Cleaning up the liquid in cartridges

[smoorman]

Has anyone tried further refining the oil in THC vape cartridges? I've noticed some burnt residue on one of mine and with all the recent news about fakes cartridges, injury Etc. the thought just crossed my mind that it may be possible with vacuum , clean solvent like alcohol or whatever. Any thoughts out there?

[Gingerbeard]

I'm going to assume you don't have any sort of fractional distillation setup. Your oil was probably made using one.

You would lose all your oil if you tried to further refine it. Any sort of filter would suck it up and you would wind up with a sticky filter. The vacuum process is done in a vacuum oven. When the oven heats up residual solvents and moisture are more readily evaporated and removed by the vacuum. This is how shatter and wax and junk are cured. Oil is not cured. Only distilled. Vacuum ovens don't remove solids.

If you're getting burnt residue on one of your cartridges it might be a bum cartridge. I'll let one bad item slide. A second one from the same company and I move on. I use shatter/wax/whatever. If I get a gram of sulfur or otherwise nasty tasting concentrate, I decarb and cook with it. The decarb process makes questionable concentrate better. If you have a dabbing rig you might try draining the oil and going that way.

There's a reason there are $10 cartridges and there are $100 cartridges. Quantity v. quality.

[smoorman]

Gingerbeard
Thanks for the feedback. So dissolving the oil in alcohol to a 20:1 ratio or so and then passing that through filters and then allowing evaporation wouldn't improve it? Money isn't the issue I'm just curious if it would work. I'm totally new to this so I'm not sure what to expect.

[Gingerbeard]

Your coffee filters (?) are no better than the filters used when your oil was made. The filters at the lab were first used when the flower was blasted. The result from the blast gets mixed up with a whole bunch of alcohol, then frozen. The waxes separate from the oil, removed, and the oil is passed through another small vacuum beaker. That's all the filtering the oil gets. When it goes through the distillation process it's supposed to remove remaining impurities. If you're getting residue in your cartridge it could be one of two things: You have a yucky cartridge to begin with or you might have gotten the bottom of the distiller.
I've tried washing shatter. My results were a loss of almost everything, evaporating alcohol on a plate, and a coffee filter I might have been able to smoke. If you decide to go ahead, use food grade alcohol. Not isopropyl. If you're somewhat a regular at your dispensary, tell them you got a bum cartridge. Maybe this is tongue-in-cheek but any legitimate dispensary will be happy to take care of you.