Cannabis Processing Challenges

Working with and processing cannabis is time-consuming, it’s viscous, sticky, difficult to clean, subject to regulation and quality control, and it’s common to leave expensive unusable waste behind. These problems and more can be solved by using a SpeedMixer – learn how our SpeedMixing Technology can solve your cannabis processing challenges today!

Homogenizing Distillate

Problem: Homogenizing distillate can be time consuming, difficult to repeat and with the potential exposure to heat, one can risk degrading and possibly ruining the desired end product.

Solution: Distillate is sticky, thick and messy. It’s extremely viscous and usually requires excessive heat to drop the distillates viscosity and consistency to a workable level.

Outside of using a SpeedMixer, mixing distillate with terpenes and other oils/flavors to produce products such as oil for vape cartridges is a common task typically requiring a heated stir plate and/or oven. The resulting process can take hours to mix while potentially oxidizing distillate, degrading the final product.

Unlike traditional manufacturing methods, the SpeedMixer completely homogenizes separated cannabinoid fractions within seconds to minutes, with no cleanup, no cross-contamination risks, and a completely validated and repeatable process every time. SpeedMixing saves valuable labor hours normally spent on processing, cleaning, testing, and transferring. SpeedMixer containers can integrate directly into off the shelf filling equipment for vape cartridge production – virtually eliminating any transfer losses.

Purge Hydrocarbon Solvents

Problem: The process of purging hydrocarbons solvents (E.g. Butane, Propane, etc) to levels below state compliance standards is typically a long, arduous and potentially product damaging process.

Solution: Outside of using a SpeedMixer, the traditional and antiquated process for purging hydrocarbons consists of using a vacuum oven, physical agitation and resting product, and can require hours or days to complete. Even after this long processing time, the material is still not guaranteed to achieve the required purge levels of residual solvents.

The SpeedMixer is able to purge hydrocarbons to required standards, in some cases down to 0 ppm (undetectable) in minutes using lighter than normal vacuum levels and minimum temperature exposure. The material flow created from mixing in the SpeedMixer cup creates a thin film focal point for cannabinoid exposure to vacuum, allowing rapid solvent purging without concerns of degrading cannabinoids and removing volatile terpenes. The SpeedMixer hydrocarbon purging process results in a faster, more reproducible process, yielding higher quality products than traditionally achievable.

Infusions

Problem: Infusions of products to pharmaceutically elegant standards is troublesome. For example, achieving high quality and homogeneous powders, liquids, semi-solids, emulsions, and topicals is difficult using traditional methods.

Solution: The standard process for infusing ‘powder products’ like sugar, salt, “kaviar”, maltodextrin, etc, requires solvent like ethanol, physical agitation, and then purging the solvent/drying. It is time consuming and requires multiple pieces of equipment to accomplish.

The SpeedMixer evenly homogenizes powders to pharmaceutical standards in seconds without the need for solvent or purging/rotovap. This process is perfect for production, or small scale R&D batches.

Grinding/Homogenizing

Problem: Grinding/Homogenizing for analytical samples can be messy, inconsistent and vexatious.

Solution: The SpeedMixer can grind or homogenize flower, gummies, or other cannabis infused samples in seconds. With multi-sample capability and no machine cleaning between samples, users can process hundreds of samples a day for HPLC prep. Because the technology uses single-use containers, these processes can be completed without the risk of cross-contamination.

General Cannabis Uses and Other Applications

In summary, the SpeedMixers is capable of processing fractions of a gram up to 20kg of material at a time and in a matter of minutes without cleanup, contamination, or material loss. The SpeedMixer also streamlines the production of final products including batter, shatter, budder, topicals, infusions and more. The SpeedMixer not only increases throughput but also frees up lab space and capital by replacing vacuum ovens, overhead mixers and heated stir plates with a single or multiple compact units.