Just about a couple of months ago, in December 2020 to be precise, the United Nations (UN) corrected an anomaly it had subscribed to for decades. What did it do? The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) delisted cannabis resin and cannabis from the Schedule IV of its Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that dates back to 1961.
Schedule IV sort of black lists substances by labelling them as “most dangerous.” Of the 53 member states in the CND, 27 voted in favour of the delisting while 25 voted against the same. This is a welcome development for the cannabis industry to say the least.
But even before the UN took this essential first step in the right direction, winds of cannabis legalization were gaining robust traction all over the world. Many countries had already legalized cannabis for medical and even recreational reasons, while a few held out cannabis as illegal.
The favorable vote at the UN CND does bring the issue in global limelight though.
And with that, it opens the doors to worldwide treasure houses for the cannabis industry, be it cannabis extraction equipment makers or cannabis product manufacturers and distributors.
One desirable feature of cannabis extraction equipment is scalability. Because with global public opinion tilting in favour of cannabis legalization, given its umpteen health benefits, the demand for cannabis products will rise to never before known levels. In turn, producers will place orders for cannabis extraction equipment like never before.
And with no one wanting to miss the bus to “destination cannabis boom,” nay juggernaut, scalability will be among the most crucial features they will be looking for.
Now, the supercritical fluid extraction (SCFE) equipment is well known for its capacity to deliver extracts with negligible contamination. The reasons for this are hidden in the way it operates. The SCFE process uses a supercritical fluid (SCF), one that has its:
- Pressure above its critical pressure
- Temperature more than its critical temperature
The properties of an SCF are:
- Somewhere between that of its liquid and gaseous states
- Similar to that of either its liquid and gaseous states
For example, the:
- Density of a supercritical fluid is high, like that of a liquid. The greater the density of an SCF, the higher is its solvent power i.e. ability to dissolve a compound from a raw material.
- Surface tension and viscosity of an SCF are low, similar to that of its liquid state. These help a supercritical fluid to seep deeper inside the solid raw material and extract more from the raw material.
Density of the supercritical fluid rises and falls with pressure increasing and decreasing respectively. Carefully controlling pressure makes the SCF capable of pulling out only the required compound (target molecule) from the raw material. Very little of other compounds from the raw material get into the final extract. What is more, changing the pressure alters the target molecule. The same process can extract two different compounds from the same raw material when operating at diverse pressures.