Removing Chlorophyll from extracts

More often than not, you can't polish a turd.

I've definitely polished a turd using hexane so I'm not sure why everyone thinks it can't be done.
Although my starting material was buds not shake...

Blunter the kid said:

Although my starting material was buds not shake...

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Thus the turd factor. Multiply that turd factor by the length and temperature of the soak. Really just save your money and cook it into edibles (decarb first).

SnapsProvolone said:

Thus the turd factor. Multiply that turd factor by the length and temperature of the soak. Really just save your money and cook it into edibles (decarb first).

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With all due respect the same compounds are being dissolved whether the material sits in alcohol for 2 hours or 2 days, those same compounds will stay in the alcohol while the cannabinoids migrate to the hexane, the only thing is I didn't get much yield because there were very little cannabinoids in the material but that's beside the point because I had achieved what I wanted... The cannabinoids were separated from the chlorophyll.
Funny thing is I had performed the extraction because I was turning the material into edibles, my thinking was that they would have tasted like shit if I left my extract full of chlorophyll so I did an alcohol/hexane separation to remove it.
The edibles I made were just like edibles I make with bho except there was a lot less cannabis like flavor in them but the extract still made good lollipops

@ maps, do you own a vaccuum purge?

@ blunter, the point im getting at is in maps original post he states this is his first time making hash oil, and his tek is not proper at all. Im going to assume if its his first time extracting he probably doesnt have a vac purge. I feel it is dangerous and just plain wrong to push him towards chemicals that need experience and proper purging to make safe. I would much rather beat a dead horse and see him spend some time finding out proper extraction teks rather then harming himself or others by using chemicals hes not experienced enough to use.

I do my extractions with 90+% ethanol. Sub-zero temp. Though it doesn't leave out all the chlorophyll, it leaves most as the final extract is a pale lime green. Temperature is also a component in chemistry. Mine is not as efficient as Oakley's, I'm too lazy to get other solvents. My point is that using alcohol does not automatically doom one to a dark green extract. As Oakley said, polarity and temperature.

thagooroo said:

Would any of the methods mentioned be able to make a thc infused sugar look like this

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Oakley's method would

Didn't realize that it was his first time making hash oil lol, so yea maybe he should learn a little bit about the tek down before he attempts a hexane wash.
I figured I would give him the information he was asking for anyways.

lio lacidem said:

@ maps, do you own a vaccuum purge?

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I dont have a vacum but I'm planning on getting methanol and doing multiple washes as suggested. Hexane is not that toxic in small amounts and you can really pollish your extract.

From http://skunkpharmresearch.com/
Alcohol/Hexane wash:

One way to clean up an alcohol extraction, is to reduce its volume to a manageable level given your resources, and pour it in a separatory funnel to about the one third level, followed by the same volume of n-Hexane and then of water.

We use an HPLC Reagent grade for this purpose, which we get from the local scientific supply store.



Shake well and then lift the lid long enough to burp any pressure, before setting it in a stand to stratify into layers. After it has separated, bleed off the water and emulsion layer. They contain both the undesirables, and the alcohol as well, with the cannabinoids left with the hexane.

Add water again and repeat the wash step until you are satisfied with the clarity, before evaporating off the hexane, to yield the pristine oil. More on hexane purging in the subsequent process description for serious scrubbing:





To put this process into perspective, I once collected all of my pipe bowl scrapings and roaches until I had about a pint of them, and dumped that into the container of black denatured alcohol, that I had been cleaning my pipes in.

I shook the mixture well and let it soak for a day to extract the material from the roaches and scrapings, before straining it through a wire strainer and then a coffee filter.

Because I didn’t want to mess up a separatory funnel with the black foul smelling mess, I poured the solution in a 1 gallon Ziploc bag, to which I added equal amounts of water and hexane.

After shaking it well, I hung it from one corner, to let it stratify, and after it had, I clipped off the lower corner of the Ziploc bag, and by pinching it, and controlling the bleed rate, I was able to bleed off the water, alcohol, and emulsion layer, so that only the now gold hexane solution remained.

I filtered the hexane and poured that into a Pyrex pie plate, which I blew air over with a fan to evaporate off. Attached are pictures of the amber oil that I extracted.

While the black color was gone, slight ashtray undertones could still be tasted, so further refining was necessary with activated charcoal, but we will cover that as a separate subject.

I am not suggesting this process for reclaiming ashtrays, but simply to make a point.





Hexane/Saline water wash:

Joe came up with this process, which has produced our most pristine creations. It involves re-dissolving the oil in a hot highly non-polar solvent such as hexane and repeatedly washing the solution with saturated salt water until it is mint quality.

Salt water washing uses a separatory funnel as above, but we start out dissolving the extraction to be cleaned directly into hot n-Hexane, and then washing the hexane solution with saturated salt water.

The magic trick is two fold. The saline exposes any proteins hydrophobic surfaces, making them insoluble in water, so that they precipitate out, and the saturated water has no room for anything but the alcohol, which aids that process.

We start out by making four or five liters of saturated salt water in a glass (or ceramic) container, by mixing sodium chloride (table salt) in hot tap water with a hand mixer until no more will dissolve. We buy the salt cheap by the bag, using salt intended for water softener use.

We perform the salt water wash of the hexane mixture, by simply pouring the salt water and hexane into the separatory funnel together in about equal parts and shaking well and burping, before allowing the mixture to separate out into layers.

After carefully bleeding off the bottom layer of water, we continue to replace it and repeat the wash process of both the emulsion layer and the hexane solution, until the emulsion layer disappears and the hexane has bell clear clarity.

At that point we stop washing and evaporate off the hexane. While we use HPLC grade hexane, light naphtha containing only Pentane & Hexane will also work for this process. Check the MSDS because the word light naphtha only means it boils between 30C and 100C, so it can contain Benzene..

Purging Hexane:

While n-Hexane is a delightfully non polar solvent, that enables us to do some amazing things, it has two more carbons and four more hydrogen atoms in the chain than Butane, and so due to the greater Van der Waal forces involved, is not as easy to get rid of as Butane.

The most effective way that we’ve found to remove the residual hexane, is either with multiple ethanol washes, usually around three, or thin film vacuum.

To wash with ethanol, redissolve the hexane honey oil in ethanol at a ration of about 10 to one and boil off the alcohol. When it is almost all gone, do it again, and repeat, until there is no decernable hexane odor.

For thin film evaporation, we place about .200 inch of it in a six inch Petri dish, which we place in a vacuum chamber and evacuate down to 29.5 mm Hg and ~80F for 30 minutes.

N-Hexane boils at about 69 °C/ 156 °F and has a high vapor pressure, so it is easy to evaporate, but harder to completely purge. Given our 30ppm taste sensory threshold and our 130 ppm odor threshold, we can detect its presence, long before we reach levels of concern.

Because it is a simple Alkane and relatively non toxic, hexane is used extensively in food extraction, but should not be viewed as being as salubrious as mother’s milk.

Skunkpharm put it better than I ever could.
Caution should be used as with any other solvent but the precautions are the same and one should always take into account the danger involved when extracting.
Also maps when your using anything other than butane I would absolutely recommend a vacuum purge just to remove the residual solvent.

Lol

Can I water cure my buds and then do Decarboxylation before the extraction?

water cure lol.... just let them dry out, bone dry, don't worry about decarbing

It's just buds look kinda dirty and pressed up (far from high end quality). Please take a look

I also read decarbo was a must for high qualuty extractions.

http://www.reddit.com/comments/e5s68/chalex_chilled_alcohol_extraction_method_the/

Twitch. said:

water cure lol.... just let them dry out, bone dry, don't worry about decarbing

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Can I do both things anyway? in what order? pros and cons?

i would not water cure your stuff, i would also not decarb it.

you can do what ever you want its your weed...
but if your starting with nugs which I assume you are since you said water cure, just let those things dry out bone dry then powderize it, pack it, stick it in the freezer for 24 hours, then blast that shit...

fuck reddit, do you want to learn how to make badass extracts?

do not try to water cure your buds.....

Like twitch said, do not water cure it's a waste of time and it's your buds are going to lose a lot of smell.
If your using buds your end product should be good as is.
Did you decide to use butane or alcohol for the initial extraction?