Cold Ethanol Extraction of hemp biomass with foreign matter

Hash and Stuff Extraction
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Question for the organic cold ethanol folks.

Backstory: I hand bucked my Cherry biomass last season successfully, however it seems we may have had some foreign particles (shredded tire pieces) that accidentally got into a sack or two. My extractor threshed the hand bucked hemp into fractions but found about 2-3lbs of these rubber pieces (.25 to .5 inches) in roughly 1100 lbs.

Question: Is this batch total shit now or is it possible to extract and still not contaminate the resulting crude oil? Does this violate the organic certification/process?

Thanks for any insights as well as any cures.

John

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My idea would be to grind/shred the material, with something that wouldn’t pulverize the rubber bits as well. Then sift the biomass through a screen.

This is fairly easy to do on a small scale with a blender to remove seeds from bud for pre rolls, since the bud shreds way before the seeds do. (what I’m actually doing right now)

As for the scale you are talking about though, that’s a tough one.
I believe there is a thread or two on here about extracting seeded biomass and maybe possible ways to remove the seeds, could be applicable to rubber bits as well. Good luck, sweet hat.

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Shatter, thanks for the feedback. I forgot to mention that the fractions have all been completed (seed, stem and bud) but the tire remains in the bud portion. I guess what really has me puzzled is whether rubber tire can be degraded that quickly in a cold ethanol bath (10-30 min?) and how much will affect the extraction results. Thanks again.

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I would definitely not extract that material. Until it’s been cleaned, through sifting or some other means. That seems like a huge health hazard to your consumers, to run ethanol/whatever your solvent of choice is over tire rubber contaminated material.

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Thanks Jamesv… just wanting to get an idea of the magnitude. We will definitely sift out as much of the material we can to ensure any contamination issues. Im a data guy and I like to understand numbers on a “parts per million” impact for the resultant tests.

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You could extract it and purify it to high hell and sell it explicitly for non inhalation purposes

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So material is already ground up?

I wonder if a seed sorter that uses a vacuum would be enough separation to pull the leaves & bud and leave the rubber pieces behind.

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The tire pieces were on the floor of a riding arena and at the end of hand bucking my crew accidentally swept some of this material and it got into the totes… a small amount (1 cup in 1000lbs)

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There’s a lot if unsold hemp now, can you write off the sacks?

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Thanks everyone for weighing in on this. I believe this to be an isolated situation and have realized that the threshed biomass is contaminated and now does not meet organic standards. We live and learn in this new industry. Going forward, I will be doing my own Quality Control prior to handing over to an extractor. Again, thanks for the input.

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