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For many business leaders, the CBD industry represents an exciting investment opportunity. Experts predict that the industry as a whole will continue to grow over the next few years. However, it’s important that businesses involved in CBD processing and the manufacturing of products like lotions, edibles, and extracts understand how to ensure efficient and uniform production standards. This is crucial for business reputation, customer satisfaction, and ROI. Here, we’ll explain why high-pressure homogenizers are essential to the modern edible manufacturing process and how CBD-based companies can benefit from using them.

Cannabinoids

Cannabinoids are chemical compounds found within the cannabis plant. Crucially, they represent the active ingredient in CBD products. In order to create a CBD product, manufacturers harvest cannabis flowers, reduce them to first unrefined and then refined oils, and process the oil into a single compound known as cannabinoid isolate.

The problem at the next, and final, stage of the process is that cannabinoids are hydrophobic—meaning that they don’t mix with water—so it can be very difficult to evenly and efficiently incorporate cannabinoids into a finished CBD product.

As such, CBD manufacturers must use emulsifiers to create oil-in-water emulsions involving cannabinoids. From there, they are able to form micro-emulsions, nano-emulsions, or liposomes, which are effectively combinations of hydrophobic and hydrophilic materials. Ultimately, this enables the effective mixing of CBD and non-CBD compounds within a given product.

How Homogenizers Work

Generally speaking, the quality of an emulsion depends on the quality of the mixing method employed. This is where high-pressure homogenizers stand above other mixing options. Most mixing equipment uses the three following methods to form stable emulsions:

Impact: high forces applied over a short period of time.

Shear: motion between adjacent layers of liquid.

Cavitation: rapid pressure changes.

High-pressure homogenizers are unique in that they employ all three methods simultaneously. This ensures effective particle-size reduction, a crucial aspect to quality control and production in any mixture. The smaller the particles are, the more even the mixture is and the higher its bioavailability becomes.

Benefits of Using Homogenizers for CBD Processing

Because homogenizers so effectively emulsify and mix CBD substances, businesses are able to guarantee quality every time they produce a new batch of products. The homogenization process eliminates “hot spots,” or collections of CBD compounds within a mixture, thus creating evenly distributed mixtures every time.

What’s more, high bioavailability maximizes the potency of CBD products, so businesses can deliver high-quality products while using lower amounts of active ingredients. Bolstered bioavailability also contributes to faster-acting CBD products and more stable CBD products that have a longer shelf life. All told, high-pressure homogenizers can increase bioavailability by up to 75%.

In summation, using homogenizers to complete CBD processing boosts ROI, reduces costly inefficiencies, and creates high-quality, potent, long-lasting products, which, in all likelihood, will improve customer satisfaction as well.

The homogenization process is strengthening the burgeoning cannabis industry. To learn how you can use homogenizers for cannabis products, contact our team at NanoCann. Our proprietary high-pressure homogenizers guarantee cannabis products that are effective, safe, and profitable.

If you liked this article, please follow us on Instagram (@nanocannsystems) and on LinkedIn for more great content!

Legal cannabis consumption is sweeping the nation. Today, 38 states (including Washington, DC) permit marijuana to be used medicinally, and 20 of these states also allow recreational use. This doesn’t mean that just anyone can start growing, manufacturing, and selling cannabis products in these areas; strict laws and ordinances at state and local levels regulate cannabis cultivation, production, and distribution. Thus, each cannabis product meant for legal sale in the U.S. must first undergo analysis by a state-licensed lab. These labs test for potency (active amounts of THC and CBD), as well as safety, screening samples for possible contaminants such as pesticides, mycotoxins, heavy metals, residual solvents, bacteria, and other possibly harmful analytes. Only products that meet compliance requirements are released for distribution and sale, and homogenization can help the cannabis industry create high-quality cannabis products.

But first: What is homogenization?

Homogenization is the process by which the components of a substance are each broken apart into particles that are equal in size and structure and then thoroughly mixed back together. This ensures that a sample maintains the same molecular composition in each of its segments should it ever be divided.

How is homogenization used in the cannabis industry?

Homogenization is critical for the manufacturing and the testing of edibles.

Manufacturing

During the production of cannabis edibles, homogenizers reduce the size of cannabis particles, standardize their composition, and disperse them evenly across the final product.

Having small, uniform cannabis particles equally distributed throughout a sample guarantees:

• Increased bioavailability – Small particles maximize surface area and allow for increased dissolution and absorption of the active ingredient by up to 75%.
• Reduced need for more active ingredient – Because more active ingredient can be absorbed, less is needed to make an effect.
• Faster user response – A better active ingredient that dissolves quickly means users feel a faster response.
• Better appearance (and taste, when applicable) – Properly mixing a product makes it look (and taste) better.
• Longer shelf life – Homogenization effectively combines a product’s particles so they can’t separate, creating goods that last longer.

Testing

Homogenization is also critical for the testing and analysis of cannabis edibles. In order to assess potency and search for certain analytes, lab technicians must first homogenize a cannabis sample so that all its particles are evenly dispersed and can be trusted as an accurate and reliable representation of the cannabis edible as a whole. Properly mixing a sample especially helps labs verify the concentration of cannabinoids and terpenoids, those ingredients that most influence a cannabis edible’s overall efficacy. Furthermore, homogenization enables the effective grinding of a sample so that further assay testing can occur.

Want to learn more?

The homogenization process is strengthening the burgeoning cannabis industry. To learn how you can use homogenizers for cannabis products, contact our team at NanoCann. Our proprietary high-pressure homogenizers guarantee cannabis products that are effective, safe, and profitable.

If you liked this article, please follow us on Instagram (@nanocannsystems) and on LinkedIn for more great content!