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In Summary
Jake Wikstrom & Dr. Sorbo from Cool Clean Technologies join Chase Nobles, CEO of Kush.com for the HempList #64
With a background Aerospace Cleaning & Sterilization, Dr. Nelson Sorbo explains how he used his experience to jump into the Hemp / Cannabis extraction business with Cool Clean Technologies, a company that also builds industrial cleaning, cooling, & extraction processes in many applications. Then Chase asks Jake to explain how Cool Clean Technologies has narrowed in on a Fully Automated Subcritical Liquid CO2 extraction system for the Cannabis specific extractions, and how they’ve brought that to market. Additionally, Dr. Sorbo explains some of the science behind their extraction process including what elements of the plant you want to keep in a crude oil, vs everything that is being filtered or processed out and the crew ends the podcast discussing the future of Cannabis if it were to be federally legalized.
Cool Clean Technologies has developed CO2 Extraction systems for various industries for over 20 years. Through comprehensive research in botanical oil extraction, CCT has modified existing technologies to manufacture one of the most unique and versatile extraction systems for the Cannabis market. CCT now has a many Cannabis extraction customers throughout the world, who are using the patented Cold CO2 Extraction™ process to extract high potency Sweet Crude™ Oil, High Terpene Full Spectrum Extract (HTFSE), specialty acid-form extracts, and numerous other products!
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Transcript (Auto-Generated)
hey everybody chase nobles here founder
over at kush.com i’ve got jake wilkstrom
and nelson sorbo from uh cool clean
technologies
and nelson it’s actually dr nelson as an
uh doctor in your environmental
engineering uh so super excited to have
you on the show from a scientific level
i think bringing that credibility to
this space is gonna be helpful for a lot
of people listening um but yeah glad to
have you guys on the podcast welcome to
the show thanks chase appreciate it
ma’am thank you right right on well
let’s just jump right into it nelson you
know as a veteran in engineering and
understanding the science behind this
space what drew you to the cannabis and
hemp industry
well what it turned out it was an
application
of a technology that i’ve been involved
with for over two and a half decades
and
i’m very interested in working in the
hemp space to provide an alternative
health benefit to people
of interest and it turns out that our
technology
works very well with this particular
application and so it was fortuitous
that this application came along when we
already had a solution
and and what was the solution that you
had been working on uh and how did that
progress as as far as your career goes
how long have you been doing this what
were you doing before
give us the give us the origin story the
superhero
very good well i was part of a team in
aerospace in california
that used liquid and supercritical co2
for cleaning aerospace components
and i was also part of a group that was
formed to commercialize that technology
and so back in the mid 90s we started
working on various
liquid co2 based applications
for for example cleaning garments
degreasing things medical device
cleaning sterilization
so in solving those problems we
developed a lot of skills
uh to accomplish those goals and then as
i said when i became aware of and
started working with him
it was a beautiful kind of a
a beautiful
deal it worked out really well
right
no it’s it’s it’s been brewing for
many many years right and you’ve been
doing this long before the industry was
doing co2 extraction um
in the sense of cleaning aerospace parts
and materials that’s a that’s something
i hadn’t even considered co2 extraction
for yes when you were doing the kind of
the cleaning process was there
refinement of what you were cleaning off
or was it purely just to get any and
everything off of the parts
well yes it is about removing the
residues of interest
and so in some cases those residues are
on the surface and other cases those
residues are embedded in the material
and so the experience that we had in
working on removal of residues
and extractables in a material dovetail
perfectly with extracting the good stuff
out of him
yeah now you’re cleaning the hemp plant
right you’re getting all the oils out
for everybody yeah well it used to be
that the good stuff was the parts after
they were cleaned and now the good stuff
is what i pull out of the out of the
biomass so uh
it’s it’s worked out well and i really
enjoy it molecularly if you were
identifying you know
particles of interest what kind of
particles were you that you were were
those that you were trying to clean off
just to try to draw the parallel here
sure
one of the key uh key contaminants of
interest in aerospace and also medical
device manufacturing are silicones
so silicones are part of a silicone
rubber
and sometimes those rubber we call them
monomers are not part of the matrix and
they’re freely photo float around so
that’s bad
if you’re in outer space and that’s also
bad if you use silicone parts in a human
body
and so to process those we use co2 to
solubilize them and then pull them out
so again it dovetails perfectly with
hemp
where you have a trichome with some good
stuff in it co2 goes in and grabs it
pulls it out leaves behind the biomass
and you’ve got the good stuff
right and i imagine with your experience
there’s not much left after you run the
material through
sure it’s it and that’s where the kind
of the chemistry and process engineering
goes to speed that up
to make it more efficient
in some cases to leave certain things
behind like leave behind wets waxes and
fats and things like that but keep all
the good stuff to get the uh
the terpene the terpenes out
so there’s all kinds of interesting um
things to do with the chemistry
right on and jake we’ve got you here
you’re on the sales side you’re on
taking this to market and kind of
boiling all the science and the
technicalities that nelson i’m sure you
know so well dr nelson sorry i’m sure
you know so well
jake you have to refine that and take
that to market what has that experience
been like what have you been up to and
where do you see the opportunities as
far as your company goes uh cool clean
technologies to bring it to market you
know all this experience and education
well it’s definitely uh it’s been an
interesting step from our core business
uh you know we use co2 in all phases so
we do co2 cleaning cooling extraction
all sorts of things so this jump into
the cannabis market uh has been an
interesting one as nelson said it’s been
a pretty fun one
uh and it’s been great to kind of
provide the market with with a new
option for extraction you know many
people have heard of you know super
critical extraction things like that and
we manufacture those type of systems as
well uh but we found for the cannabis
market that subcritical liquid co2
extraction can be a little more
selective
again as nelson was saying we can leave
behind some of those components that we
don’t want to extract and we can provide
customers with flexibility i know
especially in the hemp market we saw a
lot of our customers uh have issues with
as prices started to bottom out
um so we were able to have uh help our
customers kind of develop you know
pressures temperatures certain formulas
so to speak uh to extract things you
know such as uh high terpene full
spectrum extract uh also acid-base
cannabinoid oils so and kind of pivot in
that market and allow them to be
profitable uh in a time where the prices
you know really did bottom out for a lot
of you know just straight cannabinoid uh
oils basically right i think everybody’s
been burned by that price crash and uh
that’s a frequent topic here
but you said something really
interesting there and dr nelson i’d love
to see if you could go a little bit
deeper
when you first extract you know
something with the co2 machine you end
up with this kind of crude oil right and
this crude oil then has to go through
refinement if you want to get it into a
distillate or an isolate or anything in
front
what are the particles that you
specifically want to extract what are
some of the particles that you extract
even though you may not want to and what
are the some of the particles that you
definitely want to leave behind and if
you do it the wrong way you can
accidentally get you know kind of gunk
up your crude oil more than it already
is
sure well the basics are first of all
particulate matter
so we don’t want to uh you know just
kind of the uh the cellulose type type
stuff from a plant you know that’s not
useful at all for anybody
so we have as part of our process we
process all of our uh our biomass in you
know very efficient bags so we kind of
leave that behind in in our extraction
vessel
secondly
the extractables include the the
terpenes
and
those are the good things the uh the
cannabinoids of course are the
the golden the golden
children so to speak
and then the fats and waxes come along
for the ride and so chlorophylls and
some of the other pigmentation come in
and it turns out the chemistry
of co2 is such that we leave along we
leave behind a lot of the
the items that are soluble with other
types of ex uh
solvents such as alcohol so we leave
behind a lot of polar
very polar solvents you know some of the
chlorophylls and things like that so
those are easy for us to
kind of leave behind the things that are
a little more problematic are the fats
and the waxes and so that’s where we
combine our not only our chemistry but
with our process technology
and we can play with things like
temperature and we try to knock out
those
unwanteds in our process and we have
uh means of doing that through not only
through temperature pressure control but
also
other process uh
other process elements like filters and
things like that with without um without
going to a lab with your crude extracts
what are you looking for as far as when
the when the when the oil when you open
up the spout the oil comes out of the
machine what are what are the signs that
you did it right without like i said
without taking it to the lab visually
you know and maybe i don’t know if you
can smell it or anything like that what
are you looking for in a refined crude
oil that doesn’t have
you know all the stuff that you don’t
want in it
well you wanna
i was gonna say for me as soon as you
walk into the lab and uh you can smell
it it smells like an entire field of
cannabis just bloomed um that’s some of
the big developments in the terpene side
as soon as you walk in you can smell it
that’s that’s the first indicator uh the
second other one that’s you know more
qualitative i guess uh is again just the
purity of that oil um
we’re looking for oil that’s you know
that’s clear it’s not milky uh it’s not
gonna have again no particulate in there
it’s not gonna have any of the the
unwanted you know unsightly things that
you would see in oil it’s gonna look if
we do it right it should look like honey
or a molasses or something that’s that’s
very pure um
you know it’s it’s very clear uh and
it’s a high quality high quality oil and
you can just you can just tell by the
site
right on with that information i think
it’s really important to kind of jump
into how does cool clean technologies
you know perform in the market what do
you guys do if a farm comes to you or a
manufacturer an extractor comes to you
and they say hey we want to
have the capability to create crude
create distillate create isolate
potentially what what is the package
that cool clean technologies can bring
to the market whenever it comes to that
question
well we provide a fully automated system
for these type of manufacturers and
whether that’s you know someone that
wants to do kind of a hub model uh where
they buy a system and extract you know
for farmers around them in the hemp
market or if it’s someone you know with
heavy investment they want to be
vertically integrated and bring
extraction into their you know into
their processes
will help every single type of customer
to do this
and that comes in the form of you know
first of all providing the system that
is fully automated uh comes from you
know medical and aerospace fields so all
the data is collected
everything is kind of built to an fda
standard because these systems have been
used in fda approved environments um so
first of all we provide that system
second of all we help them you know with
the formulas the pressures the
temperatures needed uh to help create
products that they’re actually going
towards so you know whether they want to
you know create a full spectrum extract
they want to go after the high terpene
full spectrum extract they want to you
know create
something that’s you know basically
ready for distillation process
these are all different processes for us
within our machine and we help them
develop that process to get the product
that they’re desired
and the in the machines that you all
manufacture you’re not in the distillate
market you guys are purely in the
extracting at a high efficiency rate for
exactly what you want to crude actually
correct we call it sweet crude because
it is it is going to be a higher quality
we’re going to have cannabinoid content
you know 70 to 80 plus percent um if
we’re going for terpenes we’ll be above
20
pretty much every time so again it’s
this it’s a crude extract but it’s we’re
going for high quality crude extracts
now i know you get this question a lot
jake
whenever somebody’s trying to determine
ethanol
hydrocarbons
co2
you know without being the boilerplate
pitch why why is co2 the right direction
that you want people to go and what’s
what’s the biggest difference that you
all see in the finished good
well especially you know with with
alcohol you have health and safety
concerns again as nelson said it’s a
great solvent but it is aggressive uh
you’re gonna get things that you don’t
want it’s gonna require you know further
refinement you’re gonna have to remove
the ethanol from your extract there’s a
couple you know hindrances there in
terms of co2 uh again we we make super
critical co2 extraction machines we just
found for cannabis they’re a little too
aggressive um you’re gonna get more of
what you don’t want uh with the stuff
that you do want so again you know i am
of course a little biased uh but seeing
the quality of the oil that we get from
our systems it’s uh it’s exciting uh
it’s something that frankly i haven’t
seen in the industry and um it’s
exciting to be a part of that kind of
next level of how can we refine through
processes to make you know the highest
quality crude extract that we can and
that’s the sub-critical how about
hydrocarbons what’s what’s the what’s
the conversation around hydrocarbons how
do you all look at them
i mean
frankly hydrocarbons produce high
quality oil they do um and what i kind
of say always is you know we will be the
closest to hydrocarbon uh without those
volatile chemicals again there’s health
and safety concerns uh you have to
remove those two i think it’s you know
parts per million or billion it’s uh
that’s not something that you want in
your body so just in terms of you know
we can provide the highest quality
extracts uh in the most natural form
because okay if there’s co2 left
we exhale co2 every day you know it’s
not something that’s uh it’s volatile or
it’s going to harm you know people
around right on so if you’re listening
out there
subcritical co2
doesn’t strip the plant as much as
supercritical co2 lesson number one
lesson number two
ethanol strips even more than
supercritical co2 potentially and takes
off a lot of the plant
lesson number three hydrocarbons are
really hard to compete with but you have
to deal with hydrocarbons that are
explosive and then you have to get all
those hydrocarbons out at the end of the
day so
subcritical co2 cool clean technologies
bring it into the market thank you guys
so much for being a part of the podcast
and we’re excited to have you on the
show dr nelson thank you so much jake
pleasure having you on the show thanks
chase appreciate it thank you