Carboxylation of cannabinoids

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cold gravy

New Member
This post is really directed at Fadedawg, who has been a major help in compiling a lot of the information pertaining to the chemistry involved with cannabis. I'd like to formally thank Fadedawg, the rest of the great people at skunkpharm and "the contributors" of the concentrates and extracts section of this forum.

With that said it occurred to me that since decarboxylation is just the loss of the carboxylic acid group isnt it possible to carboxylate the THC back into THCa?

Thanks.
 
C

cold gravy

New Member
mDUB562 said:
That's heavy, do you think there would be a practical purpose to that? Or is this purely theoretical?
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If it worked it would constitute a much cheaper process to isolate THC for medicinal use.

N/A said:
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The THCacid (THCA) is extracted from the alkane solvent into a second saline aqueous solvent with ph of 12.7-13.2. This is achieved by taking saline (sodium chloride solution) and adjusting the ph to 13 with sodium hydroxide.
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This suggests that THCa is soluble in water at a PH of 13, if this is true then it makes the purification of THC significantly easier for the hobby chemist.
Of course I don't even know if THCa is able to dissolve in water at a given ph, this is where Fadedawg and the rest of the skunkpharm gang come in. I'm hoping they can test this hypothesis more accurately than I ever could.

The process described would also have the benefit of allowing us to know definitively if the loss of the carboxyl group is what makes THC darker or if the darker color is from pigments that are undergoing a decarboxylation reaction at the same time.
 
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