CBD Concentrates RSO/FECO Potency Testing?

Howdy,

How many members make their own RSO/FECO and have had it tested for potency? If you would be so kind, reply with the potency %, and if you used the original RSO recipe or a QWET/QWISO. Did you winterize as well? Curious what potency people are getting at home.

 

I am going dark for 30 days. Lets connect at the end of March. I should be able to bring your TAC up to 70+ with some simple changes.

 

Yes, TAC. And Its mind numbingly simple, but I have to update the website and documentation, plus get the lab tests back in order to have my ducks in a row for March 31st.

This is simple little tweak goes against everything people believe in making RSO. Sometimes, questioning assumptions leads to breakthroughs..

 

Greeting Everyone,

I've moved up the announcement date, got all my ducks in a row so here it is -

Today is a new day in making RSO or FECO. RSO and FECO are unrefined cannabis oils which are nothing more than “La Brea”, as I affectionately call it. Unrefined RSO and FECO typically fall in the range of 30-40% potency. Using this new process immediately raises the potency up to the high 70s producing clean oil you can vape. Change two things in the way you make RSO and you now have "Refined Cannabis Extract" oil. These simple changes will be standard on the way you make oil going forward. Nothing for sale, the process is free to all who make their own oil. This is my Pay-It-Forward to make lives better.

Here's a video that will walk you through making oil. You can now take 2oz cured plant and have decarbed winterized oil ready for vaping in under two hours with two simple changes in the way you make RSO.



Here's the naming convention for Refined Cannabis Extract, aka RxCE. The ‘x’ in the name is the solvent used for the bulk extraction. This covers the various ‘flavors’ of extract -

R.E.C.E - Refined Ethanol Cannabis Extract (replacing FECO)
R.I.C.E - Refined Isopropyl Cannabis Extract (replacing RSO)
R.A.C.E - Refined Acetone Cannabis Extract
R.E.A.E - Refined Ethyl Acetate Cannabis Extract (sounds like Ray)

Your thoughts?

 

On the RxCE Home Page, just below the 7 point graph, there's a link to the 7 test results.

 

Yes, in the morning.. Sorry, I tried, long day..

 

Morning. Sorry, last night I wrote out a reply then realized I probably dont understand your question. Can you give me context to 'the potency issue'? I read that from a few different perspectives. Are you asking about RxCE potency and test results or RSO/FECO in general?

 

Oh, okay.

First, lets agree that potency is the percentage of Total Cannabinoils of the overall volume of concentrate. 79% Cannabinoilds can be broken down into the individual compounds of THC, CBD, CBG, CBN, etc. Looking at my last lab test that has 69.3% CBD in a total of 79.1% cannabinods, some people might consider the CBD concentration to be the overall potency. From an extraction perspective, the Total Cannabinoids is the accurate measurement of potency. And that leads me to the next point, why certain concentrates have a plateau of high 70%s.

So, when you wash the plant in alcohol, either ethanol or isopropyl, it dissolves a mix of cannabinoids and plant compounds. The longer the soak the more plant compounds are added to the wash. 99% Isopropy is best to use because its less polar than Ethanol so it sucks up less plant material compared to ethanol in the same exposure times. I ran tests where I did a 5 minute and a 12 hour isopropyl wash on 1 oz of hemp, then immediately boiled both down and measured the oils. The 5 minute soak delivered 2ml of oil, but the 12 hour soak delivered 5ml! The longer soak didn't pull more cannabinoids, it pulled plant material. Doing the Rapid Winterization on both and final reduction brought both down to around 1.5ml each. All that to say, there is a substantial amount of plant compounds in an unrefined oil such as RSO and FECO if no winterization is done. My first lab test with no refinement shows Total Cannabinoids to be 34%. (BTW, have you found the lab tests on the website?) The second lab test shows Total Cannabinoilds to be %54 percent because I used water in the boiler but didn't winterize afterwards, leaving the waxes in the oil. The rest of the tests are distilled in brine or distilled water then winterized. These test show Total Cannabinoilds to be in the upper 70s.

So why is there a plateau of high 70s Total Cannabinoids? Why not up to 100%? Distillates and Isolates can reach upwards of 99.9% purity. Reason being, these products are purified through additional refinement using lab gear that takes the oils and boils out each compound individually. Thats tough to do for most of the world ouside a lab. Butane and C02 extractions are very clean in raw form compared to RSO because the gasses match the molecular characteristic that liquify the cannabinoilds without dissolving the plant compounds. Its this oil, after additional cleanup, which is typically used as input to the Distillate and Isolate manufacturing. That give you context to the high end purity and how to achieve it. But that also tells you the theoretical limit of what simple extractsions such as Bubble Hash, Rosin, RSO, etc is capable of reaching, and thats theoritcally about 80%. On the RxCE homepage, you first run into a dark gray graphic that shows the historic potencies of RSO, ROSIN, RxCE, then distillates and Isolates. Think of it as two different playing fields. RSO, ROSIN, RxCE, etc. are subject to fairly crude extraction methodologies and represent the range of 0-79.9% potency. Its takes additional refinement to move to the next level, and thats with lab gear which produces Distillates and Isolates.

Now, is RxCE unique? No. I'm using two known steps to refine cooking oil. The most significant of the two is Winterization. This has been used for years to clean up gas and solvent based based cannabis extracts. The problem is, its not optimal, especially at home. It takes 12-24 hours to freeze both alcohol and plant material to do a QWET and QWISO extraction. With this one refinement, winterized cannabis extracts can reach the high 70s in potency.

How is RxCE different? I made an observation this past summer that plant waxes survive the initial bulk distillation that removes/recovers the alcohol. RSO uses a Crock pot open boiler to remove the alcohol by boiling it out, but leaves the waxes in the oil. By using Ethanol to rehydrate the oils using a 10:1 ration, there is a whole lot less solvent to cool down and conversely the oils are a higher concentration in the ethanol. Thats the first optimization, less alcohol. But there's a chemistry one as well. On the Future 4200 forum, room temperature winterization has been observed and discuss for years. What is seen is the higher polarity of Ethanol squestering the high concentration of non-polar lipids in pockets. The result is a high concentration of waxes in tiny spaces that start to crystallize starting at room temperature. I observed this as well went putting together RSO 2.0 2022. Here's an interesting picture that visually shows this sequestering/pooling of non-polar compounds. I purposely made this mess which settled out into a pattern. This is polar/non polar separation at work. You can see this on the RxCE home page, the middle image of three pics.

So is RxCE better? Its a lot less time consuming. But you dont get refinement for free. This process reorders the steps in making RSO, adds water distillation, and performs decarbing of the final reduced oil. So there are new muscle memories to learn using this process, ie, new ways to go about it. For instance, distilling in water. In the original RSO, the distillation is stopped before boiling dry, then the solution moved to a smaller reduction setup. With RxCE, the remaing water/emulsion has to be dumped while saving the oils and sediments. That's a new art, so it will take ppl time to learn how to do that efficiently (the upcoming 'RxCE Shop Manual' will cover that). Doing the Rapid Winterization is conceptually close to Winterization, but is a different excercise. Decarbing after final reduction might be new to people and requires proper cooking appliances to make it work optimally.

Hope that helps. Did start answering your question?

IMG_4077 by CHSAdmin posted Mar 16, 2023 at 1:33 PM