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Dutch pilot experiment: LEGALLY growing organic female hemp flowers high in CBD
- Thread starter DutchHempCBD
- Start date
Fédora 17 is an early variety and the main one in France and Switzerland. BTW Fédora 17 is 'female predominant' (i.e. 50% females and 50% monoecious/hermaphrodite plants) and medium sized. You should find plenty of information about this one 
.
Alyssa might be something for you: Canadian variety with ~90% females (less culling work to do ), small-medium sized and very early (still less early and a bit taller than Finola).
Many 'female predominant' varieties show > 90% females in the expensive F1 generation and ~50% in the standard F2 backcross usually sold.
Some more links for you:
Hemp and organic farming
Chanvre-Info.ch
.Alyssa might be something for you: Canadian variety with ~90% females (less culling work to do
), small-medium sized and very early (still less early and a bit taller than Finola).Many 'female predominant' varieties show > 90% females in the expensive F1 generation and ~50% in the standard F2 backcross usually sold.
Some more links for you:
Hemp and organic farming
Chanvre-Info.ch
Last edited:
It is conform; but whether or not it's in the catalogue is up to you to figure out: Chose the catalogue with your preferred language HERE.
Maybe we should discuss these things in the Hemp Seed Hub and not here
.DutchHempCBD
Member
Mine have no smell at a distance. If you put your nose on the buds you'll smell it for sure. I'm not to sure how to classify the smell though.
I think it's possible to cull all the male plants. It just takes some good dedication as offthehook shows. You for SURE can only cull all the males if you plant them in narrow rows. As soon as you get a big field you can't walk in between the plants. Especially not above 25 kg/ha seeds.
I haven't tested any of my stuff yet. At harvest time I'll save a good sample size portion of leaves and flowers for later testing. After having done the extraction I'll also get that tested.
As you point out in your last sentence.... there's a problem with that study. They haven't measured to cannabinoid content. From what I understood from this article there is quite some freedom in the harvest dates (at least in greenhouse plants) (http://www.gwpharm.com/uploads/finalfullthesisdjpotter.pdf page 98-99):
Plant development was seen to have ceased by their eighth week in short daylength, and plants harvested after nine and ten weeks showed very high levels of foliar senescence. The results of the cannabinoid assay suggest that both cultivars had reached maximum potency at the end of the seventh week in short daylength. In both
chemotypes, delaying the harvest beyond the eigth week of lowering appears to have no clear effect on the terpene or cannabinoid profiles. and The remarkably unchanging cannabinoid and terpene profiles, from the eighth week of the flowering period onward, suggest that the secondary metabolites are stable while sequestered in the trichome. This facilitates the task of the grower of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis, as delaying harvest does not appear to affect the specified ratio of metabolites.
Thanks for thinking along though, much appreciated.
We are still in the process of determining the exact approach. As we are dealing with somewhere around 150.000 to 200.000 female plants we'll have to think about a realistic (financial and time wise) scenario. As I see it we have two options.
Machine harvest: Harvest both male and female plants. All chopped up in small pieces of 5 cm, including stalks. We don't have a machine available that can separate the leaves and buds from the stalks. Unless any of you knows where we can loan a machine like that?! This technique has the advantage of quick harvest, but will result in more trouble later on. We will be dealing with the fibres stalks. It will add a lot of unnecessary bulk, and weight to the entire process. Also the male stalks will end up in this process.
Hand harvest: Walk through the field. Only take out the females. Strip the leaves and flowers from the stems by hand. This will be a multiple day process. This technique has the big advantage of being to more precise. We can select what we want. This will result in less bulky processing and storage, no male stalks. Take out samples that are covered with impurities like soil. The down side is the increased time, energy and cost involved with this approach.
From either technique will take the material try to pack it as loosely as possible as to not damage the trichomes. Will put them in easy to handle portions. Let's say 25 kg bags. And deep freeze.
Harvest is expected from the 10th August onwards. What do you mean by call over?
....
Alyssa might be something for you: Canadian variety with ~90% females (less culling work to do
Many 'female predominant' varieties show > 90% females in the expensive F1 generation and ~50% in the standard F2 backcross usually sold. ...
Remember that karl.uk is bound to one of the EU certified varieties. So the Canandian varieties are out of the question.
DutchHempCBD
Member
EXTRACTION METHOD!?
EXTRACTION METHOD!?
We haven't choose an extraction method yet. Our main question is: What is the most favourable extraction method for obtaining concentrated acid phytocannabinoid products with the lowest loss of terpenes and flavonoids?
As of now we're looking at the following extraction methodes.
Low temperature ethanol extraction
The envisioned extraction technique is as follows. Dry the Cannabis plant material. Combine x amount of ethanol with x amount of dried plant material. Blend to a fine mixture, preferably at low temperature (e.g. -18 °C) to minimise chlorophyll extraction. Filter the resulting blend. Perform a second and possibly third extraction on the filtered plant material with fresh ethanol. Combine all filtered ethanol extracts. Perform cold evaporation of the ethanol by increasing surface area and air circulation and/or lowering air pressure (vacuum evaporation). Another possible method is aerating the mixture by pumping an inert gas through it. The resulting residue will most likely be a thick sticky oil. Adding a vegetable oil like hemp seed oil will lower viscosity and makes the product easier to handle and dose.
Ethanol is highly flammable which requires stringent safety measures in comparison to the non-flammable vegetable oil. In contrast to the vegetable oil extraction, ethanol extraction requires drying the Cannabis plant material prior to extraction. If this is not done ethanol will also dissolve the water from the plant material complicating the ethanol evaporation stage, especially at room temperature. The drying of the plant material increases the risk of loss of volatile terpenes and flavonoids. An ethanol extract can be concentrated by evaporating the ethanol, something that is not possible with vegetable oil extracts.
At room temperature ethanol efficiently extracts chlorophyll from the plant matter giving the final product an unpleasant taste. It is hypothesised that this could possibly be circumvented by performing the extraction at lower temperature (-18 °C).
Water based extract
Water solubility of phytocannabinoids is reported to be limited due to their lipophilic nature. Multiple studies have found that cannabinoids like THC and THCA stick to the side of the glass container when attempting to make a water based solution. In order to effectively produce water-based extracts some type of aqueous solubilizer has to be used. Examples of a few solubilizer are ethanol, propyleneglycol, and cyclodextrin. Hemp seeds contain lecithin which is known for its emulsifying properties enabling it to simultaneously interact with water and oil. An interesting area of research would be the extraction of hemp seed lecithin to be used as a solubilising agent for phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids.
Dr. William Courtney is a big advocate for the use of high dose non-psychoactive raw dietary Cannabis. He has consulted around 7000 patients with diverse medical conditions, many of whom he consulted on the use of raw dietary Cannabis. The main described administration is the juicing of leafs and female flowers of ‘drug’-type Cannabis. No information was found where Dr. William Courtney describes the insoluble nature of the phytocannabinoids in water or the use of a solubilizer to help improve aqueous solubility. Additionally no analytical research has been found on the effectiveness of juicing Cannabis plant material as a means of administering phytocannabinoids.
The above makes clear that an interesting field of research would be the determination of effective aqueous solubilizers for phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids. This would greatly increase the bioavailability of these compounds in water-based extracts of Cannabis plant material. This research would also open up the alternative administration routes that do not show the limited bioavailability of orally administered (phyto)cannabinoids, due to low absorption and high first-pass metabolism. Such routes of administration are inhalation, sublingual, and injection.
Supercritical CO2 extraction
Analytical research comparing ethanol and supercritical CO2 extraction of Cannabis plant material showed that ethanol was more favourable in extracting terpenes. The researched supercritical CO2 extraction did however extract only trace amount of the unwanted chlorophyll in comparison to generous amount that was extracted by ethanol. Another positive factor of the researched supercritical CO2 extraction method is the production of highly concentrated extracts high in phytocannabinoids.
Research into supercritical CO2 extraction should be focused on extracting the full range of terpenes and flavonoids alongside with the phytocannabinoids. It is hypothesised that this may be achieved by altering extraction parameters like pressure, temperature, and extraction time.
Vegetable oil infusion
The envisioned extraction technique is as follows. Deep freeze the freshly harvested Cannabis plant material (e.g. male hemp flowers) to break open the plants cell walls. Dissolve x part ionic salt (e.g. NaCl) in x part tap water. This will decrease the solution and/or micro-suspension of lipophilic compounds in the water. Combine this water with, x part plant material, and x part vegetable oil. Blend the mixture until the plant material is reduced to a fine consistency. Stir/agitate the mixture for x amount of time to allow for extraction. Filter out the plant material. Perform a second extraction on the same plant material with fresh x part tap water and x part vegetable oil. Stir/agitate the mixture for x amount of time to allow for extraction. Filter out the plant material. Combine both water and oil mixtures and run this trough a fine filter. Cool the filtered water and oil mixture to 1 °C. The infused oil will separates from the water and will form a solid oil layer on top of the water. This solid layer can be scooped of. To separate last fraction of water the mixture can be centrifuged. Perform analytical analyses of the phytocannabinoid, terpene and flavonoid content. Divide the vegetable oil extract into easy to dose portions.
The above named extraction technique is presumably favoured over ‘vegetable oil only’ extraction. By using tap water, the water from the fresh plant material can separate easier from the non-polar oil fraction and plant fibres. Additionally by adding tap water the blending of the plant material is made easier as opposed to a relatively low amount of vegetable oil to plant material. The latter would make for a relatively fibrous blend from which the vegetable oil should be pressed. It is presumed that a significant amount of vegetable oil would remain in the plant material.
In the analytical study that researched the vegetable oil extraction olive oil was used. It is hypothesised that hemp seed oil can be used instead of olive oil. Both olive oil and hemp seed oil mainly consist of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Hemp seed oil is a rich and balanced source of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Furthermore it is hypothesised that including a saturated vegetable oil like extra virgin coconut oil (naturally high in medium chain triglyceride) could help to extract an even broader spectrum of lipophilic Cannabis compounds.
Ideally one daily dose of the end product would not contain more than a daily recommended dose of the selected vegetable oils. Therefor a part of the research should be focused on finding the phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids saturation point (mg/ml) of various vegetable oils.
The previously mentioned analytical study heated the olive oil to around 98 °C. Research needs to reveal if vegetable oil extraction of phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids at room temperature is also sufficient. If room temperature conditions show to be insufficient in extracting, research can be done to find a temperature range and heating time where no significant decarboxylation of phytocannabinoids or loss of terpenes and flavonoids occurs, but where extraction is increased. Another area of research could be the utilisation of ultrasound sonication to aid extraction.
Cold water trichome separation
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique. As you might be aware this technique is often used to create solvent-less (bubble) hash. A good scientific article by GW Pharmaceuticals going into this extraction technique is mentioned in the document (chapter 4) I posted in post #165 . According to the latter document this extraction technique only seems to extract around 37% of the cannabinoids. Do you know of a way to increase this yield? Maybe combing it with sonication?
Dry sifting trichome separation
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique....
Sonication
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique....
Any advise is welcome!!! One of the important points to remember is that we are dealing with an estimated 150.000 plants, 4,500 kg (dry weight) of leaves and buds and a limited € budget.
EXTRACTION METHOD!?
We haven't choose an extraction method yet. Our main question is: What is the most favourable extraction method for obtaining concentrated acid phytocannabinoid products with the lowest loss of terpenes and flavonoids?
As of now we're looking at the following extraction methodes.
Low temperature ethanol extraction
The envisioned extraction technique is as follows. Dry the Cannabis plant material. Combine x amount of ethanol with x amount of dried plant material. Blend to a fine mixture, preferably at low temperature (e.g. -18 °C) to minimise chlorophyll extraction. Filter the resulting blend. Perform a second and possibly third extraction on the filtered plant material with fresh ethanol. Combine all filtered ethanol extracts. Perform cold evaporation of the ethanol by increasing surface area and air circulation and/or lowering air pressure (vacuum evaporation). Another possible method is aerating the mixture by pumping an inert gas through it. The resulting residue will most likely be a thick sticky oil. Adding a vegetable oil like hemp seed oil will lower viscosity and makes the product easier to handle and dose.
Ethanol is highly flammable which requires stringent safety measures in comparison to the non-flammable vegetable oil. In contrast to the vegetable oil extraction, ethanol extraction requires drying the Cannabis plant material prior to extraction. If this is not done ethanol will also dissolve the water from the plant material complicating the ethanol evaporation stage, especially at room temperature. The drying of the plant material increases the risk of loss of volatile terpenes and flavonoids. An ethanol extract can be concentrated by evaporating the ethanol, something that is not possible with vegetable oil extracts.
At room temperature ethanol efficiently extracts chlorophyll from the plant matter giving the final product an unpleasant taste. It is hypothesised that this could possibly be circumvented by performing the extraction at lower temperature (-18 °C).
Water based extract
Water solubility of phytocannabinoids is reported to be limited due to their lipophilic nature. Multiple studies have found that cannabinoids like THC and THCA stick to the side of the glass container when attempting to make a water based solution. In order to effectively produce water-based extracts some type of aqueous solubilizer has to be used. Examples of a few solubilizer are ethanol, propyleneglycol, and cyclodextrin. Hemp seeds contain lecithin which is known for its emulsifying properties enabling it to simultaneously interact with water and oil. An interesting area of research would be the extraction of hemp seed lecithin to be used as a solubilising agent for phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids.
Dr. William Courtney is a big advocate for the use of high dose non-psychoactive raw dietary Cannabis. He has consulted around 7000 patients with diverse medical conditions, many of whom he consulted on the use of raw dietary Cannabis. The main described administration is the juicing of leafs and female flowers of ‘drug’-type Cannabis. No information was found where Dr. William Courtney describes the insoluble nature of the phytocannabinoids in water or the use of a solubilizer to help improve aqueous solubility. Additionally no analytical research has been found on the effectiveness of juicing Cannabis plant material as a means of administering phytocannabinoids.
The above makes clear that an interesting field of research would be the determination of effective aqueous solubilizers for phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids. This would greatly increase the bioavailability of these compounds in water-based extracts of Cannabis plant material. This research would also open up the alternative administration routes that do not show the limited bioavailability of orally administered (phyto)cannabinoids, due to low absorption and high first-pass metabolism. Such routes of administration are inhalation, sublingual, and injection.
Supercritical CO2 extraction
Analytical research comparing ethanol and supercritical CO2 extraction of Cannabis plant material showed that ethanol was more favourable in extracting terpenes. The researched supercritical CO2 extraction did however extract only trace amount of the unwanted chlorophyll in comparison to generous amount that was extracted by ethanol. Another positive factor of the researched supercritical CO2 extraction method is the production of highly concentrated extracts high in phytocannabinoids.
Research into supercritical CO2 extraction should be focused on extracting the full range of terpenes and flavonoids alongside with the phytocannabinoids. It is hypothesised that this may be achieved by altering extraction parameters like pressure, temperature, and extraction time.
Vegetable oil infusion
The envisioned extraction technique is as follows. Deep freeze the freshly harvested Cannabis plant material (e.g. male hemp flowers) to break open the plants cell walls. Dissolve x part ionic salt (e.g. NaCl) in x part tap water. This will decrease the solution and/or micro-suspension of lipophilic compounds in the water. Combine this water with, x part plant material, and x part vegetable oil. Blend the mixture until the plant material is reduced to a fine consistency. Stir/agitate the mixture for x amount of time to allow for extraction. Filter out the plant material. Perform a second extraction on the same plant material with fresh x part tap water and x part vegetable oil. Stir/agitate the mixture for x amount of time to allow for extraction. Filter out the plant material. Combine both water and oil mixtures and run this trough a fine filter. Cool the filtered water and oil mixture to 1 °C. The infused oil will separates from the water and will form a solid oil layer on top of the water. This solid layer can be scooped of. To separate last fraction of water the mixture can be centrifuged. Perform analytical analyses of the phytocannabinoid, terpene and flavonoid content. Divide the vegetable oil extract into easy to dose portions.
The above named extraction technique is presumably favoured over ‘vegetable oil only’ extraction. By using tap water, the water from the fresh plant material can separate easier from the non-polar oil fraction and plant fibres. Additionally by adding tap water the blending of the plant material is made easier as opposed to a relatively low amount of vegetable oil to plant material. The latter would make for a relatively fibrous blend from which the vegetable oil should be pressed. It is presumed that a significant amount of vegetable oil would remain in the plant material.
In the analytical study that researched the vegetable oil extraction olive oil was used. It is hypothesised that hemp seed oil can be used instead of olive oil. Both olive oil and hemp seed oil mainly consist of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Hemp seed oil is a rich and balanced source of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Furthermore it is hypothesised that including a saturated vegetable oil like extra virgin coconut oil (naturally high in medium chain triglyceride) could help to extract an even broader spectrum of lipophilic Cannabis compounds.
Ideally one daily dose of the end product would not contain more than a daily recommended dose of the selected vegetable oils. Therefor a part of the research should be focused on finding the phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids saturation point (mg/ml) of various vegetable oils.
The previously mentioned analytical study heated the olive oil to around 98 °C. Research needs to reveal if vegetable oil extraction of phytocannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids at room temperature is also sufficient. If room temperature conditions show to be insufficient in extracting, research can be done to find a temperature range and heating time where no significant decarboxylation of phytocannabinoids or loss of terpenes and flavonoids occurs, but where extraction is increased. Another area of research could be the utilisation of ultrasound sonication to aid extraction.
Cold water trichome separation
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique. As you might be aware this technique is often used to create solvent-less (bubble) hash. A good scientific article by GW Pharmaceuticals going into this extraction technique is mentioned in the document (chapter 4) I posted in post #165 . According to the latter document this extraction technique only seems to extract around 37% of the cannabinoids. Do you know of a way to increase this yield? Maybe combing it with sonication?
Dry sifting trichome separation
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique....
Sonication
I'm in the process of researching this extraction technique....
Any advise is welcome!!! One of the important points to remember is that we are dealing with an estimated 150.000 plants, 4,500 kg (dry weight) of leaves and buds and a limited € budget.
Last edited:
DutchHempCBD
Member
Your welcome to visit the field karl.uk.
We sowed roughly 500.000 Finola seeds (30 kg/ha) on 0,19 ha of land.
wordtree
Member
thanks for sharing your journey...
if chlorophyll is your main concern, dry sift/mechanical separation seems to be the way onwards.
2 stages or more (or stack screens and do it all in one batch)-- inital removal of seeds by screening and sonication to isolate plant material from heavier seed. finer screen gradients to isolate trichomes. you then are left with the concentrated resin with which to further process (if needed, ie suspending in emulsion) requiring less overall input of solvent and time as well as your rough sifted 'green' with which to process which can be CO2 extracted or use some other non-polar solvent.
possible screen choices are stainless steel or nylon, perhaps several hundred micron metal mesh for seed separation, and progressively finer screens down to the ≈50 micron level.
also it would be cool if you could share a test of heavy metal content in the green material (cannabis is a strong bio-accumulator)...
if chlorophyll is your main concern, dry sift/mechanical separation seems to be the way onwards.
2 stages or more (or stack screens and do it all in one batch)-- inital removal of seeds by screening and sonication to isolate plant material from heavier seed. finer screen gradients to isolate trichomes. you then are left with the concentrated resin with which to further process (if needed, ie suspending in emulsion) requiring less overall input of solvent and time as well as your rough sifted 'green' with which to process which can be CO2 extracted or use some other non-polar solvent.
possible screen choices are stainless steel or nylon, perhaps several hundred micron metal mesh for seed separation, and progressively finer screens down to the ≈50 micron level.
also it would be cool if you could share a test of heavy metal content in the green material (cannabis is a strong bio-accumulator)...
Hi Guys,
Very Informative and complex subject on extraction..................wow
I have been intouch with the guys at Healing Hemp in Northern Ireland, they are growing Fedora 17 this year ( they couldnt get hold of Finola seeds ) however they grew Finola last year and juiced the fresh flowers and green leaves, to give a hemp Juice. I was suprised that the CBD content of this juice was only 0.6% (they had it tested obvioulsy)
Any thought son why CBD content so low ?
Is juicing not an option for you Dutch ? the other methods seem costly and time consuming ??
Thanks
Karl...
Very Informative and complex subject on extraction..................wow
I have been intouch with the guys at Healing Hemp in Northern Ireland, they are growing Fedora 17 this year ( they couldnt get hold of Finola seeds ) however they grew Finola last year and juiced the fresh flowers and green leaves, to give a hemp Juice. I was suprised that the CBD content of this juice was only 0.6% (they had it tested obvioulsy)
Any thought son why CBD content so low ?
Is juicing not an option for you Dutch ? the other methods seem costly and time consuming ??
Thanks
Karl...
Hey Dutch, you have a difficult task before you!
Could you reduce the weight? The stalks add an important but unnecessary amount of weight... maybe some kind of comb to strip the flowers and leaves from the stalks? What do hemp farmers to separate the stalks? True, they use the stalks and not the rest, but the procedure will be the same.
If you're after the acid forms, you may prefer fresh plant matter over dried one.
Concerning solvents: Obviously, you need to stick to general regulations and rules; which leaves you with water, ethanol, glycerol (depends) and edible oils as sole feasible solvents. Supercritical CO2 would be best, if you could find a company which does it for you.
An other problem is that flavonoids are soluble in water and a bit less in ethanol whereas cannabinoids and essential oil are soluble in oil and a bit less in ethanol. To overcome this problem, a consecutive extraction might be an option: Determine the water content of your fresh hemp and then juice it. Now you add 96% ethanol to the pulp, take for example 13% of the calculated total water content; extract and filter or juice. Add fresh ethanol to the pulp and repeat. Mix the juice and the two ethanol extracts. What you have now is a 20% ethanolic extract containing as well highly water soluble substances and ethanol soluble ones. A further advantage of this is the self-preservation due the 20% ethanol. No sterilisation or additives needed .
Chlorophyll, unless you do a fractionated supercritical CO2 extraction, will always be a problem. That stuff is soluble in more or less everything. Frozen ethanol extraction is difficult and will neither extract many of the other wanted constituents. Also, evaporating the ethanol afterwards will cause the essential oil to evaporate as well. Maybe not completely, but many monoterpenes will get lost to a considerable degree. Easier to consume the ethanolic extract directly. Besides, people pay deer money to buy chlorophyll pills against halitosis . Chlorophyll is only a negative factor if you intend to smoke the extract. In edibles, it's a nice thing if you don't have to store the product too long.
Considering the huge quantity, dry sift may be the easiest and cheapest way to go. Though, you'd get only the trichomes (most cannabinoids and essential oil) but lose the flavonoids and other intracellular stuff. If I remember correctly (but I'm absolutely not sure if I do!) bubble hash could be done with fresh plants. Get the trichomes first, then simply juice the plants to obtain the water soluble goodies too .
Sorry, got to go for now...
Could you reduce the weight? The stalks add an important but unnecessary amount of weight... maybe some kind of comb to strip the flowers and leaves from the stalks? What do hemp farmers to separate the stalks? True, they use the stalks and not the rest, but the procedure will be the same.
If you're after the acid forms, you may prefer fresh plant matter over dried one.
Concerning solvents: Obviously, you need to stick to general regulations and rules; which leaves you with water, ethanol, glycerol (depends) and edible oils as sole feasible solvents. Supercritical CO2 would be best, if you could find a company which does it for you.
An other problem is that flavonoids are soluble in water and a bit less in ethanol whereas cannabinoids and essential oil are soluble in oil and a bit less in ethanol. To overcome this problem, a consecutive extraction might be an option: Determine the water content of your fresh hemp and then juice it. Now you add 96% ethanol to the pulp, take for example 13% of the calculated total water content; extract and filter or juice. Add fresh ethanol to the pulp and repeat. Mix the juice and the two ethanol extracts. What you have now is a 20% ethanolic extract containing as well highly water soluble substances and ethanol soluble ones. A further advantage of this is the self-preservation due the 20% ethanol. No sterilisation or additives needed
.Chlorophyll, unless you do a fractionated supercritical CO2 extraction, will always be a problem. That stuff is soluble in more or less everything. Frozen ethanol extraction is difficult and will neither extract many of the other wanted constituents. Also, evaporating the ethanol afterwards will cause the essential oil to evaporate as well. Maybe not completely, but many monoterpenes will get lost to a considerable degree. Easier to consume the ethanolic extract directly. Besides, people pay deer money to buy chlorophyll pills against halitosis
. Chlorophyll is only a negative factor if you intend to smoke the extract. In edibles, it's a nice thing if you don't have to store the product too long.Considering the huge quantity, dry sift may be the easiest and cheapest way to go. Though, you'd get only the trichomes (most cannabinoids and essential oil) but lose the flavonoids and other intracellular stuff. If I remember correctly (but I'm absolutely not sure if I do!) bubble hash could be done with fresh plants. Get the trichomes first, then simply juice the plants to obtain the water soluble goodies too
.Sorry, got to go for now...
DutchHempCBD
Member
Thanks for thinking along!
@wordtree. Combining drysifting with sonication sounds good. As for quality, my focus is on getting a high yield, not on obtaining some super pure hemp hash. Therefore I would choose a 160 micron screen and get one product grade. The screen type would be a metal wire mesh. Nylon I’m guessing will not survive processing 4,500 kg of hemp. I aware that the yield goes up and the quality due to leaf impurity goes down. As you mentioned yourself an additional purification step can be performed on the hemp kief. The seeds (estimated 200 kg) are not a priority. Heavy metal test would indeed be interesting.
@oldchuck. Yeah, that’s more or less what I concluded as well. It takes a big external company to process that. And that will most likely cost a lot of €.
@karl.uk. Check out my last post #169 and carefully read under ‘’water based extraction’’. So the reason why we don’t choose for this relatively easy extraction technique is because it’s largely ineffective. You just drinking a green goop with the occasional lost trichome.
@only ornamental. The mentioned weight of 4500 kg is only leaves and buds. We’ll most likely choose for stripping the leaves and buds from the stalks by hand on the field. I contacted HempFlax, the biggest processor of industrial fibre hemp in the Netherlands. They told me they perform field retting which means that they leave the stalks with leaves and buds on the field for a couple of weeks. After that the run the material through a machine that separates the leaves and buds from the stalks. They don’t do anything with the leaves and buds as these are all rotting and far into senescence. Their focus is on good fibre quality.
As for your statement on acid forms. Only when you would dry the plant material with heat or in the sun would some of the cannabinoids decarboxylate.
In regards to the solvents. I don’t see it as a very (cost) effective method on the scale that we are facing. Supercritical CO2 doesn’t extract all the terpenes. At least according to this patent application. Check out table 1 and accompanying text. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US20040049059.pdf
As for your consecutive extraction, sounds good but not when your talking about 4,500 kg material. That still takes a lot of alcohol. And I think supercritical CO2 extraction will cost a lot of €
Do you have a reference to research stating that flavonoids are located in leaf material? As for tepenes I quote the following from the research document (page 176) mentioned in post #165. ''With the exclusion of The removal of glandular trichomes from cannabis floral material produces an ‘enriched trichome preparation’ that has a very similar cannabinoid and terpene profile to that of the plant material from which it came, but is much more potent. One major exception is the diterpene phytol, which is associated with the biosynthesis and catabolism of chlorophyll and Vitamin E, and this is predominantly found outside the trichome.
*******
Yep, all in all the extraction seems to move towards mechanical trichome separation. The next question is what technique. I'm currently looking at
- cold water
- cold water combined with sonication
- dry sifting
- dry sift combined with sonication
- tumbler (dry material)
Did I miss any great ones?
If you have any pointer to the above mentioned technique that is much appreciated.
@wordtree. Combining drysifting with sonication sounds good. As for quality, my focus is on getting a high yield, not on obtaining some super pure hemp hash. Therefore I would choose a 160 micron screen and get one product grade. The screen type would be a metal wire mesh. Nylon I’m guessing will not survive processing 4,500 kg of hemp. I aware that the yield goes up and the quality due to leaf impurity goes down. As you mentioned yourself an additional purification step can be performed on the hemp kief. The seeds (estimated 200 kg) are not a priority. Heavy metal test would indeed be interesting.
@oldchuck. Yeah, that’s more or less what I concluded as well. It takes a big external company to process that. And that will most likely cost a lot of €.
@karl.uk. Check out my last post #169 and carefully read under ‘’water based extraction’’. So the reason why we don’t choose for this relatively easy extraction technique is because it’s largely ineffective. You just drinking a green goop with the occasional lost trichome.
@only ornamental. The mentioned weight of 4500 kg is only leaves and buds. We’ll most likely choose for stripping the leaves and buds from the stalks by hand on the field. I contacted HempFlax, the biggest processor of industrial fibre hemp in the Netherlands. They told me they perform field retting which means that they leave the stalks with leaves and buds on the field for a couple of weeks. After that the run the material through a machine that separates the leaves and buds from the stalks. They don’t do anything with the leaves and buds as these are all rotting and far into senescence. Their focus is on good fibre quality.
As for your statement on acid forms. Only when you would dry the plant material with heat or in the sun would some of the cannabinoids decarboxylate.
In regards to the solvents. I don’t see it as a very (cost) effective method on the scale that we are facing. Supercritical CO2 doesn’t extract all the terpenes. At least according to this patent application. Check out table 1 and accompanying text. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US20040049059.pdf
As for your consecutive extraction, sounds good but not when your talking about 4,500 kg material. That still takes a lot of alcohol. And I think supercritical CO2 extraction will cost a lot of €
Do you have a reference to research stating that flavonoids are located in leaf material? As for tepenes I quote the following from the research document (page 176) mentioned in post #165. ''With the exclusion of The removal of glandular trichomes from cannabis floral material produces an ‘enriched trichome preparation’ that has a very similar cannabinoid and terpene profile to that of the plant material from which it came, but is much more potent. One major exception is the diterpene phytol, which is associated with the biosynthesis and catabolism of chlorophyll and Vitamin E, and this is predominantly found outside the trichome.
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Yep, all in all the extraction seems to move towards mechanical trichome separation. The next question is what technique. I'm currently looking at
- cold water
- cold water combined with sonication
- dry sifting
- dry sift combined with sonication
- tumbler (dry material)
Did I miss any great ones?
If you have any pointer to the above mentioned technique that is much appreciated.
I don't trust patent applications because you can claim whatever you want in a patent
. Supercritical CO2 extractions made tremendous progress in the last years. It is most suited for medium to non-polar compounds such as cannabinoids and essential oil. I don't like the term 'terpenes' that much because it is a too large term. What is interesting in cannabis are mono- and sesquiterpenes which make up ~99% of the essential oil. Phytol, cholesterol and others (except vitamin A, E, and carotenoids) usually have a low pharmaceutical value or health benefit. Most of these are present in the seed oil, anyway.I know for a fact that you can use supercritical CO2 to extract essential oil
. Unfortunately, most such machines aren't made for large quantities but you could run several smaller batches. They are costly to buy but not so much to run (carbon dioxide is cheap and can be recycled).Extracting tons... jup, too much alcohol needed. That's why I came up with this consecutive extraction where you'd need only about 700 litres LoL. But who's gonna drink all that? You could work with smaller batches and recycle the solvents... but as said, essential oil evaporation might become a problem.
Reference for flavonoids? Would 'Me' be an acceptable answer?
There are literally millions of books about flavonoids ;( but they make up a central part of my education, soo... here's just one reference work I picked from a quick search on Pubmed: CLICK ME
Flavonoids are very abundant in nature and produced by all plants and usually rich in the green parts. They are produced intra-cellularly. Most flavonoids are glycosilated and hence highly hydrophilic (water soluble) and therefore stored in the central vacuole or the cytosol. Amongst other constituents, they are the reason for yellow colouring of the leaves in fall, others are red, blue, violet etc. (e.g. anthocyanes) and are the main pigments in flowers and fruits.
Flavonoids have a vast quantity of beneficial effects; one of the common things are antioxidant activities.
Besides, they are most stable at a slightly acidic pH (optimally about 4, but up to 6 works).
One last thing: The seeds...
I don't think that you'd extract something at useful concentrations when you leave them in the herb and process with whatever strategy you choose. Lecithin in them isn't even enough to emulsify the seed oil, let alone help much with the extraction.
wordtree
Member
rough sift still has some 'green' in it...probably enough for flavonoid/flavanoid synergy. you can always amend with things like flavonol or whatever you like later as well.
some dry ice might aid in the processing too once the seed is separated.
about harvesting: you might want to look into decorticators (note quite a forceful effect on the plant material that way though)
if you could run a few pounds of seeded fresh flowers through a heavy apple cider press and see what you get that would be excellent...at least that's the most complete product I can think of for immediate consumption. if you want to preserve the pressed mixture, you can dessicate and/or freeze-dry with some kind of natural preservative added like cinnamon or rosemary or lemon oils to get a juice 'powder'. heavy metal content is important in that case, though...
some dry ice might aid in the processing too once the seed is separated.
about harvesting: you might want to look into decorticators (note quite a forceful effect on the plant material that way though)
if you could run a few pounds of seeded fresh flowers through a heavy apple cider press and see what you get that would be excellent...at least that's the most complete product I can think of for immediate consumption. if you want to preserve the pressed mixture, you can dessicate and/or freeze-dry with some kind of natural preservative added like cinnamon or rosemary or lemon oils to get a juice 'powder'. heavy metal content is important in that case, though...
wordtree
Member
the juice is not in a concentrate 'dry' form so the CBD content will be relatively lower.
It is good you did not seed them, than the rats would come back and try and eat every seed.
What was the area or total number of plants? I am wondering why it would take so long? I can sex a acre a day, more with help.
-SamS
