I've recently gotten into making iso (ty GC forums!) and like most beginners am amusing myself trying to get it as pure as possible. I was thinking about adding a water step in. After filtering off the iso rinse from the bud, I would add an equal amount of water to the iso, put a lid on it and freeze it. My thinking is that the good stuff isn't very water soluble, but a lot of the impurities might be. The isopropyl would remain liquid and hold onto the thc/cbd. As the water freezes it would separate itself to the sides/bottom of the container, entombing many impurities with it? Then you could quickly drain off the iso into a new container and have a cleaner finish after evaporating the isopropyl off. But I was hoping someone sciency or who has experience with this could chime in before I commit resources to trying it. I've done a lot a searching, but have only found vague references to using water. Sometimes involving overloaded saltwater. But I believe they were using a very different approach.
question, what is 'pure'? there is already water in your IPA and your thinking is correct for the most part. In a traditional winterization, you start with a hydrocarbon extraction and then dissolve into ethanol to precipitate non-polar compounds from the solution. I dont know how easy it will be to remove them with the same solvent you extracted them with. why do you need to do this though? is your oil coming out green?
Damn thing dint save my post yesterday! I've just got standard kitchen equipment atm unfortunately electric fan oven assorted pyrex and stainless implements accurate scale untreated coffee filters 99% iso source material I'm willing to spend a little on this though. I've got some .45 & .2 micron syringe filters on Wishlist, figure those would probably get me most of the way there themselves. Gonna buy a glass coffee plunger too, should be able to shave off some of the rinse time exposure with that. I'm not terribly concerned about yield. Just having fun with it. I'd prefer to avoid sourcing oddities like hexane/butane/chloroform.
Oh you mean technique not technology lol, soz That run was very dry shake, uncarbolized. Froze everything, Pour Iso and drain off immediately (no shaking). As fast as I can. I only do a single rinse. Pass through untreated coffee filter let stand outside until 2/3rd to 3/4 has evaporated scrape the sides down to re-dissolve oils into the iso pass through coffee filter again to remove airborne contaminants from standing outside [This is where I'm thinking of adding water, freezing, draining, then syringe filtering] place in fan assisted oven at 80F until entirely evaporated scrape
I'm sure that would get me better results that way, but where's the fun in it? Learning to make a superior smoke from what would otherwise have gone in the compost bin is a rewarding hobby. Dipping buds in iso and throwing them away sounds like a habit I should avoid! I've taken 1 gram of that qwiso above and redissolved it in 10grams of iso + 10grams of water. Stirred vigorously over the mildest of heat to make sure it's all broke down. Then sealed it and put it in the freezer. The idea that the water would separate it looks promising anyway. When fully dissolved the mixture looked like cloudy honey, but it quickly started to clarify as little dark sticky particles began gathering up together on the bottom. Whether or not things are actually separating in the way I imagined I can't say yet. I can imagine a dozen ways for this to go wrong lol
lol this is funny. you arent going to achieve that with a simple IPA wash. its all in the material, put good in, get good out. You could make that material better if you did a polar hydrocarbon extraction followed by a non-polar ethanol wash frozen to like -50F. You need to learn more about extractions if you think you can take that material and make gold with a simple wash. if you're already washing super quick and its coming out that dark, thats what you're gonna get. what kind of water did you use? sounds interesting to say the least.
Ok so after leaving it in the freezer for a few hours there was definitely some separation between a milky layer and some chocolatey brown stuff at the bottom. I drained off the milky layer as best i could (really should have used a pipette tbh). I then dried both samples. The brown stuff left this sticky residue View attachment 144355 The milky stuff scraped off the pyrex like this View attachment 144356 Needless to say I was pretty excited! It's texture had completely changed to crispy flakes. The colour had changed a lot. Tasted really nice too. It was so different from the original iso I couldn't really compare. So I used a little isopropyl to reactivate it down to a liquid in the shot glass, then evaporated it off again. When dry it had regained much of it's original red colour, tho more transparent than the original. It also retained a runnier quality than the original iso at room temperature. In conclusion: while there was some degree of purification achieved, which likely could be improved by allowing much greater time to separate (48hrs as opposed to 2hrs), it is unlikely to be effective or efficient enough to merit using this technique instead of pursuing a more effective one. I believe salting out to break iso/water miscibility is probably the simplest improvement I could make to improve my trim iso.
Or perhaps dissolving the qwiso into plain water over low heat, then sealing and leaving to stand at room temperature for a few days. The thc/cbd should settle to the bottom (a long with any other non-water solubles), but water soluble impurities would stay dissolved in the water, the majority of which could be very carefully removed with a pipette. I see this all seems a little silly to you. But extraction is a new toy to me. I'm bored and this is honestly the most interesting thing I've done in months so
what are you doing dissolving it back into more solvent? use the least amount of solvent as possible, IPA is a dirty solvent. and what kind of water are you using?