If you don't know proper lab technique and safety don't attempt any of this. I knew a really smart guy who made a mistake with a solvent that was heavier than air and a burner sitting 20 feet away. He almost blew himself up.

Gordonliu makes a lot of good points. I think however the costs of column chromatography are not as high as his estimates. The solvent that comes out of the bottom of the column can be fed back into the top until one of the layers of your column makes it to the bottom. The rotovap we used in the lab also condensed the solvent after evaporating it so the losses were small.

I haven't actually tried this but I don't see why you couldn't reuse the column after you flush everything through it. I sometimes dream of owning a rotovap. What I would try doing if you're trying to make the purest honey oil you can is soak your cannabis in the solvent, filter out the cannabis, and then evaporate most of the solvent. Then take what's left and place it on top of your column and run the same solvent through. This way you know everything will dissolve into your solvent and your column will be clean when you're done.

I would suggest doing some sort of wash after you make your extract. Some solvents are very harmful, especially when inhaled, so you want to be sure your final product is clean.

I've seen butane extractions produce very high quality oil. I would try butane before chromatography, its much easier to do and since butane evaporates at room temp you don't need the rotovap.
greyphilosophy Reviewed by greyphilosophy on . Column chromatography for honey oil Does anyone have experience using column chromatography for the isolation of cannabinoids (mainly THC) in honey oil? I've researched high and low and have only been able to find mentions but nothing helpful for someone figuring it out. My basic idea was to run ground bud through a Soxhlet with hexane, purify through silica gel column chromatography and remove the hexane with a rotary evaporator. If I've understood correctly, this should yield highly potent, extremely pure honey oil. I'm not Rating: 5