Professional Marijuana Grower November-December 2018 Issue | Page 18

his or her own concentrated cannabis products at home without the risk of flammable or potentially dangerous chemical residuals. Solvent-based extracts, when done by a professional, offer some of the most potent and ef- fective medicines available to medical cannabis patients. The ever expanding list of available cannabis extracts is impressive and will continue to provide viable options to both recreational and medicinal patients who wish to choose the method of consumption that best fits their personal desires or needs. then evaporates into the atmosphere leaving behind no chemical residuals. The most sophisticated supercritical CO 2 extraction machines will even recapture and reuse the CO 2 gas as it evaporates. Rick Simpson Oil Rick Simpson oil is named for the man who created the extraction process in order to cure his own cancer. Rick Simpson oil, or RSO, is a solvent extract that is very popular among medical marijuana patients. RSO is most effectively made with lab-grade naphtha, but is also commonly made with ether. RSO is made by cooking cannabis down in a solvent to make highly concentrated oil. RSO can be smoked, ingested, or applied directly to the skin. The solvents used to make RSO are very flam- mable. Again, most solvent-based extraction methods are best left to professional cannabis processors. Cannabis Distillate Making cannabis distillate is an extraction method that employs molecular separation. What makes cannabis distillate so special is that the process allows cannabis technicians to separate the cannabinoids and terpenes from the plant material with minimal thermal degrada- tion. The vacuum levels of this process allow the distilla- tion of normally high boiling point products to occur at moderate temperatures. What this really means is that the plant material is not exposed to high temperatures for very long, which equates to less of the valuable com- pounds being degraded by the heat. Cannabis distillate is one of the most popular and highest potency cannabis extracts currently available. There is no telling what cannabis extracts will be devel- oped in the future. As the laws surrounding cannabis continue to move toward legalization, more and more extraction methods will certainly be developed. Non-sol- vent extracts offer a hobbyist the opportunity to create 18 • Professional Marijuana Grower Suggested Vendor Pope Scientific Production Scale Cannabinoid Distillation Systems Increasing demand for larger scale cannabinoid oil distillation equipment is being addressed by Pope Scien- tific with its industrial range of turnkey molecular wiped film still systems. This equipment suits the requirements of large scale CBD oil producers as well as companies making THC oil in quantity and performing toll pro- cessing services. These systems are custom designed and offered as all-stainless steel turnkey multistage skid mounted systems, complete with all components such as vacuum and liquid pumps, valving, vessels, traps, heating and chilling, instrumentation and computer/PLC control for full automation. Pope Scientific’s smaller scale 2”, 4” and 6” wiped-film molecular Cannastill packages are well established for high performance purification of cannabinoids, regardless of which extraction method has been utilized. The same high quality and yield of cannabinoid product is obtained in the industrial duty production systems, though with greater throughput, due to scalability of the Pope design. Systems capa- ble of continuous feed rates to beyond 100 kg/hr are available. Such equipment from Pope has been proven and provided to a wide range of processing industries worldwide for over 35 years. All systems are manufac- tured in Saukville, Wisconsin, USA. For more information call 262.268.9300, Email [email protected] or visit PopeCannabisDistillation.com. PMG Eric Hopper is a Professional Marijuana Grower Senior Editor. November/December 2018