I’m not working with them, no.
Without knowing your process, I cannot comment on it. What I can say is that with a highly-tuned sCO2 extraction system, those undesirables can be incredibly mitigated, even eliminating the need for winterization in some cases. It whittles down to what your customer wants, not necessarily an opinion.
Considering sCO2 as dead is a pretty wide paintbrush to use. It may not suit your needs or apply to your consumer base, but it is there.
1 Like
Not my intention, nor meant to be a gimmick. What has become a layman’s term has now become the object of condemnation.
1 Like
Ive been there personally, ya sure you can pop out some oil that is great with Co2 but your going to sacrifice yield, Financially it cant hold a candle to butane … I mean literally your spent biomass from the fractionation column still has Cannabinoids left in it when dialing in for purity. I speak from experience not just a google search
4 Likes
If you’ve got decent crude, refinement with CO2 is actually pretty viable.
I’d be interested in seeing someone separate cannabinoids with it. I’m sure there’s a good polarity gradient you could use by swinging pressure/temp.
1 Like
Not since the last time I looked into their development. They use ethanol as a co-solvent. Yes, it’s at a comparably lower volume than typical processes, it’s still not hydrocarbon-free.
The price tag is outrageous, and no word on the resolution they achieve with said claims. But I would love an alternative to “classic” C18 chromatography. I personally don’t care if other solvents need to be used, if everything extraktlab claims is true, im interested in the technology. This industry still has a need for large scale chromatography, and likely will for some time to come
1 Like
This is kind of what I was getting at in my statement above, which has been unacknowledged by @EilainaVe
If its not under $50k and can’t do a kilogram in a single day, its not worth it.
What is the price tag and what is the throughput?
3 Likes
meant to respond to your post, agree 100%
SCo2 is a solvent. Stop playing weird marketing games and confusing people.
Youre talking to people who use compressed gasses as solvents all damn day, treat us with a little more respect eh?
Anyway looks neat, im interested in the acid retention stuff! A lot!
3 Likes
Science =/= vernacular
You need to be the stop to the collective dumbing down and manipulation that makes everyone in the industry look dumber
1 Like
Its not a laymans term its a liars term used by skeezy marketers to try to appeal to people who dont know any better.
I hate it.
3 Likes
I don’t mean to be that guy so this will be my last comment, calling ethanol a hydrocarbon is a little weird. Splitting hairs or not, calling organic alcohols hydrocarbons takes readers minds to butane and propane (alkanes) rather just saying alcohol, etOH, or whatever. Two different classifications too. Just saying.
Hopefully you can find what you need and put out something great!
4 Likes
You’re exactly right, which is why my team and I first deployed chroma columns and methods. So many people were erroneous in their purchase of large-scale equipment thinking that the throughput would be there. What they didn’t consider is the lack of regulation and over abundance of hemp flower, let alone the flooding of the market with sub-par snake oil. Which is why we decided to focus on the processors and their needs; build something that’s modular and would not require any other equipment purchasing. But that’s another company and another chroma method than sCO2.
The thing is, I’m not here selling anything. I’m prodding the market and needs. Nothing in this industry would ever require a 300L extraction machine, for example. Then comes the question of laboratory buildout; why have one large system when the cost of maintenance and down-time far outweigh the ROI and operation strategy of multiple smaller systems?
There are also the companies out there selling crap and they know it. Their bread and butter is not in hemp or cannabis, and a lot of their work is peddling lies to make the sale.
It was inevitable that the fast-money and market crashers would cannibalize themselves.
I had to fix so fucking much trash co2 oil that extrakt labs hemp project, Nemadji pumped out
They were some of the worst processors in the early hemp boom- lots of ethylene glycol laced crude- they held farmers material and hid from them, when they finally gave them the “distillate” it was a waxy trashy nasty as fuck brown oil and the farmers were told
“Its like brown sugar and white sugar, the market actually prefers the darker stuff!”
Mind you this was after refusing to deliver product for months.
They brought it to me for analysis and to figure out just what it even was and the coa was insane, half the shit in there was like bizarre contaminants-
Extrakt lab is a joke.
Yall hire kids that cant get a job at mcdonalds and have them run co2 extractors, and jerk farmers around and make insane false claims and promote bullshit marketing gimmicks.
Disgraceful
10 Likes
I mean, if your group truly has that kind of engineering and design capability…there’s a need for modestly priced flow reactors relevant to cannabinoid conversions. I would say by and large there isn’t really a demand for more chromatography equipment unless its very affordable…and even then you’d need to sell a lot of units for it to be worth your time. Everyday people are running hundreds of kilograms worth of conversions, and far less material is processed via chromatography. Just my two cents.
6 Likes
Agreed.
It’s a long road for consumer education to catch up and sometimes it’s too late. This is the main reason why I became an independent engineering and consulting firm; didn’t have to watch all the slimy salesmen shovel their bull around anymore.
Very appreciated and good to know!
We have discussed conversions before and do have the bandwidth to tackle it if that’s truly where the needs are.
Or the accusation of lying through your teeth.
Because my understanding is calling super critical CO2 solventless was a deliberate attempt to bamboozle cannabis industry customers, not some jargon that CO2 operators from other industries adopted to describe a process they know damn well involves modifying the properties of their solvent to suit the solute.
Find me references outside the cannabis industry and I might buy “but we just call it that”.
4 Likes
Thank you for your explanation and I do appreciate the education. I’ll be more careful of my buzz words and aware of my audience.
Considering that alcohols are all derivatives of hydrocarbons, I didn’t think that there would be so much confusion and malcontent by being less specific.