Salvaging the remainder of Thc from blasted cannabis

[Droopy]

I couldn't really find any information on this despite googling and reading numerous threads. It seems some people either blast a second time with it or cook with their leftovers.

My question is, wouldn't there still be contaminants left over in the cannabis from the butane, or whatever solvent you happened to use.

Is there any possible way to clean these contaminants out, so that one may safely cook with their leftovers?

Cannabis is very minimally water soluble, would a soak in water be able to wash any unwanted chemicals out of said material?

What about hexane? Given the high polarity would it be able to extract the remainder of Thc while leaving any contaminants behind? Or could said contaminants be carried over with the hexane.

It would just be a shame to have to throw away blasted material that does definitely still contain enough Thc and Cbds to be effective in medicinal use, however I would not wish to cook with contaminated material either.

 

[Droopy]

Posted this in the wrong sub forum. Sorry mods.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

By "blasted" do you mean with Butane? As in supercritical fluid extraction with Butane?

 

[Droopy]

By "blasted" do you mean with Butane? As in supercritical fluid extraction with Butane?

Yes, the material I have was made with butane. I no longer make it anymore, but have a ridiculously excessive amount of material that has been sitting for months.
There's still a ton of Thc leftover and I wanted to cook with it, but don't want contaminants in my medibles. There has to be someway to wash it.

 

[nexusdisciple]

If I were you I'd probably just do a couple washes with 91% IPA. Soak for a while in IPA then filter the material and evaporate your solvent. Assuming the butane that was used in the initial extraction was clean than any excess left in the cannabis should evaporate off with the alcohol leaving you with a clean end product.

You could use high proof ethanol as well but I've always been told IPA is a better solvent for cannabis. Either will work though.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

You could use IPA, but since it is toxic and grain alcohol (ethanol) is not I would use cold Everclear to extract whatever might be left from the Butane extraction. Freeze all of your glass that you intent to use in the freezer on coldest setting, freeze all the herb you want to use and freeze the Everclear for at least 48 hours. Place the herb in a glass jar and cover with freezing cold Everclear to above the line of the herb. Shake or stir around for about 5 minutes, then filter. Its best to have filter equipment as cold as everything else. The cold temps should prevent Chlorophyll and plant waxes from passing into the liquid. Once filtered pour the liquid into a flat bottom glass baking dish and evaporate. You should have either a thick wax or shatter glass material as the end product.

 

[nexusdisciple]

You could use IPA, but since it is toxic and grain alcohol (ethanol) is not I would use cold Everclear to extract whatever might be left from the Butane extraction.

I'm not sure why the slight toxicity of IPA relevant when it is something you can grab at the pharmacy and be 100% sure it will evaporate clean. You aren't ingesting the solvent.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

Speaking from personal experience I find IPA based cannabis extractions to be very harsh on my lungs, throat and mouth. It is often difficult to get all of the IPA out of the final product unless one is using a vacuum purge system. i do not have the same problem with ethanol based cannabis extractions even from the same starting material. In small batches it might be insignificant, but if running lots of material and evaping lots of liquid IPA off it could add up in the final product. Perhaps I am more sensitive to IPA than others, but the harsh taste and burning in mouth, throat and lungs and dizzy feeling from inhaling IPA extracted cannabis is simply not worth it for me to ever use it again or consume anything that was made this way. Ethanol on the other hand, does not have any of these downsides that I have ever been able to notice. I have used 91% and 99% IPA in the past and noticed no difference in end product. Vacuum purging the end IPA extracted product seemed to help a lot, but was still more harsh and less flavorful than the ethanol extracted product, for me at least.

 

[TreehouseChemist]

Well I don't know if a simple IPA extraction of the residue would remove any contaminates that came from the butane (I mean, THC dissolves in both, so why wouldn't the contaminate?), so unless you had some way of knowing what the butane contam was, an IPA soaking is a shot in the dark.

However, had an idea for those having trouble smoking IPA extracts.

To remove IPA from an extract: (experimental)
Soak plant or extract in IPA, filter, boil liquid portion down to as small of an amount as you can (still liquid-ish, not dry), then pour that saturated IPA solution in a container of ice water (with some chunks of ice still in it) and stir it up. The IPA will mix with the water, but the THC will not. It should either float or sink (or stick to the sides!) of the container and you should be able to pour the water through a filter (bye bye IPA!) and then collect what's in the filter or stuck to the sides of your container and have a purified, IPA-free extract. The only solvent remaining would be a little bit of water, which you could finish drying or use as-is. Some of the more water-soluble plant materials that made it in to the IPA would be removed with this procedure as well.

Petroleum ether works well for THC extracts too. Dissolving a dry IPA extract in pet ether, decanting the ether and evaporating will yield a much more pure extract.

-Treehouse

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

I agree, it would help if droopy would tell us what contaminants he thinks might be in the batch he wants to run. If it is just butane residue the IPA or Ethanol should take care of that. Most canned Butane has been found to have some mystery materials inside that are oily residues, probably industrial lubricants from the can formation, and mercaptans. Since most canned Butane is made to be used in lighters it is an impure product that the manufacturers do not really care if it has contaminants or not. It was never intended to be a food grade or consumable safe product because it was never intended for that use. I stopped using Butane because of these contaminants and started using freezer cold ethanol. This is supposedly the solvent that Budder King uses to create his Cannabis Budder waxes. If there are other contaminants we should probably know about them before we advise on how best to deal with them.

 

[pitubo]

Butane refill cannisters can be found that have very pure butane. True, there are some oily ones too, but it is easy to do an evaporation test. It is also essential to do so, as dirty butane ruins the extract.

Butane is highly volatile. Of all the solvents available and practicable to amateurs it is the most volatile (CO2 even better, but not useful for amateurs.) Other solvents have a much greater tendency to (almost literally) stick around in the resinous, glue-like cannabis extract -- which is not pure THC btw, it a blend of cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBN etc.) waxes, fats and terpenes.

You certainly will not have any leftover butane in the extracted plant material after it has been vented for a while (much less than an hour). If the butane was clean, there can be no impurities left back either. Using hexane to get rid of remnants of butane defeats the purpose, as butane is so much more volatile than hexane. The other way around might make some sense, perhaps. Apart from that it is probably easier to find very pure butane in the shops than very pure hexane.

Boiling butane is in my experience an amazingly efficient extraction solvent for cannabis. I used a copper pipe filled with crisp-dried leaf that had been powdered in a coffee grinder. The first milliliters of extract to come out of the bottom of the pipe is very rich in active resin, after that the extract quickly becomes lighter and contains mostly waxes and fats, until finally pure butane runs through. Retrying extraction on the same charge does not get out anymore. Ergo, if your extraction system is good, there will not be any remainder of THC in the plant material.

I sort of fail to see the point of cooking with the extracted plant materials, as I find it is rather without any flavor or smell. It could be useful as an additive for compost making, or as a nitrogen rich supplement to the growing substrate of one's favorite mushroom culture.

Hope this helps.