Extracting active compounds from cannabis for medicinal purposes is a fast-growing industry world-wide. The enormous impact this could have on the local cannabis industry has seized the imagination of a Stellenbosch University chemical engineering team who have developed and patented a unique extraction process involving the purification of plant wax to preserve active compounds
Cannabis Africa
31 October 2024 at 05:00:00
Stellenbosch University’s Chemical Engineering Department’s Cannabis Project is lead Associate Professor Neill Goosen. Others in his project team are are Prof Robbie Pott, Prof Eugene van Rensburg and Jan Hendrik Duminy. The project is part of SU’s drive for sustainability in manufacturing.
Collectively the team has developed a ‘process that increases productivity by co-extracting plant waxes which preserve active compounds which would otherwise have been lost.
Prof Goosen says the research has enabled them to develop their own process which has potential for commercial application..
Prof Goosen explains that during the extraction of active compounds, plant waxes are co-extracted and purified on their own. The removed waxes contain significant amounts of active compounds that would have otherwise been lost in the extraction process.
“This represents both an economic loss and a suboptimal utilisation of natural resources” he says.
“We have already published three scientific papers and we hold an international patent for the process.“We are busy engaging with local medicinal cannabis processing operations to showcase our results and to establish whether there is a route for implementing our work in the industry."
The anticipated impact of the research in terms of sustainability is significant.
“We are employing chemical engineering principles to extract more valuable products from the same amount of original plant material, potentially decreasing the overall amount of waste produced in the medicinal cannabis industry.”
Goosen hopes to see their work contribute to the growth of the cannabis industry in a sustainable way, especially in South Africa.
#
Cannabiz Africa Weekly Newsline
The Business Of Cannabis
Free every Thursday.
CANNABIS INDUSTRY
BREAKING NEWS
