Cannabis Acetate

Not as much trying to get rid of the anthocyanins, as understand how they fit in. One of their characteristics is that a very thin layer is one color, and two thin layers of the same material is a significantly darker color.

Cannabis essential oils exhibit that quality. A thin layer is honey yellow, twice that thickness is dark amber, and three times that thickness borders opacity.

Any thoughts on cannabis oils exhibiting those same qualities?

Not being a chemist, I read in wikipedia that anthocyanins are readily soluble in water and polar solvents, slightly soluble in alcohol and insoluble in nonpolar solvents. This means that they can not get into the primary non-polar extract, and may not be the cause of its color.

squiggly said:

Went through this in great detail in the previous post I mentioned (between yourself, me, and Jump). I found several independent sources which describe purified (by chromatography) as a deep red oil--this is further backed up by the wavelengths of greatest absorption which are found in THC which are firmly in the green section of the color wheel (corresponding to a "reflected" color of red).
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I believe in science, but what should I think when they report in that CBN is white-off solid?

You should think they they are better at recrystallization than you--I'd bet the farm CBN can be coaxed into a solid. The problem someone like you or myself might experience in trying to obtain a sample of solid CBN is one of equipment. For compounds which don't like to be solid (like CBN, THC) a very uncharacteristically high purity must be obtained, and once it is-- a very specific and exacting process must be undertaken to solidify the stuff.

Even beyond that--that is one company on one website. Can't judge science by one company (but even with that said I still think solid CBN is totally plausible).

And yes jump, that is why I said they'd be a bigger issue in alcohol extractions (the anthocyanins)--although I think you'll find that some anthocyanins will solvate in non-polar solvents (albeit sparingly).

@Graywolf

As for the layering effect--I think you'll find this is a common optical property of colored liquid compounds (rather than solutions). It's all about absorbance. Do some reading on Beer's law.

It would be logical to expect that in the process of degradation, when the content CBN increases, the extract will become harder and whiter?

Would someone be willing to do an actual detailed smoke report on cannabis acetate? I think that would be amazing, and very informative for everyone here!

jump said:

It would be logical to expect that in the process of degradation, when the content CBN increases, the extract will become harder and whiter?

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Not necessarily. Because these all can exist as oils when they are in a mixture they tend to stay as oils--in a weird way this is akin to the compounds solvating each other in complex ways. They are effectively complexed. If an oil were predominantly CBN it would resemble a crystal structure (on the molecular scale) with inclusion impurities (other compounds). This can interrupt crystallization, for some crystals the lattice must be perfect (or very close to it) or it cannot stabilize itself.

That's why you'll see something like this described as an off-white solid. It probably took 4 hours using amazing equipment and tedious methods to process a sample down and get it to crystallize--but nonetheless it eventually yielded crystals after all the work. Many times the temperature must be brought very low to get crystallization to occur (after which a melting point is taken to determine when the material is a solid, often times the number is far greater than the temperature required to crystallize), another common method is seeding.

CanadaDank said:

Would someone be willing to do an actual detailed smoke report on cannabis acetate? I think that would be amazing, and very informative for everyone here!

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Not sure what there is to detail. It produces an oil that is more heady than the oil that it was made from, because the CBD's were also isomerized into THC and its acetate, but is not necessarily more potent overall. What it does do, is pass the blood brain barrier faster, so that the effects arrive all at once, rather than come on.

When we vaporized the oil it was made from first, and then vaporized the acetate to see if it would come in over the top of the original oil, it definitely did from a heady standpoint.

None of us high tolerance patients experienced discombobulation, though two of us did lay down and count clouds for about thirty minutes, after testing a sublingual, several different oils, and then the acetate. No whirlies or nausea, but it sure seemed like a good thing to do at the time.

Where it really shines, is in an e-cig vaporizer. We are currently experimenting with the larger e-pens, so I will soon be reporting more on the use of acetate there.

squiggly said:

And yes jump, that is why I said they'd be a bigger issue in alcohol extractions (the anthocyanins)--although I think you'll find that some anthocyanins will solvate in non-polar solvents (albeit sparingly).

@Graywolf

As for the layering effect--I think you'll find this is a common optical property of colored liquid compounds (rather than solutions). It's all about absorbance. Do some reading on Beer's law.

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Butane will also absorb up to about 32ml/liter water.

Thanks for the Beer's tip! It most certainly covers the color change with density, but how about colors? Here is a picture of a butane extraction from fan leaf that I couldn't see through, but which the camera saw as reflecting blue light.

Graywolf said:

blue light.

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Rare, but observed the appearance of the blue component in color of amber, when the usual red-yellow gamma is shifted toward purple.

Graywolf said:

Butane will also absorb up to about 32ml/liter water.

Thanks for the Beer's tip! It most certainly covers the color change with density, but how about colors? Here is a picture of a butane extraction from fan leaf that I couldn't see through, but which the camera saw as reflecting blue light.

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Did it have this same effect on multiple pictures? Else I'm almost certain that is a malfunction in your camera.

As for colors in general vs. a law like Beer's--color is (as I'm sure you can imagine) a very freaking complicated area as it regards chemistry. What you're really getting into when you want to know about color is molecular orbitals. You're entering the quantum world when you start asking difficult questions here.

This is not stuff that I'm realistically going to be able to explain on the internet. It's not even a singular concept that I can point to.

What I can do is give you a few examples which might convince you that this is some really really complicated stuff. The nature of color is such that it can be affected by what something is in or near. A hydrated salt can appear to be a different color than the dehydrated salt--other things like this.

What you're really looking at when you see a color is the result of the electronic properties of a molecule. You're essentially knocking an electron out of it's orbital with a photon--exciting the molecule. For any atom in a molecule, the electrons in it's orbital can only exist in discrete energy levels. For this reason only certain wavelengths of light are active to a given compound (wavelengths which precisely match the energy needed to excite the electron). The compound will absorb these wavelengths and allow others to pass. Fluorescence tends to come from UV excitation and involves the re-emission of a photon from the excited-state to re-enter a ground state. As I'm sure you know this can also lead to different colors.

Bohr spent half of his career simply working out the energies and spectrum for hydrogen atoms in various situations, and in so doing gave us the model for the atom which we have today (or at least a vast majority of the puzzle). A link to that here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hyde.html

This is how something can absorb one wavelength and "reflect" another.

I mentioned conjugation earlier and I'll quickly address that:

When a molecule has this property of conjugation--it is sharing electrons equally across several main chain atoms (more than two--two is common as a covalent bond) [Edit: worth noting that we're talking carbon chemistry here]. So the energy levels are wildly different than what we normally see across covalent bonds (where the orbitals are mixed in a precise way which we've described and understand well). As you get into molecules with multiple conjugations--and molecules which can conjugate ACROSS molecules (something which non-polar molecules are particularly well equipped to do--due to their tight packing, low polarity, and entropic exclusion of water)--things can start to spin your head. A common example of conjugation is benzene--the ring is fully conjugated, this is demonstrated by noticing that each bond in benzene is somewhere between the length of a single bond and a double bond. Conjugated segments are also planar as a prerequisite, if that interests you. The model of benzene which shows the double bonds is known as a resonance form. It is a fake made up model of the atom. The ring with a circle showing equal bonds throughout is the literal representation--and you'll also notice that it's the synthesis of the two equilibrating resonance forms (one with the double bonds on 3 faces, the other with the single/double bonds flipped)

Orbitals themselves are hard enough concepts to get nailed down to be completely honest about it.

There are other things to consider like refraction, semi-stable excited states for electrons, how the nucleus of an atom plays into all this, and much more. The best answer I can really give you here is that sans proper equipment--you're not going to get an answer here which satisfies you.

Here's a few wiki pages you might find interesting which can lend some reality to how complex this stuff gets--I really recommend at least checking out the first link:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level_Applied_Science/Colour_Chemistry/Colour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_field_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_chemicals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_state

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_formula

My camera takes multiple shots, just by holding down the shutter and I take all my pictures in at least sequences of three. The camera automatically gives me a light, medium, and dark shot.

I usually take two or more sequences of important shots, and all of the sequences showed blue, without repeating that before or since.

You will notice the corona around the blue is light amber. If you blow the photo up until it pixilates, you can see that it hasn't been altered.

Thanks for the color links! Looks like lots of good info! It reminds me of something that caught my attention studying when vision evolved in the Cambrian explosion, followed by protective coloration.

One protective coloration strategy was grooves on the outside shell, that acted as a diffraction grating, giving color to a otherwise transparent outer cover.

Graywolf said:

My camera takes multiple shots, just by holding down the shutter and I take all my pictures in at least sequences of three. The camera automatically gives me a light, medium, and dark shot.

I usually take two or more sequences of important shots, and all of the sequences showed blue, without repeating that before or since.

You will notice the corona around the blue is light amber. If you blow the photo up until it pixilates, you can see that it hasn't been altered.

Thanks for the color links! Looks like lots of good info! It reminds me of something that caught my attention studying when vision evolved in the Cambrian explosion, followed by protective coloration.

One protective coloration strategy was grooves on the outside shell, that acted as a diffraction grating, giving color to a otherwise transparent outer cover.

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We use the same type of grating today in modern spectrophotometers.

They are used in a component called the monochromator which splits source light into individual wavelengths (often a double-grating is used).

The instrument looks something like this:



This diagram has left out several mirrors that will be inside--which allow us to move the light bands such that we change which color we are allowing to leave the exit slit.

As the light travels through the cuvette--if it is absorbed, the detector can tell by measuring the transmittance. This all follows the rules of Beer's law--and so now we've come full circle! There's some mathy stuff beyond that--but this is essentially how it's done.

Often times a spectrophotometer will have two detectors, two sample cuvettes, two of everything essentially. What it does is rapidly interconverts between taking measurements from each cuvette--this reduces the error significantly (and it can also serve to ensure that when the machine becomes de-calibrated, the experimenter is aware of this).

Just to further illustrate that things can be more complex--even in the case of Beer's law alone--here is an excerpt from the wiki article in case you missed it:

There are at least six conditions that need to be fulfilled in order for Beer’s law to be valid. These are:

1. The absorbers must act independently of each other;
2. The absorbing medium must be homogeneous in the interaction volume
3. The absorbing medium must not scatter the radiation – no turbidity;
4. The incident radiation must consist of parallel rays, each traversing the same length in the absorbing medium;
5. The incident radiation should preferably be monochromatic, or have at least a width that is narrower than that of the absorbing transition; and
6. The incident flux must not influence the atoms or molecules; it should only act as a non-invasive probe of the species under study. In particular, this implies that the light should not cause optical saturation or optical pumping, since such effects will deplete the lower level and possibly give rise to stimulated emission.

If any of these conditions are not fulfilled, there will be deviations from Beer’s law.

Thanks bro, interesting stuff!

How about a third possibility that might explain the blue, and that is that the color of the extract is affected by both Beer's law and any included anthocyanins?

That occurs to me because Butane will absorb some water, and anthocyanins change color with Ph, from yellow to blue. Since it was the first run on the new equipment, the Ph may have been affected by the detergent I used for cleaning.

As I haven't been able to change the color of extracts at will with an acid or base, yet a forth possibility is that since we don't know for sure what flushed out of the new hoses and equipment, "who know?"

Just a curiosity, which I have refrained from shouting to the roof tops, because I don't have a good answer..................

So just to recap. The acetate as is describes here, contains only THC. But If I wanted also to have a fair amount of CBN, CBD in there to keep my head on straight, I could cook some BHO or ISO into this? Is there a way to keep some CBN, CBD in there in the proces, or does this require mixing afterwards? We have been working very hard to make vaporable cannabis, since everyone here wants it. we have tried emulsifying with ultrasound, and centriguge. Heating and freezing, microwaves and other low tech stuff. We also decarbolize the ISO etc. But the standard methods do not work, since the cannabinoids do not vape as fast as the glycol, or glycerin. Which makes it inefficient, and expensive. In short, the glycerin, and glycol vapes of, and leaves the good stuff in the cartomizer. Also, since it is vaped, it does not pass in to the bloodstream as easy. And so, to make a solution that gets you stoned, requires enough THC to imobilize an elephant. On behalf of many many danes (of the country Denmark in Scandinavia) we need ur help. Getting the chemicals should prove no problem by the way... ..
also, what is the pricetag on an opperation like this? Is it worth it?
Oh and thank you so so much for posting this. All hail sciensy folk with greater brains than me. We humbly bow down before your wisdom :)

You can blend the different oils to change their effects. We keep most of our strains separated, because the effects are different. You can also reclaim oil from a vaporizer, to enhance the sedative properties.

Except for the relatively expensive stirring hot plate ($400/500), the equipment requirements are cheap, with a boiling flask, Alihn condenser, and separatory funnel. You might look for a used stirring hotplate?

You can pick up Chinese glass ware for under $200 off e-bay.

In the case of acetate, I would say that it has its medical uses, and it is definitely worth the effort.

For those looking for the ultimate high, it is a waste of time, because though faster and more intense initially, the potency isn't that much higher.

i noticed wayyyyyy smoother than any other dabs...and does creep a bit...many said got them too high or disoriented..wayyyyy heady of course

SCFSYNDICATE760 said:

i noticed wayyyyyy smoother than any other dabs...and does creep a bit...many said got them too high or disoriented..wayyyyy heady of course

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Yup, it is smoother to vaporize than oleoresin or AA.

LIKE WAYYYYYYY SMOOTHER...LITERALLY COULDNT FEEL IT GOIN DOWN, THEN UR LIKE BOOM CLOUD!

Yeah, it is much smoother than your average absolute, and the flavor when vaporized has changed from phenolic, to an acetate, which is also milder in flavor.

Alas I don't get euphoric head effects anymore and my tolerance is so high that I can ingest close to a gram of oil without ODing, so I missed all the good stuff.

I didn't escape unscathed in the overall trials however. Despite my high tolerance reaction to the first trial, one of our tests was to see if it would register over the top of our other high THC oils when vaporized.

For that trial, we decided to test it last, after trying several oils to see what the different effects were between them, as well as to see if the acetate would come in over the top of everything else. I and four of the heavy tolerance panel members were already anointed with our daily medical dose of HS sublingual oil, which in my case was 300mg and had taken vapor hits of at least four different oils, and had 30 minutes to stablize before sampling the THC-O-A.

Indeed it did come in over the top and two of the heavy tolerance testers, myself one of them, decided to lie down and watch the gorgeous clouds that day for about 30 minutes, before returning to normal function. Neither of us was discombobulated, but it really seemed like a good idea to both of us get in a comfortable position closer to the ground and admire the gorgeous skies.

Our heaviest tolerance user, a woman, was out tending her outside garden while we enjoyed our respite and the other two a sitting philosophical discussion on the meaning of life.