Looking for some help with degassing extracted biomass. We have a new lab coming up that should be able to do 300lbs/day but have not been able to find out a process for degassing that much. We have looked into tumble driers and cascade ovens as well as many other oven options but the thought of basically having kindling mixed with ethanol in an oven is scary. We could get a trailer storage unit and retrofit it to have fans blowing through it. We have also looked into using acetic acid bacteria to turn the ethanol into vinegar. We are in an area where its cold half the year so just leaving stuff outside is not an option. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.
Click on the link, read the advice, if you still have questions…ask there
Just get it wet. It’s ethanol not hydrocarbon. Ethanol will be diluted with water
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Ethanol is a hydrocarbon… Just not organic … just saying. Also 300lbs is only like 4 big trash cans
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Just throw it out. Trust me, most ethanol processors are not devoting much thought or effort here.
They are just flipping and emptying their socks into 3 or 6mil trashbags, and sending it to the dump.
I’m speaking from experience at a lab doing 1200-1500/day.
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Centrifuge is key
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Id have to figure out some profitable I could make off spent biomass. Compost… hemp Crete, something
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All of this dude… there’s soooo much waste material it’s a flippant shame.
Nobody has figured out a profitable means of managing it yet it seems.
I always thought a cannabis fiber replacement for plastic ware would be amazing, it’s just a manner of sorting out the binding agent.
Hell even fire pellets…
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It really is terrible. The fact that we can’t just compost it is a damn fucking shame.
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ding ding ding…
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Ethanol is not a hydrocarbon, tis an alcohol. It is also most definitely organic.
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“Ethanol is a member of the alcohol hydrocarbon derivative family of chemicals. All alcohols are flammable and toxic to some degree. Hydrocarbon derivatives get their name from the fact they are hydrocarbons to start with and have other chemical elements added to create a new chemical that has some economic value.”
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I’ve talked to multiple labs that are/were paying a dumpster service to just haul thousands of pounds of it away per week, undoubtedly to be buried in a landfill. Which is a crying shame considering that even post-extraction it’s still got significant nitrogen content and makes a fantastic soil amendment and compostable ingredient, especially here in the southwest where our soil is full of sand and clay and not so full of nutrients that plants crave.
If the USDA/FDA would get out of the way and give hemp GRAS status the fresh and not moldy stuff makes a great animal food. Pigs love the seeds and the flower is high in protein and low in carbs, I.E. it’ll build muscle without making them fat. Unfortunately due to aforementioned acronym agencies those can’t be fed to animals intended for consumption or produce products like milk that are. And some animals that won’t be consumed like horses can’t be fed it due to regulations put forth by orgs like the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) who have stated that animals which test positive for cannabinoids will be DQ’ed from competition (Source: Positive Tests for Cannabis Products Will Result in Violation - AQHA)
So where does that leave us? Rock and a hard place for now. I’m selling off supersacks for use as a compostable, clean fill and soil amendment here in CO for $15 per supersack and have been able to take the spent product from a couple of other labs as well. If hemp was given GRAS status like other animal feeds already have that price would go up dramatically. Farmers feeding livestock can’t get 500 lbs of a high protein feed ingredient for anywhere close to that price point, hell, selling it for half of what the local co-op gets for something you can legally feed to your cows or pigs would be a dramatic improvement for many labs who are hurting given the market dynamics of hemp crude and other derivatives.
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Not trying to turn this into a competition of who can swing their dick around more. Just trying to provide the facts clear so people dont get the wrong idea.
Hydrocarbons are compounds that are made of only hydrogen and carbon - hence HYDRO-CARBON. Alcohols are derived (made from) hydrocarbons but also have a hydroxyl group (OH) attached.
Alcohols are very polar due to the oxygen that is attached.
Hydrocarbons are very non polar.
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