None of that is overly difficult, just very time consuming to do right.
It helps when you’re on good terms with the local fire Marshall, the local UL inspector, the Technical Safety guy, your architect, your code consultant, your specialist safety consultants, and have read every single applicable code front to back.
CRN and UL can be easy or hard depending on how you do things. Cut corners and they’re hard (expensive). Don’t and they’re not.
Saving an incredibly complete terpene fraction is not difficult at scale.
It is my understanding that Hexane is functionally not allowed by HC under the present regulations. Or at least that was true when I last stuck my head into that area of the regs. Things change fast around here.
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I heard from one of the top cannabis licensing consultancy that Aurora is using Hexane. I wrote to Health Canada and this is what they had to say
"Previously, the following residual solvent list as limits was in place:
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medication/cannabis/laws-regulations/regulations-support-cannabis-act/limits-residual-solvents.html
As you can see Hexane is not listed therefore residuals had to be 0 and could not be used in extraction.However as of October 17th 2019 (plus a 1 year transition phase to October 17th 2020) this list has been archived and each licence holder must select a residual solvent limit based on a known pharmacopeia.With this change, additional organic solvents can be used as long as the residual solvents meet the selected specification. That being said, ICH Q3C R6 lists hexane in Table 2 of solvents that should be limited in pharmaceutical production so there would be additional scrutiny and a more rigorous justification for its use and very good removal procedures/tests in place to ensure it tests below acceptable limits.
Heptane would likely be more accepted and easier to justify its use."
Residual solvent for hexane is 298ppm which is pretty doable. Do you forsee an issue raised by woks explaining why HC extracted products are harmful when smoked or vaped? Ethanol may win that argument according to common people.
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Let me put it this way:
The system is now set up so you can do pretty much anything you want if you throw enough time/money/engineering controls at it, and you can convince HC that it’s cool.
Hexane is on the “you shouldn’t use this if you don’t have to” list so we felt that it was better not to. I don’t see any real advantages to hexane over other solvents, and again, there are some disadvantages to it. Everything is a trade off.
I personally don’t see a problem with hydrocarbons vs ethanol at the consumer level, except at the very fringe edges of the market. And those people probably think CO2 is the way to go.
You can’t logic someone out of something they never logiced themself into in the first place.
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I’m pretty sure someone stated around here that down to 40ppm it still smells, which ya know… it’s worrying if they set a limit that high