Got a question? The answer may be here. The following are the top 10 questions that our sales team consultants are asked on a regular basis.
Cannabis and hemp require different efficiencies. Cannabinoid yield from cannabis is generally much higher than that of hemp because hemp contains less oleoresin than cannabis. This means that you need much more biomass or plant material to glean out similar amounts of oil.
If you are continually extracting from the same biomass source/lot, you can re-use the reclaimed ethanol many times over. Generally, expect to experience about 3% ethanol loss per extraction run in the CUP system, so you will need to top off about 0.5 to 0.75 gallon per run. You should generally switch to fresh ethanol once you switch biomass lots. At the end of the day, it’s up to you and local/federal regulations on how to proceed. Many cannabis extractors continue to reuse their reclaimed ethanol regardless of what lot or strain they are processing.
Replacement of ethanol is not necessary unless your local jurisdiction dictates replacement after a batch or lot of biomass. We recommend continually topping off with fresh ethanol.
We recommend chilling your process ethanol to -40C prior to extraction and freezing your biomass if possible, to increase the efficiency of your process. This will allow you to capture cannabinoids while minimizing the extraction of fats, lipids, waxes, sugars, and chlorophyll. Should you decide to process at room temperature or higher, you will need to invest in more post-processing equipment and SOPs for color remediation and winterization.
We do receive questions from clients who want to chill their ethanol below -40°C. However, we cannot recommend operating at temperatures lower than -40°C as the seals on our CUP Series units aren’t rated for temperatures lower than that. Technically, the seals operate safely down to -50C, but the clients that want to process at lower temperatures are often targeting -65C and beyond!
Our DC-40 will not chill lower than -40C, but we do offer an option from a different company that can chill to true cryogenic temps but, again, we don’t recommend using ethanol colder than -40C in our CUP units.
Mill size is extremely important for extraction in our CUP centrifuge extraction units. Powdery material will contaminate your tincture and unbalance your CUP unit. A mill size that is too large will reduce your extraction efficiencies, that’s why we recommend a mill size of 1/8 to ¼ inch.
We do NOT recommend extracting fresh/frozen cannabis in our CUP Series extractors as this will add water to your process ethanol, reducing your efficiencies.
Our extraction and distillation equipment are components for a larger process and, as such, are not turnkey or automated. We prefer batch processing over larger, turnkey, systems as this allows for redundancy should one part of your process fail. We understand that downtime equals money lost. In their current form, our systems are not automated, but a full front-to-back suite will only require 2-3 processors to run.
Full front-to-back, all-in-one solutions are available from other companies. However, if one component fails within an all-in-one solution, the entire lab will be down and lose money until the entire machine is repaired. With individual components a lab can continue to function while the point of failure is isolated and repaired. If your extractor goes down, you can still evaporate and distill. If distillation goes down, you can still extract, evaporate, and process crude. And, if you have multiple extractors, if one goes down, you can still extract with your remaining units while the broken one is repaired.
Just a some of the ancillary equipment pieces that we recommend are:
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CA
94931
(707) 222-6066
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