingredients, one with a HLB value slightly lower than the target and the other slightly higher. https://dowac.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3277

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Thanks Soxhlet, I had no idea I could do the measurements at home with a microscope. That could make things way easier.

Quillaja Sapponin may be looked into further since it seems to be so highly regarded for smaller particle size. I’ve read elsewhere that mixing HLB values of surfectants is optimum.

Do you have any idea why the first emulsions curdled? Would it have been the hasty mixing I did in a hurry?

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alot of factors can contribute to curdling, you need to work on reducing particle size as much as possible. In addition your ratios of surfactant/emulsifyer as well as the type have a big role to play.

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Hello Everyone! I’m glad I found this discussion. I have used beta-cyclodextrin before but never got a long lasting water soluble formula down. I used ethanol to dissolve THC then mixed in a molar ratio of beta-cyclodextrin. Once I evaporated the ethanol the thc and beta-cyclodextrin formed a yellow powder. It had limited solubility with water but was a hell of a lot better than before.

I would like to share these patents. Hopefully it helps. I think that cyclodextrins in combination with methyl cellulose could form a stable solution. “The present results suggest that the use of cyclodextrins might be a simple and useful method to overcome the poor water solubility of THC”.
Link: Hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin and its combination with hydroxypropyl-methylcellulose increases aqueous solubility of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol - PubMed

I also found another patent that could be useful. There was talk of liposomal and micelle formulations. Apparently they were able to achieve 2g/L solubility. I doesn’t sound like much but given that the average can of soda is 350ml you could use the formula to make a 500mg+ beverage.

Abstract: The present invention provides stable, fast-acting liposomal and micelle formulations of cannabinoids that are suitable for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications.

Link: US8808734.pdf

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Kenetic update

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I could test them for you using Dynamic Light Scattering on a Malvern. It will give you a better picture of the average overall particle size than using a microscope would. The particle size distribution is important to know because the long term stability can be pretty dependent on having a narrow size distribution (all of the particles close to the same size). When you have big particles floating around, it tends to cause faster destabilization of the system.

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Can you please send me the link I can’t find it and am very interested in this process, as I can’t smoke anymore do to health :confused: Thanks so much!!

What are the ratios of distillate/water/lecithin?? would love to try this myself thanks!