Agriculture Victoria, AgriBio, 5 Ring Road, Bundoora, Victoria, 3083, Australia.
PharmOut, Burwood East, Victoria, 3151, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2020 Jun 4;10(1):9124. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-66119-1.
Carbon dioxide supercritical fluid extraction (CO SFE) is a clean and cost-effective method of extracting cannabinoids from cannabis. Using design of experiment methodologies an optimised protocol for extraction of medicinal cannabis bud material (population of mixed plants, combined THC:CBD approximately 1:1.5) was developed at a scale of one kg per extraction. Key variables investigated were CO flow rate, extraction time and extraction pressure. A total of 15 batches were analysed for process development using a two-level, full factorial design of experiments for three variable factors over eleven batches. The initial eleven batches demonstrated that CO flow rate has the most influence on the overall yield and recovery of the key cannabinoids, particularly CBD. The additional four batches were conducted as replicated runs at high flow rates to determine reproducibility. The highest extraction weight of 71 g (7.1%) was obtained under high flow rate (150 g/min), with long extraction time (600 min) at high pressure (320 bar). This method also gave the best recoveries of THC and CBD. This is the first study to report the repeated extraction of large amounts of cannabis (total 15 kg) to optimise the CO SFE extraction process for a pharmaceutical product.
二氧化碳超临界流体萃取（CO SFE）是一种从大麻中提取大麻素的清洁且经济高效的方法。通过实验设计方法，开发了一种优化的从药用大麻芽材料（混合植物种群，THC:CBD 比约为 1:1.5）中提取的协议，提取规模为每批 1 公斤。研究的关键变量是 CO 流速、提取时间和提取压力。使用三变量因子的两水平完全析因设计实验，对 15 批进行了工艺开发分析，共进行了 11 批。最初的 11 批表明 CO 流速对关键大麻素（特别是 CBD）的总体产率和回收率影响最大。另外四批是在高流速下作为重复运行进行的，以确定重现性。在高流速（150 g/min）、长提取时间（600 min）和高压（320 bar）下，获得了最高的提取重量 71 g（7.1%）。这种方法还能获得 THC 和 CBD 的最佳回收率。这是第一项报告大量大麻（总共 15 公斤）重复提取以优化制药产品 CO SFE 提取过程的研究。
