Why does Ethanol Extraction Produce the Best CBD Oil?
Greenlife Organics produces some of the highest quality CBD-based products to be found anywhere in the world. There is a pretty long list of reasons why this is true, and one of those reasons is that Greenlife uses a proprietary, ethanol-based extraction system.
But first, a bit of history
The use of plant oils by humans is an ancient convention. Archeologists have found evidence of the use of olive oil, for example, as early as 2500 BCE. But plant oils don’t exist in nature, by themselves. They have to be separated from their source plant. It’s a bit like separating butter out of milk. The butter is already there, but it just needs to be separated and extracted out. In the case of butter, agitation of the milk is the primary method of extraction. Agitation is also a method sometimes used when extracting oils from plants.
CBD (cannabidiol) oil is the oil of the hemp plant. The hemp plant is, of course, a cousin of the marijuana plant, with the primary difference being that the hemp plant contains only a trace amount of THC, the compound that produces the marijuana ‘high’. This concentration level is too low to produce any psychoactive effects for users of the hemp plant and/or CBD.
Apart from THC content, the two plant varieties have many properties in common, including appearance. Both plants have the characteristic palmately compound leaf display, and the distinctive flowers.
The use of marijuana as a psychoactive agent has its own ancient origins. The hemp plant has also been used by people for centuries, but not for internal consumption. Its semi-woody stalks have been used traditionally in the production of baskets and rope, and other products needing a sturdy, fibrous base material.
However, once biochemists began to do serious research into the active compounds contained within the hemp plant, they discovered that CBD showed great promise as a nutritional supplement. It was at that point that the quest to produce CBD oil, by extracting it from the hemp plant, was launched.
The Hash Oil Model
Since the two plants, marijuana and hemp, were so similar, and people had already been extracting ‘hash oil’ from marijuana for decades, initially the same extraction methods which had been applied to hash oil extraction were applied to the hemp plant. However, there are inherent incompatibilities in the two processes. These incompatibilities are largely rooted in the different objectives sought by the two types of extractions.
In the case of marijuana extraction, there was one clear objective; to isolate out THC from the plant. Even though we now know that THC has some medicinal benefits, initially marijuana extraction was utilized to create concentrated end products for use as intoxicants. So, THC concentration was the only metric that was considered important and relevant with respect to marijuana, hash oil extraction.
Without any regulatory oversight, marijuana extractors and drug dealers devised a number of exotic methods of extraction. Since the use of a solvent is required in nearly any type of plant extraction method, they devised systems using butane, propane, acetone, and ethanol.
But there were inherent problems with three of these solvents. It is virtually impossible to use any solvent without it leaving some chemical residue in the final product. Since butane, propane, and acetone are highly toxic substances, their residues left traces of toxic chemicals in the hash oil.
These three solvents are not only toxic, they are also dangerous to work with. The fumes of these evaporating solvents can become highly combustible, if and when a source of ignition is introduced. YouTube contains a sizeable collection of videos reporting on explosions and fires caused by these solvents, used by illicit drug dealers to make hash oil [1]. Some of these same chemicals have also been used in the production of methamphetamine, so these same dealers/extractors probably used what they already had laying around in their meth labs.
It is difficult to comprehend why these dealers/extractors didn’t just use ethanol (alcohol) to make their hash oil. Pure ethanol (non-denatured) is a substance consumed by billions of people throughout the world daily. Having a small residue of ethanol in any end product poses no health concern.
Ethanol is also comparatively stable to use in plant oil extraction. Its fumes are not combustible, in the same way many other solvents are.
Ethanol is a liquid that originates in plants, produced through plant fermentation. Therefore, it has a built-in affinity to plant oils and other plant chemicals.
The Introduction of Co2
In the 1990’s, chemists began experimenting with using carbon dioxide as an extraction solvent. When cooled, Co2 transforms from a gas to a liquid, and this liquid form of Co2 proved to be an effective extraction solvent. Co2 was subsequently introduced into the marijuana/THC extraction business, as well as the nutritional herb industry. But again, with respect to hash oil production, the primary focus at this point was still the isolation of THC for concentrated marijuana-related end products.
Extractors learned the hard way that Co2 also has its own built-in dangers. Co2 extraction can cause the release of a dangerous gas that can cause asphyxiation and result in unconsciousness and death. For this reason, facilities using Co2 began taking precautionary measures, such as installing Co2 air concentration monitors, and venting all exhaust fumes to the outside of the building.
Full Spectrum
Dietary supplement companies who produce herbal-based products often print on their product label that their product is ‘Full Spectrum’. What does full spectrum mean?
The hemp plant contains not only CBD, but hundreds of phytochemicals. One scientific research study, entitled “Cannabis sativa: The Plant of the Thousand and One Molecules” [2], described it as ‘a treasure trove of phytochemicals’.
Many of these secondary hemp phytochemicals have their own nutritional benefits. For example, when formulating herbal remedies, researchers have long known that the degree of assimilation, or bioavailability of the active substance, is a critical factor in the product’s effectiveness. It is well- established that a significant advantage can be attained in product formulation when all, or nearly all of the plant’s original chemical components are retained in the final product.
The way nature configured the chemical make-up of edible plants appears to correlate directly with the human body’s ability to assimilate the plant’s phytochemical components; in particular, its bioactive components. Any herbal product which maintains a significant portion of the plant’s original compounds is considered ‘full spectrum’. A full spectrum herbal product is more natural, healthier, and more potent than a comparable, non-full spectrum product.
Ethanol vs Co2 - the Bottom Line
Plants contain a variety of chemicals. Some of these chemicals are integrated into the plant’s oils and resins, while others are more present in the plant’s structural material; leaves, stems, roots, etc. In the mainstream nutritional herb extraction business, sometimes processors will use water as an extraction medium, and at other times ethanol is used. Some processors are now using Co2.
The reason why a processor uses water is because in some cases, the plant’s principal active compound is more soluble in water than it is in ethanol. Typically, these are phytochemicals associated with the plant’s structural material. However, when the active compound is one contained within the plant’s oils and resins, ethanol is required. This is the case with both marijuana and hemp.
One of the great strengths of ethanol as a CBD extraction medium is that ethanol is effective in not only extracting the plant’s oils, but is also effective in extracting nearly all of the plant’s most important phytochemicals. Ethanol easily dissolves both water-soluble and fat-soluble molecules. Therefore, a hemp/CBD ethanol extraction is a full spectrum extraction. CBD oil which has been processed with ethanol is more natural, healthier, and more potent than a CBD product using any other extraction medium, including Co2.
A 2018 study, published in Planta Medica found that Co2 extraction failed to extract much of the beneficial phytochemicals in cannabis. It drastically changed the chemical composition by eliminating at least 200 molecules.
Co2’s strength, if you want to call it that, is that it is a process which will isolate your principal active component, at the expense of everything else. So, if you only care about THC then Co2 will work for you. What is somewhat ironic about this is that many Co2 extractors have begun to add an additional step to their extraction process. Once they extract the active component with Co2, they’re running the remaining plant material through an ethanol extraction in order to pick up a wider spectrum of compounds.
Really?
The Greenlife Culture
Greenlife Organics is a five-star rated company/product line, and for good reason. If you’re shopping for a reliable CBD supplier, and you take the time to discover the Greenlife Organics story, that’s really all you need to know in order to feel fully confident that you’ve picked the right supplier. To wit;
The Greenlife farmers, Gary and Sharon Etchemendy, began as organic avocado growers. When their aging and beloved German shepherd, Aria, developed a serious case of arthritis, they experimented with CBD oil. After a couple of days of slipping CBD into Aria’s food, he began to move and jump, like he’d done years earlier. This is what prompted the Etchemendys to enter the CBD business.
Initially, Greenlife Organics purchased CBD from other suppliers, but would soon discover that these products were of an inferior quality. They then decided to dedicate half of their land to organic hemp production.
When they realized that they needed to take control of the extraction process, in order to ensure that the product they produced was of the highest possible quality, they brought an engineer on board as a partner. Tim de Smet went to work and fabricated an entire, state-of- the-art ethanol extraction system from scratch.
Now that they had their own, superior quality CBD oil, they decided that they needed to formulate and manufacture their own products. That’s when Dr. Phil Millman got involved. Dr. Millman is a registered pharmacist with a pharmaceutical compounding license, which gives him the necessary credentials to manufacture medicines.
Final Thoughts
Greenlife Organics is now a fully, vertically integrated producer and marketer of CBD products. Vertical integration allows the company flexibility in a dynamic new industry, with evolving market and regulatory conditions. It also allows the company to produce their products at the lowest possible cost. These savings are then passed onto their customers.
Since Greenlife Organics controls every step in the production of their products, they can infuse their product line with their own high values and superior methods.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeX97LQaMgY 1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740396/ 2