anothername
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THC Reclaim Chemistry
THC concentrates tend to be between 60-90% total THC (THC+THCa) and vary greatly in consistency. When "dabbing" THC, some of the vapor condenses in
the device being used and it eventually needs cleaning. I've used three methods for cleaning: mechanical scraping, heat (so the THC drips out), and
alcohol. Alcohol is the easiest and most thorough but requires disillation.
All three methods produce the same result, which is a very dark red substance that looks black unless inspected closely. It seems like a solid at room
temperature but it's actually a very thick liquid. A ball of it will flatten down into a puddle after a handful of hours. It melts on a candle warmer
and takes a long time to firm back up completely.
This is what they call THC reclaim. It's actually fairly potent but most people consider it unsuitable for dabbing because it tastes absolutely
horrible.
Cartridges usually have THC oil in them. It's not as thick as reclaim, has a much lighter color and lacks that horrible taste. Sometimes that oil is
produced by distillation, and there are usually no other ingredients.
Why does reclaim look and taste so different from distilled THC oil? My only hypothesis is that the temperature used for dabbing is higher so maybe
the other stuff that makes up 10-40% of the concentrate is burning.
Is there a way to process the reclaim to get rid of the bad taste?
Interestingly, I collected a bunch of cartridges from the side of the highway that had just a drop or two of oil left in them. I cut them open, soaked
them in alcohol and then distilled the alcohol to get a surprisingly large amount of THC. But it's not clean THC oil, it looks and tastes exactly like
reclaim. The cartridges must have had some THC condensed inside, but most of the leftover THC in them was in the form of fresh oil. So now I'm
wondering if there's something about being in isopropyl alcohol that changes the THC into it's "reclaim" form.
Can someone explain the chemistry of this THC reclaim, why it ends up like it does and what options there might be for changing or further processing
the end result?
Thank you
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bnull
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Did you check out The Vespiary (thevespiary.org; not thevespiary.com, which is a bookstore)?
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
B. N. Ull
P.S.: Did you know that we have a Library?
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walruslover69
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There is a lot of interesting chemistry with cannabinoids, main problem with trying to investigate home cannabinoid chemistry is that the compounds
are so similar to each other that isolation or characterization is near impossible without analytical equipment.
With regard to "reclaim" a few things are going on. The starting material is not just THC, but a plant extract containing a wide variety of molecules
including terpenes, terpenoids, chlorophyll, plant resins, sugars and waxes.
The metal coil heats up all these compounds together to several hundred degrees upon which they undergo a series of thermal decomposition and
oxidation reactions that can vary widely based on heat, time and starting composition. Hotter temperatures lend themselves to more aggressive thermal
decompositions that produce "acrid" molecules.
The cannabinoids are generally fairly stable in regards to these reactions. they do occur, but in most conditions only a small amount of cannabinoids
are decomposed. The black "reclaim" is a mixture of the cannabinoids (mostly THC) with these condensed products mixed in( think liquid smoke made by
the condensation of smoke)
The best analogy is to compare with cooking. When I roast some vegetables in my oven, I get lots of blackened bitter bits on the hottest parts of the
pan that occurred through similar reactions and taste terrible. but the vase majority of vitamins and nutrients in the vegetables are preserved.
Purification of the "reclaim" could be preformed by distillation and/or active filtration to remove decomposition products, but not really practical.
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anothername
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That seems to explain it fairly well. Thank you!
I guess I'll give up on trying to clean the reclaim.
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