Greetings working on some numbers for setting up a Cold Ethanol Lab to process CBD/Hemp soon. I am curious what people are seeing for yield percentages, on Hemp/CBD Biomass from material to crude to distillate? Obviously depends on starting material. In my old BHO/PHO Rec Lab I would see 10-20% yields for crumble/shatter depending on starting material. Is say a 5% yield from CBD biomass to crude a possible and good expectation to stat with?
pretending that you’ll capture 75% of the available cannabinoids in your input biomass by the time you get to distillate is not an unreasonable starting point for your ROI math.
Figure you might start out closer to 65-70% efficiency, and target 80% as your long term goal.
You’ll want In House analytics early rather than late if you want to dial your process in and actually make that return on your investment.
Edit: for anyone who’s actually paying attention. stop calculating yield based on input biomass weight. 10-20% yields? how is that useful to you? base your yields on actual percent of input cannabinoids in your output. yeah, it requires knowing the potency of your input. you don’t do that? how do you know what you’re throwing away?!?
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ah yes I saw you post this somewhere else and couldn’t wrap my brain around it, totally makes sense now thanks for your reply. I looked back at some old records from the rec lab, mind is blown from using this formula to get real yields on what was actually extracted.
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Appreciate the above info…we have been experiencing lower than expected yields into distillate. We are going to start doing input (biomass) potency tests as well as post extraction potency tests on spent material. We want to maximize our extraction process.
Our question is this…if you have bio-mass (hemp) that was grown for seed would you see a drastic reduction in final yields. ( I know that we would have to have the pro/post potency tests to determine this) we are just wondering if anyone else has processed biomass that was grown for seed and what your end result was yield-wise?
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Going all the way to mature seed will reduce overall biomass potency.
Having seeds in your biomass will either mean seed oil in your output, or deseeding your input.
This horse has been publicly flogged a couple of times. May or may not be dead
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Thank you for the link…I had not come across that thread.
The material that we received had been de-seeded previously but we were getting way lower yield that expected. (by about 50%) We figured that material grown for seed would be less potent…just trying to avoid any arguments over expectation as we do run splits with growers at times.
We will heed the above advice and do pre and post potency testing in the future.
Usually anything with seeds will have a lower potency, the plant has put its energy into seed production instead of resin production
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Hey brother. Curious why you are benchmarking only 80% of available cannabinoids coming over into the miscella stream. Is this do to the assumed lower solubility of cold ethanol?
Are you figuring in a 13% loss from decarb and the other 7% from filtration?
Curious to see what the forums think about efficiencies and losses at particular stages…
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If they took the seeds first, my money says they took many of the cannabinoids (trichome heads) too.
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Been there done that
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@precisionnick, I said what?
Those don’t sound like my numbers. I recall suggesting 80% efficiency from biomass to distillate was something to aim for…and that 65% might be a more realistic starting point.
If CDB isolate is the end goal, I’ve seen 65% discussed as “great!”. I think.
I have been messinh around with input , output , dilution of eth after reclaim all playing a factor in yeilds , wish I had testing for the biomass before and after to see exactly what’s going on . Took a microscope and saw decent amount of trickles on the bio still after first wash, (30-1hr slighty below room temp) Going to re run and re examine again .
We have extracted and distilled cannabis the past few years using closed loop cryo ethanol. I have some of the same questions. As a rule of thumb we’d use a 90% reduction in weight from biomass to crude, using 10% for budgeting purposes, or about 45kgs per 1,000 lbs of biomass. And, we would average converting about 60% to 65% into distillate. Again, this was for budgeting purposes based on averages. Exact yields depended heavily on the quality of biomass.
What would be equivalent modeling assumptions for Hemp for ethanol extraction in the -30 C range? For every thousand pounds of biomass, what are the likely ranges for crude and distillate? What if one assumed hemp with 15% CBD?
If you biomass is test for 12%-13%. Then you probably can convert 10% of biomass into crude, weight wise.
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Up thread!!!
What’s your closed loop look like?
Is there a reason why there are particles in my crude? I don’t think it’s the clay or filter process. I check the extraction to make sure it clear of any residue/charcoal particles. Thank you
Uploading: E506E549-9A18-471C-B113-C86A49BA862A.jpeg…
@Jakeroto Pics?
I just ran some distillate for a guy and what looked like carbon specs were coming up into the head and sticking to the sides above the vigereaux. It didnt get past the head but there was kind of a lot of it.
The website is not letting me upload photos. Can I send it via email, please?
You have to let the photo completely upload before you publish your post… Give’Er the old college try this time, and wait for the photos to upload. We definitely need to see what you’re attempting to describe
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