Frozen, thawed, and re-frozen material

I wanted to know what issues other people have ran into when running a hydrocarbon extraction on fresh frozen materials that have thawed out and then got re frozen? I processed refrozen material and got nearly exactly half the yeild from what it should be. I would assume possible water freezing around the resin could cause this :man_shrugging: Any insight would be helpful. Thank you.

If you don’t freeze fast enough or freeze with atmosphere then yes this can happen. Then your fighting water covered frozen trichs which is backwards

Dry ice freeze for win

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Freeze with dry ice like stone said and pulverize the material while frozen

And then freeze it again

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@StoneD what kind of differences have you seen in material that has been thawed and refrozen?

The problem with conventional “freezing” methods is the formation of ice crystals. This is why you will see a diminishing return everytime you “thaw” then freeze.

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You are right, when you thaw and refreeze all that moisture is now freezing on the outside of the trichomes and if you are running cold you wont get to it, if you do get to it you are pulling water and tons of other undesirables. So you are stuck with a shit yield or a shit product when that happens.

I have been trying to come up with the best practical way to freeze fresh frozen. There is a few good threads on here about it, but I’m still collecting info before trying it, since I will be trying it on 100s of plants at a time if anyone has input. I want to cut the plant, shuck it, vacuum, freeze as quickly as possible, break up while frozen and then run it.

Ive seen videos of people imploding 50 gal drums using a vacuum pump do you think if you used a weak one it would help remove most of the oxygen before getting to the point of implosion.

What if u let it dry off some then refreeze fast w dry ice to blast? Like just dry dampness off?

No you shouldn’t vac it, just displace the oxygen with nitrogen instead

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Correct, no need to vacuum if nitro is available. The problem lies in the speed of the standard freezing process. If it is not almost instantaneous the water that is present crystallizes.

This material in particular, I am not sure how it was originally frozen, but was pre packed into sleeves to be ready for extraction. At some point, which is unknown, the freezer broke and over a few days the temp got up to 40 degrees f. The material was transferred to a working freezer and was re-frozen in the open sleeves. There appears to be a substantial amount of ice formed in and around the sleeves and material. I’ve always kept material sealed up until the moment its packed into the column, so I dont have much experience with this issue.

Probably cost more to extract it than its worth.

Bubble hash it

Dry

Etoh wash, evap, purge, decarb

Spd

I would try this before tossing it.

Didn’t get how much bio mass this was? A few columns is all i caught.

Theres no way it will be thrown out. The bubble/rosin from it is good, however, I do not know what the returns have been. It’s a lot of mass. @BG305 Roughly 150 lbs of random strains have been processed as a test. All have been lower returns than in the past.