Trying to find an economical way to grind up 1,000 lbs a day of biomass for extraction without killing my employees! Really don’t want to spend a bunch of money on a mill. Any advice? Thanks!
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Plastic granulator off eBay.
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How much stem material is in it? Did you buck it or is it still whole plant? There are some very economical options depending on your input material. I personally like a dust collection system like the ones they use in wood shops, simply use the suction side to send bucked, dry biomass through the blower, this will chop it up small but not super fine, great for most extraction systems. They usually have a very clean flow path since clogs and residue inside a dust collector is potentially dangerous. For smaller amounts a black and Decker leaf mulcher works alright
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I have a dust collection setup after my plastic granulator for this exact reason, however the blower wasn’t enough to grind the biomass without you through the plastic mill first.
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I get a new 5-10,000k lbs shipment from different farmers every week so and the consistency is always different. Sometimes lots of stems and sometimes hardly any… We are using hand held leaf mulchers and it works great for extraction, but is far too labor intensive to sustain long term. Thanks for the advice we are going to look into it!
looking into it! Thank you sir!
Where are you located? If you’re ever in the Denver area I’m open to meeting and talking about these topics in detail. I’ll be in Indiana a few days in August too.
My experience has been mostly with hammer mills and chipper shredders, granulators usually aren’t all that different from hammer mills, unfortunately seems most of the people selling these things aren’t in our industry and don’t have a clue what our needs are like when compared with other industries they sell to. For most other industrial applications their dust isn’t nearly as useful or valuable as ours is. Our ideal material profile (at least for ethanol extraction) doesn’t really match most other agricultural products.
To make things flow well (not to mention less of a nightmare for your employees) you also need to consider a lot of the material handling that surrounds a grinder of any sort, how you’re going to handle/move and dump supersacks, how you’re going to get it from floor level into the mouth of your grinder and where it is going to go and how it’s going to get there when it exits the other side of your grinder.
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Hey @greenbuggy! Thanks for your input. We are in Tacoma, WA. Dust control is definitely something I have considered while looking into the granulators. We do ethanol extraction as well. Whatever option we go towards i would absolutely consider all that you mentioned… Would love to hear more of your advice if you would be open to phone call! Any help is much appreciated. Thanks again!
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Well I do hear the mainland has some cheap labor
@FullCycle_Extraction I can help as well. @greenbuggy does seem to know a lot about the requirements.
Airflow is critical when trying to process Cannabis (everything but the stalk). Moisture is also very important to know. Anything above say 20% and you are going to have a tough time working the material through the screen that is used to size it. Another critical component is that hammers that are used. Check out our beveled edge hammers that we designed specifically for the Cannabis industry.
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Big fan of Fritsch. I have one of their mills and we can really push material through it. Their whole business is making mills and grinders. Not a cheap option but definitely a quality machine and I would recommend one.
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