I meant to post this ages ago as a way to mine THCa diamonds from hemp.
However, due to recent bullshit, let’s discuss the same thought train from a different perspective.
Look at the Rf values in C-18 vs the more polar silica for acidic cannabinoids in the paper provided.
Anything non-thermo extracted (so outside of maybe 2 companies) could take advantage of acidic cannabinoid isolation (THCa vs CBDa) through systems already integrated into our industry with relative ease.
Thus, dilution of a crude extract, followed by DCVC and/or FC, could isolate CBDa quite easily before decarboxylation. Dilution could be inline with extraction as the material comes off your extraction system of choice to ensure compliancy of extracts–the refining would still be diluted through chromatography, and you could ‘isolate’ prior to decarboxylation, meaning you’d only be decarboxylating your CBGa and CBDa fractions, with the THCa fraction utilized however you choose–decarboxylation and conversion to d8 and/or CBN is most viable, but taking it down a different catalytic path would be safest short term for those scared at the moment to process.
You then create broad spectrum distillate via distillation of your fractions, with no THC present due to the precursor chromatographic mfg scheme.
Don’t let fear affect the momentum that’s gotten the industry this far–shift the kaleidoscope a bit and lets all provide solutions–level together, right?
great idea as well. industrial scale centrifugation offers so much if tinkered with properly–LLE extractions stick out to me as a way to circumvent the above with less solvent needed. Membane affinity isolation as well.
so that covers extraction and winterization. cleaning up ‘cleaned up’ acidic crude is going to be on my mind for the foreseeable future.
Decarb with a catalyst!
You can get some separation of C and T this way too!
(more so a heavier concentration of the T to the first fractions)
all of the oil will contain T but the second fraction is often below .3T if you dial the travel time and temp and solvent ratio right
so you have some compliant full spec crude to play with that has more of an intact terp profile Right off the bat
So running your ethanol or methanol diluted oil through a column of activated alumina, decarboxylates the oils at different rates- the T decarbs more rapidly than the C so it moves through the column faster and elutes first
This catalytic decarb also lowers the temp for decarb significantly, so there’s no reason not to just add the stuff to your decarb pot and apply less heat to your cannabinoids while also pulling water soluble junk and other alumina friendly unwanteds, the stuff is cheap as heck too
I saw @MagisterChemist post about a series of LLE steps straight to compliant and I got real excited cause it’s very much in tune with what I have been designing for the past few months:
Continuous high speed warm extraction into methanol, selective decarb on an alumina column, first yield product is membrane filtered down, compliant full spec oil- raffinate is LLE to heptane, foreword phase separated and cleaned up, followed by rapid crystallization in a continuous flow crystallizer- there’s your isolate- the heptane is membraned and LLE back to methanol for ion exchange chroma or c18 - T fractions after several cycles can go to a cbn reactor, t free on the other side.
There’s actually like seven more intermediate cleanup steps that make the yields on your isolate push very high and make sure to keep your columns in pristine and long lasting shape but I’ve probably already shared enough calories, but they’re ultra efficient and the LLE Reactors I am including in the design Are incredibly energy efficient and all run continuously in most elegant fashion
Someone contract me to build a facility out already I’m dying to scale this up and automate it
I personally find that these new rules to be puzzles that serve to give us as a community a jolt of inspiration… I’ve been drawing up process flows all afternoon
The LLE thread was the best part of this site for awhile IMO I’m really glad to see some renewed interest as I think that the horrific waste of energy and degradation done to the product by repeatedly evaporating solvent and cooling solvent… heat exchangers are so 2019… 2020 pt 2 would be awesome to rally and become the membrane stripping liquid extraction renaissance @MagisterChemist releasing that skid was right on time
Certainly RO for solvent recovery makes these high volume LLE and chroma processes more doable. I would love a chance to build out a facility from 0 with this approach.
I guess it would work for transportation. From the wip standpoint, but the second you remove the solvent your back to illegal. It certainly can be a way labs can temp store wip stuff for spot checks.
I don’t think it solves that at any point in your production process you can possibly be committing a crime.
In reality, this might just be lighting the fire needed for progress in cannabis/ hemp industry
You will just need to build a closed loop system that is a continuous process that will allow you to separate out the THC in the extraction process. That will be the only way for you to get around the new guidelines would be like mentioned above and LLE A/B process which could remove the THC during the first processing step.
main question at hand is, if the solution is ‘in-line’, would that warrant a compositional patent for the system as a whole, and not 2 independent processes. For example, thermoextraction (i,e. Vapor Distilled) both extracts and decarboxylates the flower via one process, before reconstituting the decarboxylated cannabinoids in vaporized EtOH, and removing the residual EtOH after, resulting in a high quality crude extract. It also recovers an interestingly high amount of terpenes during the process.
Point being relative to OP, since that machine itself is patented, and decarboxylation itself happens during the process (in addition to extraction), could you then construct an inline system (i.e. diluting with a solvent in-line so the input and output of the system is compliant) or add additional in-line systems (say, pushing the saturated EtOH solution through a C-18 cylinder and collecting only the CBG/CBDV/CBD fractions), and then have 1 system in place where the compliant material would be the only output, and compliant material would be the only input. The output material could be selectively modified by adding different ‘components’ to the 1 system or process.
