Converting Sugars into Cannabinoids—The State-of-the-Art of Heterologous Production in Microorganisms
Favero, Gabriel Rodrigues, De Melo Pereira, Gilberto Vinícius, De Carvalho, Júlio Cesar, De Carvalho Neto, Dão Pedro, Soccol, Carlos Ricardo
The cells are then sent to a settling tank (ST-101) in which ethyl acetate is used with a 2:1 ratio to resuspend the cells and subsequently promote liquid-liquid extraction. The biphasic mixture passes through a liquid–liquid separator (LS-101), wherein the upper (organic) phase contains cannabinoids, ethyl acetate, and the lower phase is composed of water, ethyl acetate, and nutrients/culture medium. 9-THCA oxidation into CBNA and other secondary reactions [ The filtrate is then sent to a set of multiple effects falling film evaporators (EV-01/02) to remove part of the solvent and prepare the product for the decarboxylation step. The last step is to remove the residual solvent in the product and promote the decarboxylation of Δ-THCA into Δ-THC. For this step, a decarboxylation vacuum oven (DO-101) is proposed, in which the mixture is dispersed into trays with temperature close to 120 °C for up to one hour [ 105 ].