When it comes down to it Quality is better than Quantity every time. Having a lot of poor quality anything can prove to be very troublesome. Many fast-growing businesses choose quantity as the most important thing to consider when getting a process off the ground and their company seeing revenue, but in that case quality always suffers. More mature established businesses have a good quality focus in line with the scope or overall strategy of the project, organization, etc. Quantity seems to be an afterthought to good product manufactures because all their time is spent focused on a quality product, which goes much further in the eyes of the consumer. When considering extracted products, which are the ingredients in many of the everyday items we all consume, I like to think that they are produced by the purest highest quality method and technology we have available and CO2 is inert and pure. Even though I started out extracting with CO2, I took a long journey down steam distillation, also ethanol and hydrocarbon extraction paths only to find out that ultimately CO2 extraction produces the best quality product. CO2 extracted oil stays true to the therapeutic properties of the botanical you’re extracting, it is the best and safest method of capturing the essence of the botanical. In search of greater quantities some processors of botanical oils have sought greater and greater yields with the solvency power of ethanol and even butane mixed with propane to leach out and soak up the desired botanicals. The folks that went the ethanol route for its rapid and high yielding extraction capability quickly learned that even though ethanol is typically involved in the downstream processes, having it as the upfront extraction processes proved to make all downstream processing more troublesome unless the ethanol was super chilled upfront. Keeping it chilled as it passes through the botanical material proves to be challenging as well. Some other folks who went the Hydrocarbon route (butane and propane) to get yield numbers up found that while although a hydrocarbon is one of the best solvents for extracting cannabinoids there is still a lot of downstream post-processing that the extract needs to go through for it to be consumable, namely purging of the hazardous hydrocarbon gas out of the extract. Purging is a very necessary step for extraction processes using hydrocarbons and unless the starting material is freshly frozen, purging the hydrocarbon will also purge the end product of nearly all of the botanical material’s healthy compounds as well. Steam distillation of essential oils and terpenes always produces an adequate amount of terpenes but ones that are altered by the water/steam in a way that makes them have a less aromatic appeal than those derived from CO2 extraction. Even within CO2 extraction you have different levels of quality. While supercritical CO2 yields more extract it also contains more unwanted lipids and fats. Subcritical CO2 is the best quality essential oil extract, it smells fantastic, looks very appealing, and is ready for final productization straight out of the machine.

Link to CO2 Equipment that anyone can use to make pure natural flavors, aromas, extracts, ingredients, etc. https://ousialabs.com/

Here is an external link to read more about why choosing quality over quantity. https://www.minimalismmadesimple.com/home/quality-over-quantity/