An increasingly popular solution for making CBD ‘water-soluble’ is to create a CBD nanoemulsion. To begin to form an understanding of how a nanoemulsion works, picture taking a bottle containing oil and water. When you shake that bottle of water, the single layer of oil will split to form many smaller droplets. When making a nanoemulsion, you’re doing this same thing but using specialized equipment.
CBD is a fat-soluble cannabinoid that is growing in popularity. For bioavailability and for the sake of making CBD-infused products, it is important to know how to make “water-soluble” CBD. Here, we describe solubility and solutions for making water-soluble CBD, such as by using a CBD nanoemulsion.
The difference between nanoemulsions and microemulsions, however, is not so much one of size as of their functional features and how they are made. While both types of emulsion require similar ingredients — oil, water and one or more surfactants — microemulsions, which are thermodynamically stable, will spontaneously self-assemble. In contrast, nanoemulsions are made using technological processes like mechanical shearing or sonication to create droplets with wavelengths shorter than the wavelengths of visible light (and therefore seen by human eyes as clear).