In a study to be published in The International Journal of Pure and Applied Analytical Chemistry, researchers have revealed that it is possible to use a hard-cap espresso machine to create cannabis extracts. The team of researchers made the extracts, meant to be used for analysis, with a common laboratory solvent and a $300 espresso machine.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Valencia in Spain using cannabis that had been seized by law enforcement.
“It has been evidenced that the developed method for the major cannabinoids extraction is a really encouraging example of the wide range of possibilities that a conventional and low cost hard cap espresso assisted extraction could offer in analytical laboratories.” — Excerpt from the study “Fast extraction of cannabinoids in marijuana samples by using hard-cap espresso machines”
Researchers compared extractions of THC, CBD and CBN made with the espresso machine and the solvent 2-propanol to a more traditional ultrasound-assisted extraction using both gas chromatography and ion mobility spectrometry. The method was comparable in accuracy and more importantly, vastly cheaper and faster.
This method of extraction could be used in a laboratory setting but deserves more experimentation to see how else it may be employed. Researchers in a variety of chemical fields have lately been using hard-cap espresso extraction (HCEE) to obtain samples for analysis.