RickWhite
Well-Known Member
Do you guys really think that everyone here is just guessing?
I had 5 semesters of majors level chemistry in college with two being organic. I was formally trained in all the techniques, procedures and theories behind extracting and purifying plant oils. I explained the concepts involved a few pages back.
The main concept is that there are polar and non-polar substances and that each dissolves in it's own type. Some solvents like Isopropyl dissolve both, while ones like Butane only dissolve non-polar. Water, is a polar solvent.
Butane, strips out the THC ladened oil and waxes leaving behind chlorophyll and other stuff. Once this boils off, which it does at very low temps, you have very pure oil - unless you are spilling junk into it.
If there was polar material, one could wash and re-seperate the oil from the water. But, to do this effectively, you would have to warm the oil to get it to properly interact with the water. In doing this, the stuff will get all over making a gooey mess. Just putting a chunk of hard oil in water is pointless as is flushing water over the top. If you are doing anything, it is likely that you are floating off some of the oil and / or waxes that may contain THC.
But the point is, if done well, there is nothing in a butane extraction that can benefit from a water bath. If you are seeing a benefit, you should probably invest in better extraction equipment that doesn't let garbage sneak by.
P.S. In all of my lab reports in college (where we did this stuff in a lab) we had to account for the percentage of product lost. It is a given fact that each step increases loss. Our reports would include the difference in actual vs theoretical yield and the percentage of loss from the process. This was standard for every report.
I had 5 semesters of majors level chemistry in college with two being organic. I was formally trained in all the techniques, procedures and theories behind extracting and purifying plant oils. I explained the concepts involved a few pages back.
The main concept is that there are polar and non-polar substances and that each dissolves in it's own type. Some solvents like Isopropyl dissolve both, while ones like Butane only dissolve non-polar. Water, is a polar solvent.
Butane, strips out the THC ladened oil and waxes leaving behind chlorophyll and other stuff. Once this boils off, which it does at very low temps, you have very pure oil - unless you are spilling junk into it.
If there was polar material, one could wash and re-seperate the oil from the water. But, to do this effectively, you would have to warm the oil to get it to properly interact with the water. In doing this, the stuff will get all over making a gooey mess. Just putting a chunk of hard oil in water is pointless as is flushing water over the top. If you are doing anything, it is likely that you are floating off some of the oil and / or waxes that may contain THC.
But the point is, if done well, there is nothing in a butane extraction that can benefit from a water bath. If you are seeing a benefit, you should probably invest in better extraction equipment that doesn't let garbage sneak by.
P.S. In all of my lab reports in college (where we did this stuff in a lab) we had to account for the percentage of product lost. It is a given fact that each step increases loss. Our reports would include the difference in actual vs theoretical yield and the percentage of loss from the process. This was standard for every report.