FFE only leaves 10% or less solvent in your Crude

Did You Know: The FFE Leaves 10% Solvent in your Crude—And Why That’s a Good Thing

Cannabis ethanol extraction and purification has several critical steps and none more so than the process of evaporation. In fact, finding the ‘sweet spot’ balance of solvent remaining in your crude is the key to a high-quality end product.

Delta’s Falling Film Evaporator (FFE) works by maintaining a high evaporation rate to enable ethanol recovery from your extracted bio-mass tincture resulting in approximately 10% solvent remaining in your crude.

And, the less solvent in your crude, the better this is to produce a purer distillate and eventually, a higher quality product. However, you might think that 10% is still too high and wouldn’t it be better to reduce solvent levels to something closer to 2%?

Not necessarily. Why? Because a lower residual solvent level at this stage may actually harm your product.

To achieve a reduction in the level of solvent down to 2%, the solution would need to spend more time in contact with heated surfaces. This is called residency time: the time that the product has spent subjected to harsh conditions such as heat. So as a general rule, the less residency time the less degradation and—ultimately—a higher quality end product.  

One of the primary benefits of our FFE is that it allows for a short residency time, which reduces the risk and severity of product degradation, while still evaporating 80-90% of the solvent. The huge advantage is that the remaining solvent in the extract (which can be removed later) protects the extract resulting in less degradation and a purer product.