T H C Removal from Curative Concentrates
The process of T H C removal from curatives is extremely dangerous, requiring a keen understanding of these solvents and how to handle them. You cannot use basic chemical diaphragm pumps, it requires very very expensive hardware. The dangers of using basic pumps is pretty obvious when we discuss using such chemicals. We in no way shape or form claim to be specialists, so in turn reading this does not make you one. Unless you own the hardware required to handle these regulated and dangerous solutions this is only for education, period. Don’t call us for questions or issues related unless you are intending to buy the gear from us to ensure any consulting we do – you are safe. If you don’t own the gear you should not try this technique, these advanced techniques require advanced hardware.
With a ratio of 1:1 mic hexane with chloroform – add a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of your distilled (2nd + pass) product to the co-solvent solution.
Create a bed for the chromatography column with suitable media for this process. Media can be purchased direct through summit, or sigma etc… if you have to ask how much it is – you cant afford it. using clean co-solvent solution wash the sides of the tube down along with some clean, sterile basic sand at top of the bed to prevent turbulence from washing the top of the bed sideways. It is paramount to perform this procedure properly as the density of the bed is very important to retain with zero air pockets or gaps etc. This media is much more expensive then our silicate product and so its difficulty to use follows. it tend to be more “sticky” on solutions. It’s not actually sticky, just if you make a mess, it sticks and dries to everything.
So now that you have gravity and back pressure set your bed, add more solvent (a bit) to make sure your bed is covered and does not dry out.
Now make sure the extract is dissolved in your 1:1 solution (hex+chloroform) and do this carefully. You do not want the material to become a wash, you want it to be like a gel. Now use a long glass droplet (can be made with a 8mm glass tube) create a bed of dissolved extract over your sand hat on the media. Allow to settle. Start dripping the bottom of chromatography tube until your dissolved solution is below the sand hat. Now fill the remainder chromatography column with your solution you’ve created. Begin low back pressure with nitrogen gas using the piggyback cap system and allow the process to drain from the stopcock on the chromatography column. During this time the media will present itself like a highway. Imagine the faster molecules will rush down faster, while the other molecules will tend to go down slower. This is basic chromatography separation by visual color band/solution bands.
You have now separated the T H C from the curative. Using a properly setup rotovap, you need to remove these dangerous solvents from the solution. It can be re-prepped for curative crystallization techniques.