Medicinal herbal products in their natural forms or standardized isolate extracts are presenting boundless opportunities for the synthesis of new drugs. Their unparalleled chemical diversity, a growing demand for such diversity and the search for more natural alternatives for therapeutic drugs, have seen a global rise in interest in plants. You may need to read this article for more on extraction from plants. The presence of several active biological products within these plants makes the question of isolation by extraction and classification of each of these compounds necessary.
Extraction Explained
Extraction is the first step in the isolation of constituent chemical compounds in a plant, thus the extraction process would either yield you a pure isolate or an impure one. The extraction process might involve washing, drying, freezing, grinding and such. Where this is not done properly, constituents could be distorted or lost during the process. In most extractions involving plants, solvents are used. The unique nature of the compound that is to be extracted would determine what solvent to use. For a lot of extraction processes, ethanol and methanol are favorites.
Like every other plant with constituents that offer pharmacological value, marijuana equally undergoes an extraction process to isolate its constituents; of which CBD is our focus. The integrity of the extraction process plays a lot of role in determining the quality of the CBD product you will have. You will not want to expose your pet to products coming from extraction processes that might have leftover toxic residues.
Extracting With Alcohol
There are three major ways CBD is extracted from the marijuana flower. One method involves the use of alcohol, ethanol, propane, butane or isopropyl. The attraction to this method is its ease. It actually is a fast and cheap process. This however is a dangerous process of extracting CBD because of its tendency to leave toxic residues – naphtha hydrocarbons have been discovered in processes using these solvents.
This extraction method involves dissolving waxes from the plant. The flower is placed in a container with the solvent. The cannabinoids, which is the CBD, is extracted; after which an evaporation procedure removes the solvent, leaving behind the oily cannabinoids. Often, what you get from here has a bitter taste, being that the solvent equally extracts bitter-tasting chlorophyll from the plant. Besides the danger of toxic residues, these solvents are highly inflammable and if handled wrongly, could result in an explosion. You can get more information about this here: https://www.cbdoil.org/cbd-extraction-methods/.
Extracting with Olive Oil
Another extraction method involves the use of olive oil. This method has been the traditional method of extracting CBD from marijuana. Aside this, it is an easy process that is equally cheap. A lot of people see it as the best method of extracting CBD. It is equally safe. In this process, the plant is heated to a required temperature for a period to allow for a galvanization of the constituent compounds within it. Olive oil is blended with the plant and another round of heating is undertaken. As this happens, the cannabinoids begin to get isolated and extracted.
When it’s all done, you have a golden-looking product, because the olive oil remains. The presence of the un-evaporated olive oil simply means that your product is diluted, that is, it is not concentrated. The implication of this is that products made using this extraction method would require higher doses for users. Another con of the olive oil extraction method is preservation. Olive oil is perishable, meaning that buyers would need to factor in how to preserve their oil. Unfortunately, for most consumers, this is an undesired assignment.
Extracting with CO2
The third extraction method involves the use of CO2. This has become the most recommended method – an advanced method that sadly is not cheap, requiring much complexity and financial investment. However, it makes for a safe, contaminant-free and powerfully effective product that is equally free of chlorophyll.
This extraction method involves an extractor called a closed-loop. It is a three-chamber machine. One chamber holds CO2 in solid form (dry ice) under high pressure, another chamber holds the dried plant in it while the last chamber is a separation unit, separating the final product. The process begins with CO2 being channeled into the chamber with the dried plant.
This CO2 is in what is called a supercritical state; a state between liquidity and gaseousness. The CO2 in this state moves through the plant, extracting CBD in the process. Everything moves into the last chamber with CO2 rising upwards, resulting in a separation of the extract and the CO2.
This is a method that is much attested to. However and like we stated earlier, it requires a heavy financial investment which effectively reduces the number of players that can be go this route.
Quality Products are Worth the Cost
These are the three broad ways of extracting CBD. Further technicalities are involved in the production of full-spectrum CBD, broad-spectrum CBD and isolate – which is the pure CBD. As you search for a fitting product for your pet, some of which you can get from holistapet, remember that the quality of what you give your pet is greatly enhanced by the type of extraction process used to make the oil. Some extraction methods will surely give you a more expensive product; but surely, the wellbeing of your pet is worth the expense.
CBD oil has been proven to be effective in the treatment of a number of health conditions, but this effectiveness is hinged on the use of genuine and top quality products.