Hello I am new to this community and I am trying to open an organic CBD extraction company. Currently I would like to go for a lipid extrction technique using coconut oil. I have decided to go with lipid extraction for two primary reasons.
1.) It produces a product without the use of harsh solvents and produces a high quality product
2.) It appears that this is an untapped market in the colorado region.
I am currently in the market research phase and have not been able to find any companies in the colorado region that are using this method to produce CBD. I have two questions for you kind folks on this forum.
1.) Does anyone have any information on what kind of equipment would be neccessary to produce CBD oil via lipid extraction on an INDUSTRIAL scale/where can i find this equipment?
2.) Does anyone know of any other colorado based companies that are currently using this lipid extraction merhod with coconut oil?
Thank you for your time and consideration, any and all insights are welcome!
If you are going for distillate, as your name suggests, removal of the lipids (MCT) will be difficult and make the process not worth the money you think you will save by not using ethanol. If you are hoping to sell the product as an infused oil or tincture, the process may not be terrible, but you will find that an ethanol-extracted CBD oil that is then infused with MCT is far superior in smell and taste. If the market you seek is tincture (cannabis oil in MCT) ethanol is the only way to go for both scale and quality.
If you are looking to work at a high-volume industrial scale, you will find after some research that ethanol (at least currently) is the most efficient and scalable solvent for extraction. I am curious to know why you think ethanol is a harsh solvent. Pretty innocuous as far as I am concerned.
Also, ever consider there may be a reason a particular method is not commonly used, especially at scale? Not saying that there necessarily is, but it crossed my mind that many others, as I have, found other solvents and extraction methods to be superior.
I have no idea what exact equipment could be used to scale lipid extractions like you wish to perform, but if you look at the tools that are used to infuse small amounts of oil, you’ll see exactly what you need to find a bigger version of. I am also not in CO, so I have little knowledge concerning most companies in the state. Sorry I’m not more help there.
If you have any info that shows lipid extraction as being superior, I would love to read it.
Can it be done? Yes. At industrial scale? Yes. Will it be done with anything resembling off the shelf equipment? No.
Nothing “off the shelf” is industrial scale. The biggest off the shelf units for this industry are at the high end of the pro-sumer/hobbyist level, not even approaching industrial (except maybe HZB’s new fuge, and that’s what I would call pilot industrial scale).
Unless your budget stretches to somewhere in the 8 figures range, you’re best sticking with something proven.
The idea behind using a solvent other than ethanol is to implement ourselves in this ever expanding market. I wanted to see if you were willing to talk a little more about where i might find some other specific information on both ethanol and lipids? Any leads would be extremely helpful.
Also, thank you for responding to the initial post. I look forward to hearing from you. Feel free to message me at a.jortiz41@gmail.com
Continuing the discussion from [CBD Lipid Extraction]
I am curious as to what the process difference is between the ethanol and the lipid methods? Are they completely different as far as the equipment and where might I find some basics? I need all the information I can get and that anyone is willing to offer.
You have a ton of learning ahead of you. It will require substantial investments of time or money or both.
The bare fundamentals are the same. Prepare biomass. Add solvent/lipids to biomass. Remove solvent/lipids from biomass. Refine as necessary. The devil is in the details.
For the details, the search bar is at the top of the page, as is the consultants tab/category. I suggest you make good use of the first so you can teach yourself enough to ensure that if you decide to hire someone that you don’t get completely hoodwinked. Most or all of the information you are looking for has been posted here. If you want to be spoon-fed, most people who know enough to do so are very very busy and will charge you for their time. But the investment is likely to be worth it if your time has a non-zero value to you.
I don’t know why i missed this thread before. I talked to someone working on an industrial buildout using this method. They extract using vegetable oils, then run it into giant wiped films that distill the cannabinoids out and leave the triglycerides as the heavy fraction.
My question of course was how quickly this process of leaving the extract heavies in the oil will foul it. They did not seem to have a good plan at the time for dealing with this. Though I suppose vegetable oil is so cheap that throwing it out frequently may be considered reasonable cost of operation. Probably can be cleaned up sufficiently and sold for biodiesel.
Lipid extraction sounds appealing at face value but once you look in to it, the disadvantages are very apparent.
First is concentration, you will be limited to a tincture around 50mg/mL. With literature pointing to dosing over 250mg, 50mg/ml is far to low.
The next concern is shelf life, concentrated cannabinoids shelf life is much greater then cannabinoids in solution. Solution will have to be stored cold to avoid cannabinoid degradation but even with that, color will darken over time, eventually turning deep red/black.
Finally, if you plan on distilling it, you now have to distill 10-20x the volume then if you distilled regular crude.
I fail to see how lipid extraction is in anyway worthwhile
Thanks. Love how full of useful info it is. I didn’t see a lot of data on raw cannabinoids (Say 1g of hemp 20% CBD–> 200mg CBD) to an extracted amount. Anything you know of that has looked at that?
I’ve only ever seen a counter current extractor. The efficiency was around 88% if I recall correctly but the limitation was you couldn’t get above 50mg/ml concentration for CBD without going over 0.3%THC.
Any chance you have a link on those successful dosing levels? With so many 30-40mg/ml products out there I would love to educate some of our customers.
I’d love to see some literature on dosing as well. Some medical patients with severe problems I made tinctures that were approx 130mg/ml cbd.
Out of that batch the patients got far more relief opposed to the 50mg they were taking previously. All patients were taking the same volume doses with each strength.
Just my experience with around 15 different patients with different ailments.
