Testing equippment (THC, CBD, terpenes etc.) @home feasible?

[bigbadbiddy]

Hi folks,

so I recently watched some BcBubbleMan, hashchurch etc. to broaden my horizon (and look more into Rosin tech in particular).

During that journey I ended on John Berfalo's channel and watched some of his vids.

In one of the videos I encountered that the guy has a complete lab in his grow area which allows him to test for THC, CBD, terpene levels etc. in his product.

Now I was wondering if any of you are familiar enough with testing processes to be able to name the machines/equipment necessary to set up such a lab for testing.

I am wondering if it would be feasible to set up such a lab myself as I found out that sending in samples to a lab to get them tested is very pricey and not really feasible. Can do that for singular samples maybe but definitely can't test everything I grow.

My hope is that a few grand would be enough to do this but my gut feeling tells me that Berfalo got injured on the job or something, got a huge settlement payment from employer/insurance and used most of that money for his canna adventures. So it might be that this guy just had the 10 grand or more to set up such a lab. But maybe just 1 or 2 machines are required and it could be set up quite cheaply. Maybe I can get some used equipment from a large company that just upgraded to a newer system or something ...

But first I need to know what exactly is necessary. I have no clue what equipment is required and even less of a clue what it is called (my guess is the word spectrometer will come up somewhere ;P).

Cheers folks!

 

[queequeg152]

Hi folks,

so I recently watched some BcBubbleMan, hashchurch etc. to broaden my horizon (and look more into Rosin tech in particular).

During that journey I ended on John Berfalo's channel and watched some of his vids.

In one of the videos I encountered that the guy has a complete lab in his grow area which allows him to test for THC, CBD, terpene levels etc. in his product.

Now I was wondering if any of you are familiar enough with testing processes to be able to name the machines/equipment necessary to set up such a lab for testing.

I am wondering if it would be feasible to set up such a lab myself as I found out that sending in samples to a lab to get them tested is very pricey and not really feasible. Can do that for singular samples maybe but definitely can't test everything I grow.

My hope is that a few grand would be enough to do this but my gut feeling tells me that Berfalo got injured on the job or something, got a huge settlement payment from employer/insurance and used most of that money for his canna adventures. So it might be that this guy just had the 10 grand or more to set up such a lab. But maybe just 1 or 2 machines are required and it could be set up quite cheaply. Maybe I can get some used equipment from a large company that just upgraded to a newer system or something ...

But first I need to know what exactly is necessary. I have no clue what equipment is required and even less of a clue what it is called (my guess is the word spectrometer will come up somewhere ;P).

Cheers folks!

link me what ever video you are talking about and i can probably tell you the equipment he is using.

regarding analytical instruments... you are looking at a very broad leap from anything you are familiar with... do you have any chemistry background?
mechanical/electrical aptitude?
i went as far into chemistry as my minor would allow, so i have a decent amount of chemistry knowledge, but i am by no means a chemist, or even a qualified bench chemist or anything like that.
but in ochem i had to write a few paper so on various analytical techniques.... mas spec and NMR obiviously are out of the question, but you could probably hack together an old GC and detector with alot of work.

old equipment is hard to get running on new equipment... you will probably need shit like rs232/rs485 capture cards installed into a PC to capture the data... from there you will need software to display and log the data from the detector. this is the hard part... you would need to go online and look for help and advice on that. alot of these analytical machines use VERY proprietary software that is going to be hard to get running.

if i had to guess, id say... 5 grand minimum? you can get a gc machine easily enough... less than 1k easily, but im guessing all of the fucking around trying to get a working detector running will cost you dearly.

in my school lab we had an old ass analogue gowmac GC hooked up to some brand new agilent detector module.... the agilant unit required some software that ran only on this shitty old laptop. it was a PITA to use.

we also had this wierd ass little GC... packed column gc it was the size of a fucking toaster i kid you not.

it ran on compressed air with a thermal conductivity detector. we used this shitty little one for solvents... looking at reaction products from some crude experiments where we dehydrated cyclohexanol with sulfuric acid(we has no phosphoric lol)

 

[queequeg152]

oh and there is going to be some amount of sample preparation so you will probably need some lab equipment and analytical grade solvents maby... Helium is usually the carrier gas in GC... so thats like a 200 dollar tank deposite + probably another 300 bucks for a large bottle.

you probably will need some sort of cold trap concentrator apparatus to analyze those super volatile gasses?...

i think in an analytical lab they can analyce trase gases in some solution by bubbling inert gasses like helium/argo through the sample... then collecting the volatiles that escape in the trap, then isolate and inject the trapped gasses into the GC column.

 

[Chimera]

Cannabinoids are best analyzed on an HPLC-DAD, terpenes are best analyzed on a GC-FID. For either instrument you are looking at $15K + easy, then solvents, analytical standards, pipettes, consumables, ultrasonic baths... solvent disposal, etc. It's a $25K venture easily... it could well push into $50+K to be able to be able to do complete terpene and cannabinoids profiling, and even then that assumes you have other lab gear already that offsets the cost.

Jonny's system is not the best GC, and can only run either terps or cannabs on a given configuration, not great for quantification etc... I recommend a used Agilent 1100 HPLC with DAD detector, or an Agilent 6890 GC with an FID detectors they are the work horses of the industry, and quite adaptable to various techniques and methods. Most GC setups Ive seen lately use Hydrogen as the carrier, so you can add in a Hydrogen generator too... $$$- it saves some money on tanks and filling, but you then need the generator.

For most people it's not worth the cost of setup and maintenance, it's better to just pay an analytical lab unless you are very serious about the data. Many that have GC's in house don't really get the value out of the unit.

 

[queequeg152]

what spectrum is a DAD detector looking at? never heard of that technology before.

and whats the point of hydrogen verses helium? faster throughput? ive never heard of that either.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late response, was out a few days.

one of the videos I mentioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfZ-JdigfmI&index=2&list=PL8aHC4zMZ25BOc4v5WZ0OpRhMWJ688DLN

About 20 minutes or so he moves to his "lab". Plenty more vids in that playlist where he does tests and shows his equipment.


I only have basic knowledge/skills in terms of both chemistry as well as electrical work. I do have specialists in both fields I could tap for knowledge though. Also I could use them as an "in" to the industry and contact to labs etc. for getting equipment.
Sadly, getting my samples tested through them is not possible as neither work in a lab atm and when they do, it will likely be too risky.

So my only routes are either fundacion canna or setting up a lab at home.


However, I already worried that it would be an investment north of 10k and according to Chimera can easily exceed 50k depending on what I already have (which is likely nothing).
So that is indeed well beyond my range, sadly.

I had hoped that with used equipment I might be able to set something useful up for under 10k, then I would have considered it.
Will throw out some feelers with the lab equipment you named and see if I can get anything very cheaply. If I get lucky and can strike a bargain I might continue down this road.
If not, I guess I have to use fundacion canna and just severly limit my data collection...

What really worries me in your responses however is that Chimera mentioned old equipment can often be tricky to get to work properly with new equipment.
This could really kill the whole undertaking before even starting it...

Well let me see if I can get any of the main equipment required through my channels for cheap. I can still ask then if you think that will work with other new equip, if not then the discussion is moot I suppose.

Thanks again for the feedback, was already very helpful!

 

[Chimera]

re: DAD - http://hplc.chem.shu.edu/NEW/HPLC_Book/Detectors/det_uvda.html

re: Hydrogen as a carrier gas: http://www.peakscientific.com/articles/using-hydrogen-as-a-carrier-gas-for-gc/

"Hydrogen is the fastest carrier gas (uopt), with an optimum linear velocity of 40cm/sec, and exhibits the flattest Van Deemter profile. Hydrogen’s high uopt (optimal linear velocity) results in the shortest analysis times. Also, the wide range over which high efficiency is obtained makes hydrogen the best carrier gas for samples containing compounds that elute over a wide temperature range."

Hydrogen can also be isolated and purified from water fairly easily using a hydrogen or zero-air generator. High purity Helium must come in expensive tanks from an outside supplier, so more and more labs are using Hydrogen these days... Helium works also it just has added costs and hassles of procurement.

 

[queequeg152]

re: DAD - http://hplc.chem.shu.edu/NEW/HPLC_Book/Detectors/det_uvda.html

re: Hydrogen as a carrier gas: http://www.peakscientific.com/articles/using-hydrogen-as-a-carrier-gas-for-gc/

Hydrogen is the fastest carrier gas (uopt), with an optimum linear velocity of 40cm/sec, and exhibits the flattest Van Deemter profile. Hydrogen’s high uopt (optimal linear velocity) results in the shortest analysis times. Also, the wide range over which high efficiency is obtained makes hydrogen the best carrier gas for samples containing compounds that elute over a wide temperature range.

Hydrgen can also be isolated and purified from water fairly easily using a hydrogen or zero-air generator. High purity Helium must come in expensive tanks from an outside supplier, so more and more labs are using Hydrogen these days... Helium works also it just has added costs and hassles of procurement.

thanks for the links. ill read them when i get off work.

regarding hydrogen, yea i figured it would elute faster but isnt hydrogen also reactive at heat and pressure? are there any instances where hydrogen is not an acceptable carrier gas that you know of?

on an unrelated note... hydrogen has excellent thermal conductivity properties as well as acceptable dialectic properties. they use hydrogen in big ass generator rotor assemblies. the hydrogen gas moves heat rather well... while also having less drag on the rotor.
the state of the hydrogen charge is monitored with simple thermal conductivity instruments and hydrogen is generated from purified water kept onsite. i imagine the rotor is kept above atmospheric pressures, but who knows.

 

[queequeg152]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late response, was out a few days.

one of the videos I mentioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfZ-JdigfmI&index=2&list=PL8aHC4zMZ25BOc4v5WZ0OpRhMWJ688DLN

About 20 minutes or so he moves to his "lab". Plenty more vids in that playlist where he does tests and shows his equipment.


I only have basic knowledge/skills in terms of both chemistry as well as electrical work. I do have specialists in both fields I could tap for knowledge though. Also I could use them as an "in" to the industry and contact to labs etc. for getting equipment.
Sadly, getting my samples tested through them is not possible as neither work in a lab atm and when they do, it will likely be too risky.

So my only routes are either fundacion canna or setting up a lab at home.


However, I already worried that it would be an investment north of 10k and according to Chimera can easily exceed 50k depending on what I already have (which is likely nothing).
So that is indeed well beyond my range, sadly.

I had hoped that with used equipment I might be able to set something useful up for under 10k, then I would have considered it.
Will throw out some feelers with the lab equipment you named and see if I can get anything very cheaply. If I get lucky and can strike a bargain I might continue down this road.
If not, I guess I have to use fundacion canna and just severly limit my data collection...

What really worries me in your responses however is that Chimera mentioned old equipment can often be tricky to get to work properly with new equipment.
This could really kill the whole undertaking before even starting it...

Well let me see if I can get any of the main equipment required through my channels for cheap. I can still ask then if you think that will work with other new equip, if not then the discussion is moot I suppose.

Thanks again for the feedback, was already very helpful!

you can lease equipment obviously. but i dont think any company will be interested in moving equipment to someone in a garage or something... maby if you had a credible an office space, but who knows.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

I did follow up on with my contacts and yeah...

On a private scale this just won't work here, unfortunately.

It is not really feasible unless you run a company for it.
Maybe in 5-10 years around here but for the moment it won't be feasible.


It should be interesting to note that my contacts echoed what queequeg said: If I were to take old equipment that is being upgraded/replaced by newer variants (which my contacts agreed was my best bet at getting affordable equip), there are many troubles I could run in regarding compatibility with newer equipment.
They said that it could very well be that I need the accompanying equipment to be from the same era of manufacturing and that I could quickly end up chasing "old and rare tech" instead of analyzing bud samples ...


Running a company, you could set up a business relationship with said labs, sharing your research etc. and also talk about leased equipment as mentioned above.

As a private individual, this will likely only make sense once the market is more saturated and legal in particular..

 

[queequeg152]

lol at the risk of sounding salty... i posted about old equipment not chimera.

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Hihi

my bad mate.

That's not salty, that's right to mention.

The woe of this board... People are too high and keep mixing stuff up or end up ranting and losing their train of thought.

The prices we pay ...

Didn't want to take anything away from you, honest mistake.

 

[kwiik]

What do think about : https://www.cdxlife.com/canna-sensor/

 

[kwiik]

Scam or not?

 

[queequeg152]

looks horse shitty, but who knows. they are always putting crazy sensors on PCB's these days... example someone figured out how to detect rotting meat with some degree of accuracy. i think the rotting meat thing was detecting a particular volatile by sucking up air with a micro diaphragm pump and giving a reading sort of like how a refrigerant leak detector works.

looks horse shitty though.

 

[kwiik]

Let's hope someone figure this out soon!! As it would change a lot if things in the industry...
If you hear anything... feed backs on this thing...
Please share..
Eyes open!

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Looks pretty much exactly like what I was looking for.

But I am skeptical.

They talk about a "proprietary sensor" but give no further information about how it works, how the device obtains its results, what scientific method is actually used in the process. Existing labs for example use ... damn I forgot but something something chromatography. Do they use the same system? In such a tiny device? Possible but unlikely.
But then what does the device do actually?

It only says "we got a sensor and an app".

Not enough to convince me.

If someone would buy the thing, use it, then send the same canna sample to an existing and reputable lab, compare both results and find little to no deviation, then I would be convinced.


It could just be how the US does marketing though. People over there seem to like the "we have a sensor and an app and it can tell you all of this, ain't that great?!?"-approach. I have seen this kind of marketing quite a lot overseas, not so much in Europe.



If someone was willing to buy, test and compare with credible lab results and the result is positive, I would be fistbumping the air so hard I would need some CBD after

I will try to research more about this device but I am skeptical.

/Edit
Yeah I did a quick research and found some reviews. Among the statements by reviewers were:
- The results are not actually those of the sample you provide but representative of strains with similar profiles
- When compared to actual lab-test results, the CannaDX results could be deemed "innacurate at best"....

If you read through further reviews things come out like the fact that several things they advertise on their website are not actually functioning in the device/app or are "not yet available/implemented".

The conclusion I came away with after reading a few reviews:
A lot of hot air and basically a "fitness tracker app" but for your cannabis consumption. Basically an app that helps you in creating your own personal canna database/library. The "sensor" seems to be a toy, nothing more.

I would not buy/try it. Clearly looks like a cash grab. The company defends itself against these reviews by claiming the reviewers lack understanding/insight of what the actual purpose of the product is and crap like that.
Basically false advertising, being vague to have wiggle room when reviews/reports surface.
I bet they will ride this baby out and prey on a few suckers who just fall for the empty marketing promises without doing any research and when it blows up in a few months because all the ones willing to get tricked have been tricked and word is out that the thing does nothing, they just liquidate the company and find the next gadget to prey on naive users with.

These type of companies exist in every industry and are a plague that is not easily eliminated in our current economic and legal framework in the western hemisphere...

Just gotta do your research, stay skeptical and avoid companies like this like the plague.

 

[kwiik]

Thanks bigbadbiddy! That's what i feared!! But wanted someone else to tell it to me just to be sure it wasn't just me not wanting to belive....
Sad thing!