How Much THC Can Coconut Hold???

Now the big question everyone wants to know is how much THC can be absorbed before coconut oil is fully saturated. Nobody seems to have any clue as to a scientific formula to figure this out. People say 1:3, 1:4, etc ratios of bud to oil (oz to lbs). I've thought long and hard about this and was thinking that if you know the THC and CBD percentage of the bud your using you could have a general idea of the weight of THC and CBD's in the bud. Example: 1 oz of bud with a 15% THC content and a 5% CBD content would mean that you have 4.2g THC and 1.4g CBD's. With this theory we have a total of 5.6g of goodness to absorb into our coconut oil. Assuming that 1g of coconut oil's saturated fat will hold 1g of THC evenly and coconut oil has around 13g of saturated fat per serving you could use a half serving (maybe a little more give or take sense I know there's more then just the THC and CBDs in weed) and be able to get the most potent oil possible no mater the bud your using. I specifically want to know about using coconut oil with buds. I plan to infuse using about an oz and want to use as little oil as possible to get the strongest potency I can. I'm hoping this will be a good place to start in figuring out a formula that can be used to accurately control how potent our canna oil will be without using to much bud and wasting any THC or CBD's. I can't wait to hear what everyone has to say in regards to this topic and as a newbie I thank you all in advance.

However..note that while fat aids the absorption it is not absolutely necessary..you can simply eat supersaturated oil with decarbed hash in it...or just plain hash(decarbed)

And I did give the simple answer of 30-50%




Oh yea...lemme give you some mg numbers...I assume that's the whole point
Hold up a bit

I can't wait to hear the not so simple answer as I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to something I enjoy so much. Thank you for your time and knowledge.

he doesnt have any of that.....

So....hmmm..well I'm not really sure how I should go about this...coconut oil will take about 30% on first pass and if you run that oil on fresh herb you could get 50% at 160° or so...
http://janetcoonce.com/2013/01/02/fatty-acid-structures-saturatedunsaturated/
A nice link breaking down the structure of saturated fats, triglycerides..

I wanted to get exact and technical with it...but there are just too many variables I will do the best I can to explain...
Shorter triglycerides are considered more polar. The longer the hydrocarbon tail, the less polar the molecule.....thc is relatively non polar and like oil has a hydrophobic tail and somewhat polar head....and thca (before decarboxylation) is somewhat more polar

Now then a tri(3) glyceride is a glycerol(relatively polar sugar alcohol) backbone and three (different) fatty acids
Food Lauric acid Myristic acid Palmitic acid Stearic acid
Coconut oil 47% 18% 9% 3%
Palm oil 0.1% 1% 44% 5%
Butter 3% 11% 29% 13%
Ground beef 0% 4% 26% 15%
Dark chocolate 0% 1% 34% 43%
Soybean oil 0% 0% 11% 4%

They differ in chain length..remember more= non polar
Butyric acid with 4 carbon atoms
Lauric acid with 12 carbon atoms
Myristic acid with 14 carbon atoms
Palmitic acid with 16 carbon atoms
Stearic acid with 18 carbon atoms

But that's not all that is in the oil

Saturated Mono-unsaturated Poly-unsaturated...As weight percent (%) of total fat in Cooking oils
Canola oil 8 64 28
Olive oil 7 78 15
Sunflower oil [3] 11 78 11
Soybean oil 15 24 58
Peanut oil 11 71 18
Coconut oil 86 13 1

Now Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are medium-chain (8 to 10 carbons)

In the digestive system MCTs are broken down into individual fatty acids (MCFA). Unlike other fatty acids, MCFA are absorbed directly from the intestines into the portal vein and sent straight to the liver where they are, for the most part, burned as fuel much like a carbohydrate. In this respect they act more like carbohydrates than like fats.

Other fats require pancreatic enzymes to break them into smaller units. They are then absorbed into the intestinal wall and packaged into bundles of fat (lipid) and protein called lipoproteins. These lipoproteins are carried by the lymphatic system, bypassing the liver, and then dumped into the bloodstream, where they are circulated throughout the body. As they circulate in the blood, their fatty components are distributed to all the tissues of the body. The lipoproteins get smaller and smaller, until there is little left of them. At this time they are picked up by the liver, broken apart, and used to produce energy
MCTs do not require bile salts for digestion and therefore, passively absorbed by the intestinal tract into the blood stream where they are used for energy
Rich sources of MCTs include palm kernel oil, coconut oil and camphor tree drupes.

No that doesn't have to do with saturation per say ......




Now the saturated fat content differs minimally between butter and coconut..a couple grams ... ...so how much difference does all this make?

Not much.... because temp is such a factor with the marginal differences it will still be 30-50% no matter what you use....now hopefully though you can be better informed on the absorption of the fat and know coconut will be absorbed faster and be more potent...

Note that Wikipedia played a role in numbers..thank you wiki

If that didn't satisfy...let me know what I could add for you

If you had say 100ml (15 in a tbsp) I would expect around 50ml of hash to dissolve into it...I wish I could give you an extremely exact number using a fancy program that calculates how much thc can be held onto 1 mole of each...

Thank you for this explanation of saturated fats. Chemistry is always interesting. This with out a doubt shows that coconut oil is the way to go for many reasons, from absorption of the THC as well as delivery once ingested. I can see how there are to many factors to determine an exact formula when beginning the infusion process. I'm gathering from this that saturated fats have very similar atomic structures as THC and this is why it's able to absorb the THC so well. Does that sounds correct? I've seen on BKS's thread that she heats then colds then heats again. Is this the same as running multiple passes allowing the saturated fats to absorb, relax, absorb, relax, and giving it the ability to absorb more THC then say running a longer continues process? I'm assuming that the only way to get a general idea of how much THC (or bud) you'll be able to fit in your coconut oil is trial and error. I guess if I were to process certain amounts and then reuse the processed bud with new oil I'd be able to get an idea by testing how potent my reused bud comes out to be. More potent the reused oil is the more that got left behind in the first batch of oil.

This article discusses what you are asking about but they use olive oil instead of coconut oil.

http://www.cannabis-med.org/data/pdf/en_2013_01_1.pdf

I believe grape seed has a slightly higher absorption rate. Looking for that post on it...

Looks like a long day of research lol. Thank you everyone for the great info.

Grape seed is mainly unsaturated fats..linoleic ...18 carbon chain
saturated fatty acid has hydrogen atoms bonded to all available carbon atoms. An unsaturated fatty acid has one or more carbon atoms double-bonded to the neighboring carbon atom so that fewer hydrogen atoms are needed to create a stable electron cloud. With fewer hydrogen atoms attached, the molecule is considered unsaturated with hydrogen atoms
Ch bond is preferred over cc

27.4 mg/ml thc in 95% etoh ..though pushing it...2 tsbs of everclear can hold about .5grams of hash
I would expect something like 12-15mg/ml for coconut oil and 10mg/ml for glycerine
Those are the basic numbers and I like half gram doses..you might want 300mg

"I'm gathering from this that saturated fats have very similar atomic structures as THC and this is why it's able to absorb the THC so well. Does that sounds correct? I've seen on BKS's thread that she heats then colds then heats again. Is this the same as running multiple passes allowing the saturated fats to absorb, relax, absorb, relax,and giving it the ability to absorb more THC then say running a longer continues process? I'm assuming that the only way to get a general idea of how much THC (or bud) you'll be able to fit in your coconut oil is trial and error. I guess if I were to process certain amounts and then reuse the processed bud with new oil I'd be able to get an idea by testing how potent my reused bud comes out to be. More potent the reused oil is the more that got left behind in the first batch of oil."


Bk suggests some sort of freeze thaw repeat thing that serves no purpose

Its a lot easier and more efficient to add hash oil to coconut oil than try and extract with it...degradation aside

Triglycerides are somewhat similar to thc...that's a pretty loose somewhat..but both are amphiphillic

I'll luckly have my hands on some hash oil in the next week to produce some easy made pills with coconut oil and lecithin granules. I'll be sure to post how that come out in BKS page. But for the most part I won't be using anything other then buds so you can imagine why I'm so focused on learning about using buds only. I'm going to find some time later to research this abudance of information and I'm sure will be following up with a few questions in regards.

So WOW!!! I'm quite over whelmed at this point. I understand most of what I've read and am just having a hard time really simplifying this information into a quick formula. Very well said qwizo when you stated the number of variables that come into play here. I've decided to simply go old school with a lot of trial and error as time goes by. I intend to begin my process's in a couple weeks where I will document and post the results in a new thread. I would like to use the crock-pot method with water coconut oil and buds. I will then add a few other oils (haven't decided which one's yet) to the canna oil as well as lecithin granules. I'm going to ask on BKS thread what others think about this process in more detail. Thank you everyone for your help and this great information.

NVM! I will start a new thread in regards to the process step by step I intend to use as it is not the same as BKS.