OK, nothing to do with insufficient funds. I've been experimenting with different solvents and decarbed MJ to see how the fluorescence depends on the solvent. I don't have any photos (yet). The table below summarizes my results to date.
Solvent Fluorescence color
Hexane Red
NMP Orange (has a yellow component)
N-Butanol Yellow-orange
DMF Red (not quite the same tint as hexane)
Propylene carbonate Yellow-orange
NMP: n-methyl pyrrolidone
DMF: dimethyl formamide
All the solvents except hexane are polar, with a varying range of dielectric constants and dipole moments (most on the high side). Water falls into this category, but cannabinoids aren't very soluble in water. Cannabinoids do appear to be fairly soluble in hexane, NMP, n-butanol, DMF and propylene carbonate. I also checked an ethyl alcohol tincture I made some time back, and it doesn't appear to fluoresce at all (it WAS made with decarbed MJ). Time to try acetone to see how it performs.
The plant material I'm using for this particular set of comparisons has low to zero CBD content (just to keep things simple at this point). So I don't know if CBD behaves the same or not. I also don't know the concentration of all the other cannabinoids this particular clone can contain, so that could be a complicating factor.
Ideally, there's a solvent out there that would produce different-enough fluorescent colors for CBD and THC to be able to distinguish them. Examination of the molecular structures shows their main differences are on different locations on their molecules, compared to where their carboxyl group WAS (prior to being decarbed) -- so I'm not hopeful this approach will work for determining the THC:CBD ratio for a particular clone. But it's worth some additional investigation . The solvents I'm using are relatively inexpensive and available through Ebay or Amazon, and they're not excessively toxic (even ethanol is toxic, if exposure is too high). Of course, it's a good idea to keep your exposure to solvents to a minimum no matter how "safe" they are claimed to be. I use chemical gloves and good ventilation to avoid exposure.
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