CBD Isolate to THC with muriatic acid (simple route)

[WillD]

Reagents: CBD isolate; Ethanol 96%; HCl35% aq.; NaCl; Water


Equipment: We used a reactor for convenience, but you can safely synthesize this in a beaker.


Yield: We got about 40g out off 50g, but you can collect more if you take your time separating the oil and use heat during the separation process.


Synthesis:
Add 50g of isolate to the jacketed reactor

Pour 1L of ethanol and stir until CBD dissolved. After dissolution, drop hydrochloric acid until to red litmus (pH ~ 2). Heat the mixture to 70*C and stir for 5 hours.

After 5 hours the mixture darkens a little. Pour the brine under the lid of the 2L reactor.

After 5 minutes of stirring, let the mixture stand and separate the resulting oil. It is better to repeat the rinsing procedure with brine once.

We send the resulting oil to an oil bath and slowly heat it up to 150*C. During the heating process, unnecessary components evaporate. In addition, the conversion of CBC into THC occurs.

After additional heating, we dissolve the evaporated oil in ethanol, repeat one wash with brine and obtain purified oil.

We recommend collecting the oil before the mixture has completely cooled down so that the product does not have time to thicken.

Since we did not use solvents for extraction, some of the yield is lost. But we did it this way to make sure that we could use a minimum of equipment for the best purity.

We will be happy to answer any questions you may have, enjoy!

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I'm going to be attempting this experiment in a few days, when I get the CBD isolate, it's on the way. I will have to distill/dry my own ethanol to %96 from vodka.
I've been researching this experiment for some time and am having a hard time making up my mind with all the other methods including zeolite and the vast array of solvents.
Basically, I just want to get the most out of my CBD, so I believe I am aiming for the highest yield and ratio of d9 to d8 and spectrum. These instructions couldn't be much easier to follow.

So we can hope for around %80 percent yield of CBD into THC ? What is the isomer ratio of this particular method, how can we influence it? I am going for max psychoactive potency, of course :]
I know some of the hints for getting a better d9 yield include, trying not to let the temperature climb too high. Trying not to run the cook for too long. Trying to make the reaction as dry as possible...
is there anything else?

 

[WillD]

You can use dry conditions (using molecular sieves). To obtain yield, use additional solvents for extraction, and rinse the oil only in the form of solutions. For the exact amount of the desired acidity of the reaction you need to use a HQ electronic pH-meter. To determine the exact reaction time, analytical methods must be used. The above is the average. We do not have 100% pure in the end (there may be a regular set of impurities as iso-THC, ethoxy-HHC, CBC,CBN, etc). For purifying is better to use separation through vacuum short path distillation. The usual rotavap will not be the best solution, because you can have problems with distillation along a long path. Regarding the main cause of oil degradation, this is an increased temperature in the presence of acids or oxygen.

 

[mycelium]

I think that vacuum distillation of the converted CBD is necessary to make sure it's ONLY THC, as I read there are other side products formed(can't remember what....

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I know it was recommended in the "CBD->THC 101" .PDF with the zeolite method. The "Coming soon 201" has to do with the distillation and stuff. I think that was more important for that method (or others with various ingredients) to remove all the solvent(s) and anything that got through filtering. With this one specifically, after the brine wash, the heating slowly up to 150c (for how long?) will evaporate any impurities, as well as convert CDC to THC. Followed by another brine wash.

What is left in the photo above looks pretty good to me. I wouldn't bother vacuum distilling that personally - it doesn't seem worth the effort or potential mechanical loss. But of course, that is the best idea for the best results. Getting only THC is important, but I want to make sure, also, that the THC has the highest concentration of the most potent isomer.

 

[mycelium]

Yeah I've actually seen someone's THC degrade on the second or third pass, trying to get it super clean. Based on the lab tests they did with every batch...
But I find it odd that it only converts to THC and not a little CBN or exo-thc, etc, like other THC conversions

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Yea, the heat slowly degrades the THC from d9 to d8 to full spectrum, I believe. I don't wanna fill up the thread with a bunch of "I don't know" stuff, in case I'm wrong and my terminology is probably off, but I want to use the world selectivity, I think?. In other words, the CBD will follow a selective path when it does what it does. For example, I guess you convert the CBD before hand, and then run these reaction parameters (zeolite or lewis acid catalyst etc) on it to achieve the desired isomerization results for the different THCs and CBNs. Kinda like with your p2p for phenethylamines. For example, AlHg on p2p makes meth. P2np makes amph, mdp2p makes mdma and you can guess mdp2np.

 

[chost]

Hi @WillD
thanks for the tutorial, do you know what the ratio between d8 and d9 is?
And do you know if I change ethanol with IPA or methanol how much influence that has on the ratio?