Imagine a ton of water beeing extracted due to the hydrogen bonding
And i wonder If a simple distillation of your ethanol wil get to 96%
If your extraction picks up more than 10 % water etho distillation needs evaporation plates to purify not sure Any wfe can do that
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No, it’s not.
That would put “whole plant” close to 95% cannabinoids once cured.
That is cured flower, or VERY dry whole plant (which is ideal for ethanol => distillate)
Wet (fresh) whole plant is considerably LESS than 10% potency by weight. I’d put fresh frozen whole plant in the 3% cannabinoids range. Assuming 25% cannabinoids on cured buds. ==> closer to 12% on “whole plant” => ~3% on your fresh frozen.
Which you’ll notice agrees with @TriPro’s 4x.
As far as -40C (or F! 
) being cold enough not to pull water, all I have is @Photon_noir’s -67C for halting chlorophyl pickup.
I’ve heard fresh frozen cryo-ethanol can be done, but for distillate, where the terps are tossed, rather than it seems like the hard way do get the job done.
You’d be far better served by drying you input biomass than freezing. If you want the terps as well, you might consider adding a process step to grab them before ethanol. although I haven’t heard an ideal solution there yet.
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@cyclopath So what would the ideal post harvest process look like for the best trim for cold ethanol extraction and highest thc/cbd retention?
How about: Wet buck, rack dry, then nitrogen flush vacuum seal to remove 99.5% oxygen? Is anything being done superior to that process?
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I agree with everyone else here, fresh frozen for distillate is way too much work. But if you want those terpenes, you could steam distill them, then dry and grind the biomass, then extract that dried and ground biomass, but I am not sure how well steam distillation for terpenes scales, I only do it for about 8kg per steam distillation of fresh frozen flower.
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that sounds right to me. for ethanol. probably CO2.
fresh frozen makes awesome hydrocarbon extracts
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Ah. Just read through that thread, and I have similar questions as @Sapes. With our steam distilled flower we inline filter with a little silica gel, and have had no issues with the final product of distillate, but we are also doing BHO.
On the 20% I was referencing dried and cured biomass that is a large percentage of flower. The four times figure seems reasonable. Good information.
Then the consensus is that it would be more efficient to defrost the product prior to ethanol extraction? Grinding the frozen product probably wouldn’t help.
Just to clarify, I’m not putting this strategy forward out of choice. Larger cultivation operations are deciding that it is just not cost effective to harvest and dry the whole plant product. Increasingly as cultivators and manufacturers try to scale the supply chain, the fresh frozen approach to harvest is becoming an alternative. So what I’m really trying to develop are SOPs for dealing with this eventuality that I believe will become more common.
I have successfully extracted biomass at -40 and its only problematic without the right equipment. I was able on a smaller scale to keep water out of the solvent at -40 and leave behind a considerable amount of waxes and lipids as well. But I’ve never considered or had any experience with developing a production line that addresses the supply chain on this scale.
I’m not after terpenes in this model. This is only a process to make distillate. I just don’t see an effective way to obtain terps prior to distillation. I’m thinking that harvesting terpenes would require a separate hydrocarbon production line that had the best fresh frozen diverted to that and was just devoted to terps.
Again I’m trying to develop these numbers out of necessity. Is it a better choice to find a large scale method of defrosting this whole plant product that arrives frozen at -25 and is testing at 20-25% on specimens taken of the dried and cured product before freezing (I’ve seen the COAs) without damaging it?
I’ve also looked at cryogrinding the frozen material which I believe might address the reduced volume of the fresh frozen product. This is no easy process either but indications are that it would reduce volume by a factor of 3-5 X.
Any other thoughts?
I use a paint mixing paddle attached to a drill in conjunction with direct injection of LN2 into my plant material to cryo mill/flash freeze and it does indeed reduce volume drastically. Id say right around the 3-4x mark.
Only thing I can think of is to setup several dehydrators in a smallish room and place your thawed material on large trays throughout the room with the dehumidifiers running full blast. You should be able to thaw and pull out a substantial amount of moisture this way. You can then throw the thawed material in a large industrial dehydrator (FD Heat Pump Dehydrators from Nyle Systems | Brewer, Maine) to remove any remaining moisture. This way you are minimizing the addition of heat which should help minimize any damage.
just to be clear, offering me frozen biomass that I have to dry to 20% of it’s weight before I even attempt to extract it is going to have me going to the guy that hung it in a barn and dried it first.
just because it’s easy for the farmer to flash freeze, doesn’t make drying it the processors problem. nor storing it.
sure, I’ll take your frozen biomass. in six to ten months. good luck storing at -20C for that long and making a profit.
supply vs demand…if nobody wants frozen, they’ll figure that out.
we’ve got so much surplus biomass come harvest, that extractors should be able to pick and choose. at least here in OR.
Edit: and to clarify now that I’m not typing on my phone…
Fresh (wet) frozen makes great hydrocarbon extracts, and can be processed with Ethanol or CO2, or even just water, but in order to provide frozen material year round, somebody has to keep it in a freezer between harvest & extraction.
The most economical way to grow, is outdoors, with a single harvest. we’ve got 3yr old product lying around up here. keeping that in freezers does not pencil out…so my assumption is that cured biomass will continue to be available. Especially in traditionally overstocked regions such as CA & OR
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Interested in the Cryo freezing of biomass
I work in remote aerias and having chillers and freezer that pull 135kw an hour is madness so looking in to Cryo freezing prior to extraction
Have a pic ?
What nozzel and Where to get them do You use to spray your biomass
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Best way would be to blast freeze it and then put the material in a freezer container that comes with a generator.
On its way down to -21c
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Remember I’m the FNG 
. Why not just blast all the live material, purge all of your solvent out then mix with some warm ethanol to make your distillate?
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Here is a pic of my hose/valve/nozzle that I found used on Ebay for $159.
Sorry but I have no other pics. Super simple. I just hooked up the hose to my low pressure dewar. Put flower in a 30 gallon drum turn on the LN2 and spray the LN2 throughout the material. After a few minutes I stop the flow and then use a paint mixer hooked up to my drill to break down the cannabis. I would simple repeat a few times then quickly through that material in the freezer. I quickly learned that it is best to open the dewar line than before opening the valve place the nozzle all the way into the material then slowly open the valve to avoid blowing material everywhere.
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brand on. That hose/nozzel ?
Is iT specific to Ln2 ?
Thx
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I’m curious how freezing plants is more cost effective than drying? Drying takes a couple weeks hang + couple more to lock in a great cure, while in quarantine. Afterwards, it can be nitrogen sealed or conventionally packed with a decent shelf life. Freezing costs would accumulate indefinitely and the equipment costs to do this on a massive scale would be nuts. I totally get it for farms segmenting portions of their crops specifically toward terp sauce, etc. For distillate or standard (still very terpy concentrates). I just dont see it.
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I’m curious as to how you guys would go about drying a few hundred pounds of fresh frozen trim at a time? Also if your end result is distillate does it matter if you flash dry it and do not worry about the cure?