Bench top centrifuge for concentrates?

[dablab21]

Distillation seems to be the most common answer in the industry, but I also now see centrifuges being used more often for separation and preparatory chromatography.

I've always wanted one of those benchtop centrifuges, starting with curiosities stemming from molecular gastronomy. I'm wondering, can a benchtop centrifuge be used to separate cannabinoids in the right solvent system(s)? Or is there some additional magic to this such as temperature, vacuum or pressure which would make this equipment less viable?

I assume a benchtop could not process much at all. This doesn't matter much to me, it's just for the giggles of producing my own high quality dab with a neat toy.

 

[Pondracer]

What can you get a benchtop one for (price)?

 

[dablab21]

Centrifugal partition chromatography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The extraction cells consist of hollow bodies with inlets and outlets of liquid connection. The cells are first filled with the liquid chosen to be the stationary phase. Under rotation, the pumping of the mobile phase is started, which enters the cells from the inlet. When entering the flow of mobiles phase forms small droplets according to the Stokes' law, which is called atomization. These droplets fall through the stationary phase, creating a high interface area, which is called the extraction. At the end of the cells, these droplets unite due to the surface tension, which is called settling.
When a sample mixture is injected as a plug into the flow of mobile phase the compounds of the mixtures elute according to their partition coefficients: {\displaystyle V_{elution}=V_{dead-volume}+K_{upper/lower}*V_{stationary-phase}}

Centrifugal partition chromatography requires only a biphasic mixture of solvents, so by varying the constitution of the solvent system it is possible to tune the partition coefficients of different compounds so that separation is guaranteed by the high selectivity.

What I am not sure of is if that can be accomplished somehow with a benchtop and not those tube fed cells...

 

[dablab21]

I got this response on another forum from a gent named Fadedawg and thought it was great so I would share it here. Basically the answer is NO: you won't be accomplishing this with a benchtop centrifuge.

"Centrifugal Partition Chromatography without the partitions? The centrifuge provides only the force, with the stationary phase liquids in the tubes doing the separating.
Tongue in cheek and out of the box, in a solution, the molecules are comingled and held together by Vander Waal forces, but they all have different molecular weights, so if you spun them fast enough you might generate enough force to overcome VW and separate the constituents into layers, which could be harvested with a tangent tap in the outer wrapper like they do with a cream separator.
That is ostensibly at a high enough rpm and large enough centrifuge diameter to be challenging finding centrifuge rotating components that are up to it, and the scatter shield around it would ostensibly make it countertop unfriendly.
My guess is that you could use centrifugal forces to push a mobile through a packed chromatography column, instead of a liquid stationary. Maybe with multiple columns arranged around a central spinning shaft. Maybe looking something like a radial aircraft engine and if they were short columns it might fit on a countertop. "

 

[Moe.Red]

So are you trying to separate cannabinoids by molecule or separate the cannabinoids from all other molecules?

I've played with a lot of tech, and the only way I have found to do this small scale is a column. You can get small ones for tiny batches. Generally compressed air is used to push rather than centrifugal force.