Full THC extraction and low temp vaping.

[PeteyS]

Hey all, I was looking at the thc content of my strain that im vaping at the moment, and it stated that it had 200 mg/thc per gram.
So i was curious, will you get that full amount of thc if your vaping at a low temperature, or do you need to take it to combustion to get the amount stated on the packaging.
I know its a little bit of a "grey" area question, but i think as more people start to use cannabis medicinally, these types of questions need to have concrete answers.
Thanks all.
Pete.

 

[gordontreeman]

I don’t think you ever get 100% of the compounds present in the package. Some is destroyed by the heat (more when combusting I imagine), some condensed one the sides of whatever you’re inhaling through, and I don’t think our lungs absorb 100% of the material.

It is absolutely true that you’ll get more of it by vaping at a higher temp, though. Sometimes I don’t want those effects and just toss it, but usually as I’m in the “waste not, want not” camp I finish at a high enough temp to get my avb a respectable tobacco/coffee brown.

 

[Vaporware]

What we call THC (Delta 9 THC or I think in flower it’s often a lot of THC-A that converts to Delta 9 when heated) doesn’t require very high temps to extract. Something in the low-mid 300s I think where combustion occurs around 450.

Since we can’t heat every portion of every piece of flower consistently there will always be something left unextracted, it’s possible that you can get more of those last bits of THC at high temps, and there are other compounds (good and bad) that can be released at higher temps.

Personally I value my health and the overall quality of the flavor and experience more than I value extracting every last bit of THC.

If full extraction matters that much to you, I’d suggest using your AVB to make edibles/topicals/etc. If they’re not good that means you already extracted just about everything you could without releasing a lot of compounds that are more likely to be detrimental to your health.

That said, high temps do release some compounds you may want, so you can give it a try and see what you think. If you can really blast it with a convection heater I think you *might* get the good stuff without too much of the bad, but if you’re consistently cooking flower to near combustion levels I’d look into benzene and whatever else might be produced at those temps and see if you think the trade off is worth it. Personally, I don’t.

 

[GoldenBud]

I'd recommend you to purchase some magnifying glass x60 and take a look at your herb after vaping, if you see the trichomes, it's not 100% vaped, i don't think there's a vape you can extracts 100%, maybe butane vapes or something like the Flowerpot so each hit you need to be careful not to combust...

 

[PeteyS]

I guess what im really curious about is, how much of the stated THC will you get if you vape to 347f, compared to how much thc will get if you vaped the flower to 410f or higher, and a bonus here, how much thc will you get if you "Smoke" it. I think we, as consumers should have access to this type of information. Ill bet that S&B already have studies on this.

The reason why im asking this question, is because I want to start tracking how much THC im putting into my body, and so far ive been using the (eg. 200mg/g) method on the packaging material, but it dawned on me that when vaping at a low temp and not taking the flower close to combustion, i don't think im getting nearly as much thc.

 

[DrJynx86]

It would be amazing if some people collaborate and get a true spectrometer study with the same flower samples but vaped at different temperatures and then measuring how much % THC is left in the AVB.

I usually calculate 5% left (and activated) but I think that comes from a study done with a vaporizer and just tested max extraction and not different temps.

Edit: because I live in a country without companies doing spectrometer analysis for Cannabis, I have been working on a computer vision app that uses high quality macro photography to count and measure the the trichome volume and color in plants and then (in theory) should help to detect "peak-thc/cannabinoids" content, given that you sample and measure every day.

I will extend that same software for trichome detection on AVB samples, shouldn't be too difficult, only thing I need is to get through this harvest and probably in two or three months have some results.

 

[sickmanfraud]

I guess what im really curious about is, how much of the stated THC will you get if you vape to 347f, compared to how much thc will get if you vaped the flower to 410f or higher, and a bonus here, how much thc will you get if you "Smoke" it. I think we, as consumers should have access to this type of information. Ill bet that S&B already have studies on this.

The reason why im asking this question, is because I want to start tracking how much THC im putting into my body, and so far ive been using the (eg. 200mg/g) method on the packaging material, but it dawned on me that when vaping at a low temp and not taking the flower close to combustion, i don't think im getting nearly as much thc.

The best way to satisfy your curiosity would be to vape a sample to no higher than 347F and another sample to 410F send the two samples to the lab and see how much THC is in each sample.

 

[DrJynx86]

The best way to satisfy your curiosity would be to vape a sample to no higher than 347F and another sample to 410F send the two samples to the lab and see how much THC is in each sample.

Absolutely, as I mentioned in my edit, I have an AI/Computer Vision app in development, I will try it on my own samples as soon as I'm back of my current break while waiting for the harvest to be complete, I will post my results here and will probably open source the code as soon as I prove (or disprove) my theory.

In an ideal world I would run the software and also do the lab testing but as I mentioned no labs here.. in any case, if I open source the app many fine people are invited to test and hopefully help getting a better algorithm for detection altogether.

 

[invertedisdead]

I guess what im really curious about is, how much of the stated THC will you get if you vape to 347f, compared to how much thc will get if you vaped the flower to 410f or higher, and a bonus here, how much thc will you get if you "Smoke" it. I think we, as consumers should have access to this type of information. Ill bet that S&B already have studies on this.

They did.

Both low temp and high temp vaping are pretty wasteful, too low and the material won't even vaporize, and too high will typically require a bunch of extra cooling, which will basically result in a similar effect as vaping at a lower temperature anyways.

With dry herb there's a pretty small window for reaching the optimum temperature.

 

[GoldenBud]

yeah because Volcano 170C is not 170C once the air cool the heat exchanger....Supreme V3 can extract it all at 169C !..... too bad it's discontinued

230C does the job for the Volcano weaker heater

 

[invertedisdead]

yeah because Volcano 170C is not 170C once the air cool the heat exchanger....
230C does the job

It is definitely worth noting that the Volcano's max temperature is somewhat conservative with what some folks consider "high temp vaping" these days.

I do notice this sweet spot with my high horsepower vapes, there's a temperature range right below combustion that actually results in quite a bit less vapor IMHO than vaping at more conservative temps.

I basically make a distinction between "high temp vaping" and "low temp smoking."

edit: as for that video, that's just the effect of vaporizer manufacturers using temperature probes in all sorts of different locations skewing the numbers. The laws of physics is going to lock in the vaporization/boiling point as being extremely consistent across devices. Devices aren't really extracting at different temperatures.

 

[DrJynx86]

They did.

Both low temp and high temp vaping are pretty wasteful, too low and the material won't even vaporize, and too high will typically require a bunch of extra cooling, which will basically result in a similar effect as vaping at a lower temperature anyways.

With dry herb there's a pretty small window for reaching the optimum temperature.

Seems like they only weighted the "by products" and I assume it's AVB on the Volcano and Ash on the cigarette, in any case, doesn't make sense the ash weights more than AVB but I'm probably misinterpreting something.

 

[GoldenBud]

It is definitely worth noting that the Volcano's max temperature is somewhat conservative with what some folks consider "high temp vaping" these days.

the Volcano's heater weighs less than the Supreme and probably has less volume too...

 

[invertedisdead]

Seems like they only weighted the "by products" and I assume it's AVB on the Volcano and Ash on the cigarette, in any case, doesn't make sense the ash weights more than AVB but I'm probably misinterpreting something.

I believe the byproducts are actually pulled from the gas phase but it's a bit confusing because they didn't dive that deep into it.

"It is, however, important to note that the identification of the by-products was not investigated during our current studies. It is therefore not claimed or suggested that the by-products produced by smoking cannabis are similar to those formed during vaporization of cannabis. The identification of the by-products produced by combustion and vaporization and their classification as harmful or toxic will be investigated during future research. It is, however, envisaged that the vaporizer will produce nontoxic by-products while the combusted cannabis material will consist of toxic by-products due to the significantly higher temperature reached during smoking, as this is known to occur in tobacco."

Here's a link to the study https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DDsIN9iof35pgz_wUUs6bIOaa0xzqBUO/view

 

[GoldenBud]

Seems like they only weighted the "by products" and I assume it's AVB on the Volcano and Ash on the cigarette, in any case, doesn't make sense the ash weights more than AVB but I'm probably misinterpreting something.

cannabis is an organic material hence it goes through combustion, in the air there's enough oxygen so it goes through complete combustion, so i guess CO2 + Water are the by-products, not 100% sure but it seems like it

*maybe some partial combustion is going on too, to the parts which are not exposed to to air... so CO too
dunno what are the by-products when you vape, maybe Toluene or so

 

[DrJynx86]

cannabis is an organic material hence it goes through combustion, in the air there's enough oxygen so it goes through complete combustion, so i guess CO2 + Water are the by-products, not 100% sure but it seems like it

*maybe some partial combustion is going on too, to the parts which are not exposed to to air... so CO too
dunno what are the by-products when you vape, maybe Toluene or so

I assume if two samples weight the same, AVB + vapors extracted should weight "the same" as Ash + Water + CO2, but again, probably missing/overlooking something important.

 

[Hackerman]

You might be able to take the ABV and test it for THC using the Duquenois–Levine test. It is a 'relatively' easy home test method that I have done many times using off the shelf chemicals and supplies.

You could vape at different temps and duration and then test each sample. This test has been pretty accurate for me in the past and would likely provide your answer.

Just tossing it out.

 

[DrJynx86]

You might be able to take the ABV and test it for THC using the Duquenois–Levine test. It is a 'relatively' easy home test method that I have done many times using off the shelf chemicals and supplies.

You could vape at different temps and duration and then test each sample. This test has been pretty accurate for me in the past and would likely provide your answer.

Just tossing it out.

My brother is a chemical engineer and will love this "new finding", thanks a million for sharing out, this is amazing for my case where I cannot send samples to labs because they don't exist in the country.

 

[PeteyS]

Cool experiment by the way, does it indicate anywhere how much canabis was used for the tests?
Assuming it was one gram. It looks like they extracted about 20mg/thc at the lowest temp, then double that for 200c.
But what i don't get is at 230c, the thc extraction doubles once again.
Should we not aim for this type of extraction every time?

On a side note, ive been keeping all my low temp avb(175c), to vape yet again when the time comes.
I plan on having a humongous bowl full at (230c) Wish me luck!

Pete.

 

[Hackerman]

My samples were usually way less than 1 gram. More like 0.1 gram. I used 37% muriatic acid (not the green stuff) and a lye base that I can't remember right now. I think it was sodium hydroxide. My lab is still packed and I don't have any room for it in my new place. If I can dig up my notes I'll post some tips. If I recall, I did not decarb my samples as the test worked equally well on THCa. Don't quote me yet. I'll try to dig up some info. Here's a pic of a completed test. The samples are the 5 small vials. Results are 2 variables of each sample. It's all about color for results.

 

[PeteyS]

Hey "Hackerman",
so from your testing, what would you say is the optimum vape temperature to use if you could just pick one?
And, do you think that low temp vaping is wasteful, as your not getting "all" the canninioids.