Chloroform Extraction- First Attempt

Fadedawg

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
atrumblood said:
I managed to steam distill some the terpenes. Do you guys think steam distillation of thc or cbd would work?
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Steam distillation has been used for a couple hundred years for the mono and sesquiterpenes, but the boiling point of the diterpenes and larger molecules, is too high for saturated steam. Dry steam may work, and I've pondered/schemed ways to use super heated steam without the attendant pressure issues.

One DIY way that was shared with me, but which I haven't tried, is to pipe the saturated steam through a flat wound stainless tubing coil, which is in a fruit cake tin filled with aluminum chips. That tin-o-chips-n-coil, is placed on an outdoor propane seafood boiler burner, which is cranked on full blast.

On the list................hee, hee, hee, snicker, snark, snort, bawahahahahahahahaha!!!!
 

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DaveInCave

DaveInCave

Well-Known Member
A heating mantle is super easy to make yourself btw.
Also, I'm thinking, if chlorophyll is such a problem, what about dousing the plants with ethylene, or let them cure in ethylene atmosphere?
It's a strong inducer of the Chlorophyllase enzyme which as at name suggests, breaks chlorophyll down.
I did my minor in biochemistry, but it was such a long time ago.

Where in the EU are you from Mike?
I can recommend couple of places for edibles.
 
eugeneoregon

eugeneoregon

Active Member
atrumblood said:
Just finished the extraction. It is a nice dark green. Almost black looking. The next step when I wake up will be distilling the chloroform out for reuse. Then I will setup for Vacuum distillation of the final product.View attachment 3905197
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I have used nearly every solvent off the shelf. Hexane, DCM (but nit converted to chloroform), Ethyl Acetate, Acetone, Pentane, all alcohols and of course water. You cannot help but extract chlorophyl even with CO2 or other methods. I have considerable expertise and know of what I speak.

However, that chlorophyl along with the fats, proteins, and all components generally refered to as "wax" (mostly DNA from the plant) can be removed to nearly 100% in a very simple procedure. I will explan and then respost a vid about degredation but that also has an example of tremendous chlorophyl removal from an extraction that grabbed way more than wanted.

Here is how you do it;

Dissolve all of the extract into a pint of so of isopropyl alcohol. Adjust quantity as necessary but the iso MUST be "rubbing alcohol" which is how isopropyl alcohol is labelled when it is mixed with water. Usually 70/30 ratio and this works great. Otherwise add water to start.

Then bring the mix to a boil and keep it there. Iso and water form an azeotrope together and cannot be seperated by boiling alone. As the mix boils the ratio of iso to water decreases. The ability for the rubbing alcohol which is increasing in polarity as the iso diminishes also diminishes. As the mix reduces you will suddenly see that the oil begins dropping out of solution.

One the oil can no longer be held in solution at that point hydrolysis will have "swollen" nearly everything organic like chlorophylls. If the extract was not denatured by the solvent used to extract it with then he boiling in alcohol also denatures all DNA proteins which appear as cloudy "goo" in when extract is left in alcohol. "Wax" as used in our industry is made up of a bunch of stuff plant DNA is right up there. Alcohol denatures DNA of any kind so this step also removes proteins which lend an aweful flavor IMO.

After the boil it is critical that you cool the mix, now with extract and reaidual rubbing alcohol, to room temp. If you do the next step with hot extract you will lock up your THC inside of the column. I freeze mine just to get it cold faster but the key is room temp or less - never hotter.

Now prepare a buchner funnel with a few inches of aluminum oxide on top. It will be the column used to sep the chlorophylls and waxes. Pour your cooled mix ont top and pull through. Keep adding iso onto the column until it elutes clear alcohol. All green and waxes stop on top and all cannabinoids pass through. It is very complete.

Here is a repeat post but in this vid it shows me finishing up te procedure just explained and shows just how effctive the process is.
 
dabbindylan

dabbindylan

Well-Known Member
eugeneoregon said:
I have used nearly every solvent off the shelf. Hexane, DCM (but nit converted to chloroform), Ethyl Acetate, Acetone, Pentane, all alcohols and of course water. You cannot help but extract chlorophyl even with CO2 or other methods. I have considerable expertise and know of what I speak.

However, that chlorophyl along with the fats, proteins, and all components generally refered to as "wax" (mostly DNA from the plant) can be removed to nearly 100% in a very simple procedure. I will explan and then respost a vid about degredation but that also has an example of tremendous chlorophyl removal from an extraction that grabbed way more than wanted.

Here is how you do it;

Dissolve all of the extract into a pint of so of isopropyl alcohol. Adjust quantity as necessary but the iso MUST be "rubbing alcohol" which is how isopropyl alcohol is labelled when it is mixed with water. Usually 70/30 ratio and this works great. Otherwise add water to start.

Then bring the mix to a boil and keep it there. Iso and water form an azeotrope together and cannot be seperated by boiling alone. As the mix boils the ratio of iso to water decreases. The ability for the rubbing alcohol which is increasing in polarity as the iso diminishes also diminishes. As the mix reduces you will suddenly see that the oil begins dropping out of solution.

One the oil can no longer be held in solution at that point hydrolysis will have "swollen" nearly everything organic like chlorophylls. If the extract was not denatured by the solvent used to extract it with then he boiling in alcohol also denatures all DNA proteins which appear as cloudy "goo" in when extract is left in alcohol. "Wax" as used in our industry is made up of a bunch of stuff plant DNA is right up there. Alcohol denatures DNA of any kind so this step also removes proteins which lend an aweful flavor IMO.

After the boil it is critical that you cool the mix, now with extract and reaidual rubbing alcohol, to room temp. If you do the next step with hot extract you will lock up your THC inside of the column. I freeze mine just to get it cold faster but the key is room temp or less - never hotter.

Now prepare a buchner funnel with a few inches of aluminum oxide on top. It will be the column used to sep the chlorophylls and waxes. Pour your cooled mix ont top and pull through. Keep adding iso onto the column until it elutes clear alcohol. All green and waxes stop on top and all cannabinoids pass through. It is very complete.

Here is a repeat post but in this vid it shows me finishing up te procedure just explained and shows just how effctive the process is.
Click to expand...
You make things overly complicated
 
eugeneoregon

eugeneoregon

Active Member
dabbindylan said:
You make things overly complicated
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In all honest the post was not meant for folks who balk at procedure. The procedures I use came after a very long time.

I do not make them complicated, they are complex in order to obtain very high purities. If boiling extract in iso/water first then pulling through a buchner funnel is too complicated for your own lab then you can skip removing the chlorophyl for sure, however all of your temperatures used to extract pure THC will be MUCH higher and your end product will be much darker and much less potent requiring multiple runs.

This technique takes no longer than winterizing and is no more complicated than brewing coffee and is the only method I know of beside silica gel chromatography that can do such a thorough job at removing the green component of this compound. If you are uncomfortable boiling a pot or have a better method then you would be wise to ignore my posts. My posts are meant for folks with basic capabilities of refinement and I do not mean to suggest that guys like yourself would find it useful. Here is a shot of what kind of purity I obtain.

A06279C3-C3A5-470F-9808-4DE363EE599E.jpeg

You can indeed produce purity like this but not if you attempt to do so without careful attention to every single detail you will fail dozens of times or more just as I did while I was self teaching this art. This is substantially pure THC as seen in the photo which of course begins to break down immediately. Without chlorophyl removal this dab would have a decided green tint to it and taste like plant. It is not a bad taste but I would rather not settle for a simple green dab when I can take some care and make rhe really good stuff. Without question those friends pf mine who find boiling extract in iso to be overly complex will most certainly not be able to refine high purities approaching absolute and most don't want to. My videos are not meant for them, they are meant for folks seeking ideas and not fault. There is not one single technique I use that does not seek to fill in the detailled blanks of information for folks who do not back away from a challenge and have the resources to do these things.

My techniques are not meant for user like you because for sure you already know exactly what you need to know and are willing to settle for the purities that are simple. I think most people would be happy that way so its all good.
 
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eugeneoregon

eugeneoregon

Active Member
Fadedawg said:
Steam distillation has been used for a couple hundred years for the mono and sesquiterpenes, but the boiling point of the diterpenes and larger molecules, is too high for saturated steam. Dry steam may work, and I've pondered/schemed ways to use super heated steam without the attendant pressure issues.

One DIY way that was shared with me, but which I haven't tried, is to pipe the saturated steam through a flat wound stainless tubing coil, which is in a fruit cake tin filled with aluminum chips. That tin-o-chips-n-coil, is placed on an outdoor propane seafood boiler burner, which is cranked on full blast.

On the list................hee, hee, hee, snicker, snark, snort, bawahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Click to expand...
Steam distillation of cannaninoid proceeds right after the terpenes come across in my own steam distillation rig. Steam distillation has been used for a long long time to,purify things like extract and it works wonderfully. This short vid documents what it looks like as the water and extract emulsion pass through the simple condenser. This vid started with dispensary extract beginning purification before my lab had decent vacuum distillation capabilities. Steam distillation is a highly effective alternative if you are seeking to purify extract. Steam can ONLY purify and remove compound exposed directly to it. Boiling a plant does not do it unless the grind is such that the cannabinoids are exposed to the passing steam. Note that at the point of this video the water in the condenser which is now loaded with steam distilled THC is turned to very hot to clear the slow moving compound from the condenser.

 
eugeneoregon

eugeneoregon

Active Member
Fadedawg said:
That certainly looks interesting. Could you explain what you're doing in more detail?
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The extract is placed in the main boiling vessel. The steam generator is a boiling flask secured in a stainless steel pot by ordinary sand which covers about half the flask. On top of that is a bump trap kjedahl bulb to minimize liquid water from entering the rubber hose on top.

The rubber hose is connected to a glass evacuation tube cut to size and is fitted through the thermometer adapter and into the boiling flask. The tip of the glass evacuation tube is set beneath the surface of the oil puddle being distilled by steam. Both the steam generator and the boiling flask are then set to mainatain a water boil.

The steam enters the boiling flask underneath of the oil puddle and is travelling pretty fast. The steam will pick up with it aromatic components that are not normally miscible in water. This is a core concept of steam distillation - it only works when the water and target compounds are NOT miscible. The steam picks up the aromatic molecules as it passes through the puddle and since the puddle is also kept at boiling temp the steam does not condense in the puddle and carries along then some aromatics with it. Once the water condenses the aromatic is deposited at that point. THC is a volitile aromatic though it is not a hydrocarbon. So the first things to distill out this way are the hydrocarbons which are mostly terpenes and then the cannabinoids.

The water will come across milky white and smell like pine trees if the extract you get is like mine with lots of pinene, but after the pinene fractions out mostly the yellow/green buildup begins to form almost white at first. Be patient because it takes time for the unseen volitiles to fraction off. Keep smelling the water. Terpenes are unmistakable and pungent seperated this way.

Then suddenly you start to see a milky film form in the condenser. This is the target. Like any other distillation there are limits to purities obtainable and multiple runs improve this but one huge advantage is the system never gets hotter than about 98-105C as measure at a head thermometer. One word of caution - if the steam generator injecting tube is placed directly against the glass bottom of the boiling vessel the thermal stress will crack the boiling flask.
 
Fadedawg

Fadedawg

Well-Known Member
Thanks, I see what you're doing now. Thanks for sharing!

Have you tried to extract cannabinoids from raw plant material using steam?
 
eugeneoregon

eugeneoregon

Active Member
Fadedawg said:
Thanks, I see what you're doing now. Thanks for sharing!

Have you tried to extract cannabinoids from raw plant material using steam?
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No. I have grown a total of one marijuana plant in my 53 years lolz and only rarely use flower or bud.

I grew up on the farm(s) though of Central and Eastern Oregon. Back in the 80s a big cash crop was mint. The oil is the only thing of value in mint and as a farmhand I have intimate knowledge of how the mint oil is extracted. This is what put me on to the idea of steam distillation in the first place but back home we called it steam co-distillation.

In that case the mint is ground pretty fine and then they employ superheated steam in these huge mint stills they drag into the field. The superheated steam is all done inside a beefy steel construction because it is dangerous but when passing superheated steam through the leaves it will extract the oil. Marijuanna could likely be processed in those exact same mint stills if any still exist. The mint market shifted to India over the decades so I doubt most are around. Of course we would be talking BALES of starting material for one of those lolz, but for sure attempting superheated steam distillation using glass is a giant blunder and should never be considered in my opinion.

Just imagine the day when a hay baler is feeding a twenty foot stack of pot into an old mint still and producing gallons of oil at a time.....I hope I am alive to see it.
 
L

LateKnightChemist

New Member
atrumblood said:
Yes that is how I make it. I use about 75mL of acetone for a bottle of bleach that is 8.25%. I shake it and let it sit for about a day to settle out, then I separate it.

Once separated, it should be distilled at least once to get rid of all the other stuff that may have been in your bleach and acetone.
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Necroing this thread to contribute to anyone else looking to use chloroform as a solvent, and my input here is speculative (SWIM will be doing it soon, until then correct me if I'm wrong and someone has more experience with this), but the stoich behind your haloform is a little off, so in using your chloroform as a solvent you probably had an azeotrope with acetone and that's what stripped out the chlorophyll and other nasty stuff; you reacted CH3COCH3 in excess with your NaOCl rather than the other way around.

The balanced reaction is CH3COCH3 + 6 NaOCL -> CHCl3 + NaCH3COO + 2 NaOH + 3 NaCl so you have a 6:1 ratio between bleach and acetone.

Assuming you used a 1 gal container of bleach, you have

3.785 L NaOCL * (1000 mL NaOCL/1 L NaOCL)*(1.11 g NaOCL/1 mL NaOCL) = 4201.35 ~ 4200 g NaOCl/gal

Using 8.25% bleach, that's 4200 * .0825 = 346.5 g NaOCl available in a gallon.

346.5 g NaOCl * (1 mol NaOCl/74.44 g NaOCl) * (1 mol CH3COCH3/6 mol NaOCl) * (58.08 g CH3COCH3/1 mol CH3COCH3) = 45.06 g ~ 45 g acetone needed per gallon of bleach

45 g CH3COCH3 * (1 mL/.791 g CH3COCH3) = 56.89 ~ 55 mL acetone per gallon of 8.25% bleach because it's better to have bleach in excess than acetone to avoid the azeotrope issue. You had an excess of 20 mL acetone/gallon bleach.

Depending on how high your yield is, you usually get ~50-100 mL distilled chloroform per gallon of bleach, so let's go with the middle number of 75 mL. If you were soxhleting using 300 mL solvent, you had four batches of distilled chloroform, each with an excess of 20 mL acetone, so 80 of your 300 mL of solvent were acetone. That would be enough to pull out the crap just shaking in a mason jar; soxhleting just made sure the acetone did its job ruining the perfectly good extract.

If you are still in the game and want to give it another go using a new, clean batch of chloroform, let me know if things go differently. I'll also keep you updated on how it works when SWIM does the extraction using chloroform or write up a new thread including all of the math and method behind it.
 
F

fredpalazzo

New Member
atrumblood said:
I have been wanting to try extracts for a while now, and I have been doing a lot of reading on the topic.
While I would love to be able to do CO2 or butane extraction, I do not have the equipment needed to do that.

Ethanol, and Isopropyl Alcohol are the most common method of extracting cannabis, I have opted to try something different. Something that I don't think anyone here has tried before.

I am going to be doing the extraction using chloroform (Trichloromethane).
The chloroform I am using was made by my self and distilled to remove any impurities.

The reason I want to use chloroform is because of its properties as a solvent.
It has a low boiling point which will allow a thorough extract of the cannabis.
It has a low affinity towards chlorophyll and thus the extract will contain a lot less, which leads to a cleaner better tasting product.
It has a high vapor pressure which means it will not linger in the product, and will evaporate away.

The methods I will be using include refluxing via soxhlet extractor, distilling off the chloroform for reuse, then using a vacuum chamber to force any residual chloroform out of the product. Last I will be vacuum distilling the product to isolate the thc , waxes, and tannins using a short path distillation apparatus.

If all goes well, I should be left with a clear amber extract ready to smoke.

I will be posting my progress here.

I am thinking that this weekend I will begin the process.
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I liked to use chloroform in the early 80's because, with my limited glassware, I could use a hot plate to boil the mixture and place a balloon at the end of the glass cylinder outside the window to condense the solvent back into the flask. It was the quickest yet safest way I could extract oil from the buds. And chloroform didn't contain any water to contaminate the sulfuric acid step for converting the other cannabinoids back to just thc. Good memories!
 
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