Hello there,
I am back with a new idea.
Maybe one could seperate trichome from frozen leave more gently by an air jet like in an air jet sieve but cold and vibrating.
That’s it.
What do you think?
Is it worth the effort?
Ice water works well because once the plant material is rehydrated it is not so brittle, making it easier to avoid contaminant.
Dry sift on the other hand is very challenging because the material is very dry and prone to breaking. Thats why processes like static tech and carding are required to clean up dry sift to be full melt.
I imagine cold air would suffer this same problem. What would it offer that dry sifting does not accomplish? Unless you could find some way to use air to separate the trichrome from the contaminant, but static seems much better suited for that.
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For water there is additional microbial contamination risk and the cleaning of cold surface can be easy.
By frozen leave I mean fresh frozen. It is less brittle and has more volatiles.
Maybe if one choses the right geometry for a fluidized bed one can only rub the leaves against each other in the air so the trichomes fall off.
I believe the contamination would be acceptable for further seperation like winnowing in a gravity sifter and electrostatic separation or just the vibrating sieve.
Are there other materials for triboelectrostatic
Would a high voltage supply be needed for that or could the friction caused by particle movement be enough?
Does static even work on fresh frozen trichome contaminant mix?
What about vibrating sifter?
There are many companies that do this!
-CryoMass is a company making equipment for the hemp space,
-The Resinator is the OG commercial cryo dry sifter
- Heck you can just grab a large tank of nitrogen with a dip tube for that teeny bit o LN2 in the tank and use that as a “Cold Breeze + agitation” over your dry sifting screens you’ve got at home!
Dry sifting isn’t that hard, or complicated, it just takes practice and patience, and a solid understanding of your input material and its supply chain.
I wouldn’t recommend learning dry sifting with fresh frozen material to start however.
2 Likes
I believe cold water and terpene rich trichomes are a critical match in terms of friction and robustness at this temperature.
Can bleeding of the trichome be avoided in such cases - or - how bad can efficiencies get?
I am just thinking theoretically now.
I want to think fresh frozen. It’s fresh.
Is it less brittle in relation to the trichomes at that temperature compared to room temperature dry material brittleness - or - does fresh frozen sieving produce less contamination than classic dry sieving?
Does electrostatic separation work with fresh frozen trichome contaminant mix? With high voltage supply?
For tumblers maybe a cold air knive is helpfull that blows from outside through the sieve to counterwash it, to rub the leaves, to disperse the particles in the air and to push them out of the drum.
This way one could use a refridgeration system to cool everything.
I believe the contamination would be acceptable for electrostatic separation.
Then there are varrious electrostatic fluidized bed seperators that could be operated at freezing temperatures.
Please search for images.
I think for the production of kief simultanious entrainmentaiment and disintegration followed by electrostatic separation could help to reduduce the residual trichome in the spent biomass and decontaminate the kief in comparrison to other disintegration procedures.
Do you think electrifiing the drum to charge the fine particle for subsequent free falling electrostatic fractionation is possible?
I hope to be helpfull.
Pillow case and dry ice, shake shake shake
Then dry sieve to desired micron