Is under 12ppm possible consistently?

I am in no way an extraction expert and the laws here in Massachusetts are very strict for residual solvent testing and only allow for a maximum of 12ppm of “butane”. Is less then 12ppm possible on a consistent basis? (In terms of producing products such as live resin, “sauce”, ect.) I will be hiring an extraction specialist when the times comes but I need to make sure hydrocarbon extracts are even plausible in a business plan right now. Thanks for your input!

With the right process in place, it’s possible.

If your goal was to produce sauce that needs to meet those specifications then the best way to do it would be to isolate the THC or CBD from the terp fraction via crystallization and then purging each component separately. The crystals will purge very quickly due to the fact that there is more surface area exposed to allow evaporation to take place (assuming you didnt grow big diamonds). The sauce will purge faster due to the fact that once most of the cannabinoids are removed, the surface tension of the terp fraction is reduced significantly and so it takes less heat for the oleoresin to be runny enough that molecules are able to more easily break thru the surface of the oleoresin and evaporate.


Perhaps if you do not use butane… my 5 sec thought.

ND is possible with all finishes.


Suggestions ?

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I consistently get zeros back, on most of my live sugars/diamonds. I’m in denver, so it’s probably easier for me. I think it’s hard not to lose flavor getting the last 100 but my bosses prefer zero’s so i take my time with it and try to avoid loss when I can and usually test as nd across the board.


Where are they using butane? I thought Massachusetts was only able to use Ethanol and C02. Cause the C02 and Ethanol concentrates suck ass!!! Hopefully cayse its butane made it’ll be cheaper like 30 a gram not this 70 a gram bullshit.

I only shit on Massachusetts to no end cause I live in it and it’s too expensive to go to a dispensary. So to me literally everything about Massachusetts concentrates are shit. Doesn’t matter how many times you filter it or post process it or get it to an acceptable ppm level, your company will over charge. Only tourists smoke your shit. Sorry bro.

I work at a lab in mass and it definitely is possible to get under 12 ppm consistently, at least for wax/shatter/full spectrum oil/live resin. Diamonds/sauce are a bit more difficult. Butane/Propane extractions are totally legal here but the limit (12 ppm) is crazy low. We have a lot of trouble getting our diamonds/sauce to pass, though we have not tried using nitrogen as the pressurization gas, only its own residual solvent. I would love some suggestions from yall on how you get the diamonds/sauce to pass without just cooking the absolute shit out of it. We’ve gone well over 100 hours for purge at 100F under vacuum and still can’t get them to pass. The ‘sauce’ by that point becomes much more highly viscous and not a consistency that I feel like is desirable. We do purge terps/cannabinoids separately and have tried crushing the diamonds to release as much gas as possible. Might try purging residual gas first, then using nitrogen to pressurize, though at that point the product probably won’t have a low enough viscosity to crystallize. any advice would be appreciated !