Good morning everyone. I work for a licensed micro-processor in Canada. We produce infused topicals for the recreation and medicinal markets here. We have developed an anhydrous body butter that has no water based ingredients. The problem with this formulation is that we are struggling to separate the cannabinoids from the matrix in order to do our in-house potency testing before sending it out to a 3rd party testing lab for final certification and release (yaa, regulations!).
We have tried LLE using Acetonitrile and then Methanol and got less than 30% of the cannabinoids out and a very heavy carry over from the topical matrix. I was going to try going very nonpolar (Im thinking pentane or Hexane) before extracting into Methanol. Im not really sure where to go from here, any suggestions?
Hot soap water pre-foam of sample to get matrix broken up, then 10x vol of MeOH added, sonicate/vortex to extract. Let settle and filter to inject vial. No LLE extraction needed.