The cannabis industry is in its infancy. Only now, with the legalization of medical marijuana and recreational marijuana in many states across the USA, is this crop coming out of the shadows and into the focus of established industry actors. Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) with CO2 offers precisely modulated extraction conditions to target specific oil compositions. From an economical view, efficiency numbers and turnover rate can be optimized for highest yield per week. Additionally the consumer exerts pressure on the manufacturer to provide precisly formulated oils. Based on economic and quality considerations, we have run a large scale Design of Experiment project. We included such factors as pressure, temperature, particle size and substrate preparation, to optimise for responses, including yield per substrate unit, yield per week, and extract composition. The response surfaces help scrutinize long held beliefs and practices in the cannabis industry, for example that substrate preparation is of high importance and will lead to outsized changes in extract yield. Research about solubility of cannabinoids in CO2 has been considered in the fine tuning of cannabis extracts for the consumer market. Academic SFE instruments differ strongly in setup from today’s most common production scale units of cannabis extract producers. We have adopted and expanded on prior research with respect to solubility numbers.

Optimizing yield and composition of cannabis extracts of large scale SFE

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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