Hey there everyone. I am in need of new freezers for our fresh frozen product, that being said I was curious if there is a preferred freezer brand that people like to use or has done them right in the past. Thanks for the help.
I got a so low -85 17cf horizontal freezer I’m about to let go. Works great for freezing fresh material, or chilling your 6x48 columns.
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the right freezer depends on how much you’re trying to freeze and how long it’s gonna be till you get to extracting it.
small grow, that harvests a plant, freezes it, then extracts that day doesn’t need but dry ice.
we use a 40ft refrigerated shipping container. some of those come with diesel backup…because 2500sq.ft of mush doesn’t do anyone any good (claims of cbd extraction from wet baled excluded).
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ThermoKing conex units go down to -40C whereas everyone else only goes to -20 or -30.
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tell us how much you’re trying to freeze and for how long…other wise the answers will be mostly irrelevant.
a -80C chest style freezer will get the job done for some. -40C gets things frozen faster (than -20C) and is more likely to stay below 0C when you add fresh to your frozen (add more biomass to a partial freezer full). -20C is sufficient to KEEP things frozen.
one could pair a -80C chest freezer with a large -20C walkin, freeze fast, then transfer. which one could look at as an upgrade (expansion) path were one to start with the -80
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Frozen is frozen. You can rely on electrical power, or you can use DI to flash freeze your material, and DI to prep your material for extraction. The rest of the time -0 is usually plenty cold.
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We are freezing 160-240lb a day. We have 2x large walk in freezers that we use for storage but I am looking to replace our chest style right now. What is the brand is your -80 freezer? Thanks.
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-80 chest freezer almost certainly isn’t up for that volume. .
40lb seems closer without supplementing with dry ice.
@TheGratefulPhil or @Lincoln20XX could probably do the math for us to actually confirm or deny what are essentially guesses on my part.
As far as brand? I’ll get back to you. It was used and we have not worked it hard nor long yet.
It’s NOT, a SoLow nor a Forma.
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-0o
I assume you’re using F?
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How much?
My magic 8-ball says it’s likely insufficient. Your guess seems reasonable.
But my strength in this area is in process thermodynamics, not “freeze this stationary thing using just the air around it” which to me has always seemed like a not fantastic idea.
Most chest freezers tend to have fuck all capacity at low temperatures. They’re good at holding things at temp. Less good at getting them there at the speed you’d like.
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Good ole American me… Yes.
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Great suggestions! I can’t believe that didn’t occur to me until I read your posts.
They made me modify my FF plan using multiple -40’C freezers, insulated coolers with DI for 24-hours, a DI maker, and a small (12 CF) LN2 blast freezer.
Now, I’m planning for a 153 CF LN2 -84C blast freezer (for flash) in the drying room with the bucker, vac sealers, and Illuminated’s new automatic sock filler. In the extraction lab, two -20’C chest freezers (for process staging and column chilling). And a -20’C walk-in freezer (for bulk storage) in the equipment room. And the cost shouldn’t be too much more than my original plan.
The 153 CF blast freezer fits two baker’s racks. So I’ll be able to flash freeze many vac bags and packed socks simultaneously.
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Sounds like you get all the fun toys 
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Only by the grace of people like you, @vortal, @SubstituteCreature, @Cannachem, @FicklePickle, and about 100 other members here. Without you guys, I wouldn’t know which fun toys I need! 
BTW, if you’re ever in MI, you’ve got a standing invitation to stop by for some fun 
action. The 
and 
are on me 
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Happy to be able to give useful info 
I may take you up on that, it sounds fun!
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Here’s the equipment quote for the 153 CU LN2 blast freezer:
The employee I’m working with gave me a roughly calculated dwell time of 7 minutes. But it was under incorrect assumptions (70’F flower temp when loading the freezer). So, the dwell time when using an insulated cooler with dry ice immediately after harvest should be much shorter, maybe <5 minutes.
If they would accept it, does anyone from IL want to help their R&D for our industry by gifting them some fresh flowers?
From our emails:
Me:
Do you have customers using your blast freezer for flash-freezing fresh cannabis (e.g., in vacuum bags or material socks for butane extraction)? And if so, have they reported dwell times that work for them?
Them:
I have been speaking with another customer recently who has a similar product, but is not using vacuum bags or anything, and is wanting to put the product through one of our tunnel freezers. Despite Illinois (our company location) being a recreational state, this is a product that is hard to get large quantity of to use for testing to determine accurate dwell times, and has been an industry that has been having increased interest in our freezer products. The dwell times are different depending on the desired temperature out, which I have been doing math on this product anywhere from 0F to -20F. This is something I have estimated to have a dwell time (Going from 70F to 0F) of about 7min, but I am unaware of how accurate this is, or what the difference would be with the product condensed down into vacuum bags. I have not gotten any information back from any of the customers I have spoken with, and this is something I wish was easier for us to test with our freezers so that I could have more accurate information and data on this.
My apologies that I do not have all the data and knowledge that would be of more accurate use, and this is something I have brought up with our owner to see if there is something we could do within the legal standards to test this product with our freezers so we would have the right information.
Me:
No apologies are necessary. What you wrote is very helpful. If you want to test yourself, send me your address, and I’ll ship you a few pounds of flowers! (kidding) Once I collect dwell time data and other metrics, I’m happy to share them with you, mainly if you help me tweak and optimize my SOP with your blast freezer.
Regarding dwell time, the best growers will pre-chill the plant material with dry ice. So the plant material should be well below 70’F before loading into the blast freezer. Probably closer to freezing or below -20’C on the outside of the buds, and closer to 0’C (30’F) to 10’C (50’F) inside the thicker buds.
Here’s a typical optimized workflow for indoor cultivation companies making the best fresh frozen. The goal is to minimize the time plant material is exposed to room temperature. The following is on a per-plant basis for simplicity in my email; it’s scaled to hundreds or thousands of plants as needed:
- Harvest plants in the grow room
- Immediately place harvested plants into an insulated cooler with dry ice to pre-chill the plant material.
- Transport cooler to trim/drying room
- Remove a single plant and trim large fan leaves from the plant
- De-bud branches from a plant (typically with a bucker) and place buds into a separate insulated cooler with dry ice.
- Lghtly vacuum seal buds. Layer the buds, so the bag is reasonably thin to reduce freezing time and ensure buds in the center of the bag freeze at the same rate as the outer buds. Vacuum sealing minimizes the bud’s oxygen exposure and simplifies post-freeze handling.
- Place vacuum-sealed bags into a separate insulated cooler with dry ice
- Once enough vacuum bags to fill the blast freezer have been prepared, load the freezer
- Run the freezer to ensure the center of all buds to reach -20’C to -30’C as fast as possible.
Most growers would prefer the center of all buds to reach -20’C (-4’F) to -30’C (-22’C) during flash freezing. Currently, most growers would leave vacuumed sealed flowers in a dry ice-packed insulated cooler, -40’C, or -80’C freezer for at least 24-hours. But that’s probably overkill. While a dwell time of one hour has been found insufficient, if the cooler isn’t overpakced, a few hours under those conditions should be sufficient.
The YouTube link about FF 1-hour dwell time in a dry ice cooler is from the Cannabis Cultivation and Sceince podcast Episode 97 The Importance of Terpenes and the Entourage Effect with Dr. Ethan Russo - YouTube, when Dr. Russo discusses his study I posted here: Goodbye ice-water hash, hello dry ice kif? (Nope...)
Did you move forward with this blast freezer? Were currently looking to get solution for flash freezing our harvests as dry ice prices are unstable and a consumable we’d like to get away from if possible.
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