I was just curious if anyone ever had the idea to Diafiltrate their product.
I am working in a big pharma company and we are using such a device for different products.
The main point in dia filtration is, to find a filter which molecular size is just as big as the THC molecule, I think CBD and the isomers will also be filtered out due to the same molar mass, but I am not sure with that.
The filter in our case is just a very small semipermeable membrane, if we apply very high pressure the THC should pass the Filter, all smaller an bigger Molecules should stay behind.
Has anyone ever thought about that? Is there a possibility that this might work?
I am thankful for every answer. And I hope you can understand everything, english is not my main language.
Dia filtration… interesting term. Here we mostly just refer to it as membrane filtration. There’s a lot of information floating around about it, but for now I think it’s still only for use with ethanol with lots of guys saying they’ll have hydrocarbon versions ‘soon’.
@MagisterChemist aren’t you one of the membrane guys around here?
A diafiltration or tangential flow filtration skid that the author of the post is talking about this most likely. It’s essentially the same thing but much smaller. There’s another version of this called a stirred cell too that’s just a pressurized capsule with a spinning arm and a membrane under it, usually used to take a protein or cell into another buffer.
And yes as others have stated it’s already being employed in cbd and thc as a one step winterization, color correction and solvent removal solution. They’re much larger, cylindrical shaped but are essentially the same thing.
Sounds very similar to TFF. I will be implementing TFF on the small scale soon to potentially have a continuous filtration process with a membrane size that should allow cannabinoids to pass through but restrict any larger biomolecules like phospholipids.
EDIT Looks like @NewLevelProcess beat me to it by a few seconds!
In our company a diafiltration and a tangential flow filtration is not the same.
on our tangenttial flow filtration we use about 13bar and and on the diafiltration about 200bar.
The other difference is that on the tangential flow the fluid crosses the filter diagonal. And on the diafiltration its just pressed direct current.
Maybe you could use different membranes for the TFF to get the same result as on diafiltration, i haven`t found that out yet.
I’m not familiar with that sort of ultra high pressure filtration, but what you’re asking about (rejecting cannabinoids from solution) is very easily done with TFF
Diafitration usually refers to a very specific type of Tangental Flow Filtration in which the concentration of the solution being filtered never changes because fresh solvent is added at the rate permeate is leaving the system…
This is especially useful for winterization and is actually needed with tight membranes that reject color
Tangential Flow Filtration is usually what we call the type of Filtration you’re referring to, Dia always has fresh solvent added so the concentration never changes where TFF doesn’t always have that
