Equipment used to make THC distillate is now available for commercial cannabis processors.
Those paying attention to the rapidly evolving legal marijuana industry are familiar with the “me too” culture that follows the latest innovations. New products are often hyped to death until something else comes along to distract the predictable hordes and repeat the pattern.
Often, the cause of the clamor is little more than a new name or small evolution in the industry. Rarely does anything amount to a sea change.
However, the emergence of commercially available equipment to make “The Clear” — also known as golden distillate or clear distillate — represents a potential game-changer in the business, and a big leap forward in both technology and possible applications. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to the product created as THC distillate.
THC distillate is an odorless, tasteless liquid created by refining hash oil — the thick, viscous product that is extracted from cannabis through CO2 or hydrocarbon extraction or alcohol reduction. In its most common forms, hash oil contains THC concentrations in the 50-70% range.
Different methods and skill levels of hash oil producers result in a finished product that can vary greatly from one batch to the next.
THC distillate, on the other hand, is made through a process called molecular distillation. Molecular distillation has been around for decades, and is most commonly used to separate various products from crude oil. Gasoline, diesel fuel, acetone, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and many other products made from petroleum are created using molecular distillation. The process involves vacuum distillation below the pressure of 0.01 torr. It is the separation, purification and concentration of natural products’ complex and thermally sensitive molecules. Molecular distillation is characterized by short-term exposure of the base liquid to high temperatures by high-volume pressure (around 1,024 millimeters of mercury) in the distillation column and a small distance between the evaporator and the condenser, where fluids are in the free molecular flow regime (the mean free path of molecules is comparable to the size of the equipment). In short, molecular distillation creates pure extracts that are stripped of any contaminants. In the food industry, for example, fish oil is purified to eliminate heavy metals using molecular distillation.
It’s essentially the same process used in the creation of spirits, says Hamilton Foro, chief scientist at Root Sciences, the exclusive North American distributor of VTA molecular distillation equipment.
“With heat and pressure, you target the molecules that are desired,” Foro says. “In the same fashion that you would distill vodka from mash, you can distill pure cannabinoids from its crude oil, leaving the undesirables behind.”
The same process that has worked in the petroleum and food industries for decades is now being utilized in the cannabis industry to create THC distillate. Molecular distillation is a further refinement of hash oil that strips the raw product of impurities and terpenes, resulting in a pure, potent, highly refined and much more versatile end product. THC distillate can be up to 99% THC.
Up until now, THC distillate has been something of a mystery. Created only by a few companies that had the equipment and know-how to make it, most producers and growers have had to outsource production of THC distillate. With the equipment to make the finished product now available, the ability to create a pure cannabis extract is within reach of most licensed cannabis growers and processors.
Although the science behind the machinery is complicated, Cory Balma, principal at Root Sciences, says the learning curve is not too steep.
“It’s actually fairly simple, and there’s not a lot of hand-holding,” Balma says. “The equipment works well, and someone can learn how to operate it in a relatively short period of time.”
The equipment used to create THC distillate looks like something out of a college chemistry lab (and many college chemistry labs do have advanced distillation equipment). The basic principles behind the creation of the pure distillate are straightforward.
“The process includes a heating, vapor and condensing phase, and ultimately can be achieved in a number of ways,” says Derek Houston of Helderpad, another company that sells equipment used to make THC distillate. “The differences in equipment and specific processes change the production capacity and overall quality of the oil.”
From a practical standpoint, the reason a pure extract is a potential game changer is easy to comprehend: Its odorless, tasteless, highly refined, super-potent qualities mean that it can be used in a vast number of products and applications. For example, edibles can be manufactured without the cannabis flavor some consumers find unpleasant; vape products can be made with or without added flavors, depending on preference; medical marijuana products can be created with more accurate dosing and guaranteed pure ingredients.
THC distillate — and the equipment used to manufacture it — has the potential to elevate the standards of the entire legal marijuana industry, and open up a huge new world of opportunities to both manufacturers and consumers.