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
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@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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Is it decarbed?
It doesn’t look like powders to me it looks like crystals
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Okay thanks for the response. What causes it to crystallize ?
And no, it hasn’t been decarbed
Is it pieces of biomass? Like is it just because it wasn’t really filtered well?
Try decarbing it and see if it goes away
Thc a wants to be a crystal, if your crude is high enough in potency it’ll auto crystallize
Decarbing it would make it thc which can’t crystallize
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Hello all!!
I am a hemp farmer, and have had some biomass washed in ethanol to create crude. The processor that i used was very vague in the returning weight of crude and I have been looking for actual numbers of “expected returns” for this years crop.
I want to run 1200 pounds of hemp which the biomass COA’s have 10% CBD.
What should i expect in returns for weight in crude??
I apologize ahead of time if I am a noob to this, but I am sick of being taken advantage of as a farmer and want input from honest people vs just “getting what I get” from processors.
Any input would be very appreciated.
A very rough rule of thumb is you will get your CBD % + 2-3% back in crude.
For example with your 10% biomass, you should get back about 12% of your weight in crude: 1200lb bio → 144 lb of crude.
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THANK YOU!! I appreciate that. Plus it just solidifies my original feeling that we were ripped off the first batch we ran last year. We ran 300 pounds and got maybe 7kg’s, if that.
I am hopeful that these numbers are on par, even if we only got back 10% I would be happy, and obviously 12-13% return on the total weight would be better. As I’m sure you are aware, the cannabis market is full of grifters, and finding honest processors who don’t skim off the top is tougher than finding gold in the Sahara.
Any more info you or others can contribute, or just personal experiences in this topic would be great!!
Thanks again.
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You can get nearly all the cannabinoids out if your system is properly designed. I see people saying getting 80% is “good” or only leave 2% behind (ex ur starting material is 10%) is “good” (same thing really).
Personal experience - I’d say neither is good, because you can get 95-98% of cannabinoids out with a well designed custom system - which is half the cost of a “turn-key” solution. I wouldn’t focus on building ur system to get the best “yield” - I’d focus on building a system that results in clean product that strips the maximum amount of cannabinoids.
Think differently about it.
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Oh, I’m not building my own system just yet, we are still in the fledgling stages of hemp production and growing. At this stage I am looking for as close to verifiable numbers from experienced extractors who run hemp through an ethanol extraction process. And what sorts of return numbers per pound of hemp being run when the cbd percentage is 10% in the biomass.
EG: I have 1200 pound of 10% cbd hemp at 0.3% THC.
What should I expect from the processor who washes this with the ethanol process as a return in weight of crude??
So typically we yield about 1kg of finished crude per 23lbs of biomass @ 10% cbd. These numbers also reflect winterization efforts. This is implementing -70C etoh all the way through. Filtered from 50um down to 1um bag filters. Decarboxylated and ready for the next process.
If you’re going to use ethanol extractors as a service - you need to make sure the product is properly winterized (and how that will be handled post extraction if its not).
Also with ethanol, its very common that sugars are extracted - which makes the distillation process more time consuming having to clean the entire system after each batch. Ex. I would only do a tolling deal if they are giving you back disty - NOT crude.
My math on this for 10% material (conservative and factoring for loss etc) =
1,200 * 0.08 (loss factored at crude) = 96 pounds of crude
96 / 2.2 (converted to kilos) = 43.6
43.6 * 0.6 (converted to disty - assuming crude is an average/decent %) =
26.18L of finished distillate.
Short hand math is 33lbs of 10% material = 1 liter of disty
So basically - I’d say your range of return for disty is 26.18 - 36.36 finished distillate liters.
I’d say 30L is a real expectation for your 1,200 lbs.
Save this math for future reference 
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Sorry for jumping in on this thread rather late, but I’m new. Here’s our experience: we ran our first hemp test extraction back in the Fall of 2019 using 500 lbs. of 10% biomass. Using -20C ethanol to wash we extracted 21.84 Kg of crude, pre-decarb. Going by that, your 300 lbs. could have produced 13-15 Kg. of crude. We do better now, after fine-tuning our SOPs and equipment and typically achieve close to the 12% rule-of-thumb that mcpikeig cited above.