RECYCLING Spent Biomass with a Hemp/Wood Pellet Manufacturing Machine

I was brainstorming on how to get involved in this legal ‘CannaBusiness’ large scale on the cheap. How about taking the spent biomass hemp/cannabis and running it through a pellet manufacturing machine? Setup like: you bring it over to my place by the dump truck loads, dump it and forget it, free of charge. And I run it through my Industrial Size Alibaba ‘wood chip/hemp straw’ Pellet Manufacturing Machine and sell it to Eskimos for wood stoves! Just sayin, Ken in Waikiki

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Miles ahead of you on that one.

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Why don’t you elaborate that’s why I created the Post?

It’s a hazmat transport item. It’s low density. Pelletizing onsite is the only way it makes any economic sense. And theres IP in the space.

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Dialing in a pelletizer for biomass is a bit of an ass pain, just a heads up.

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That could be true but on the positive side both wood pellets & hemp/cannabis pellets unlike other grasses leaves only 2% residual ash which correlates nicely.

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Alright, how about this for common sense IP (intellectual property) drive a large box van truck to the spent biomass sight and process it there, with a Shred-Tech Mobile Shredding Truck type of deal, setup with a Pelletizing Machine instead of a shredder? Now you owe me!

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I don’t think spent biomass is going to make good pellets. The herd from the stalks is what you want to use if you’re talking about using them for heating

Doc, I was researching Pelletizing Machines & Equipment and stumbled over several different articles mentioning a WoodChip/Grass pelletizing also one mentioned that hemp was preferred out of ALL the different grasses because it only leaves 2% ash residual similar to wood. I would say to use them for heating because livestock would get drunk off of them.

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This is something alot of us have thought about.
The main issue we see with it is the amount of pellets that you would need to make to simply pay for your overhead. This would require a very large machine (Costly, Costly when breaks down) or a fleet of pellet machines (More labor hours needed to run). Then when you do get that handled, you need to be able to feed the machine and very few processors have millions of pounds of waste, most just have thousands. If you do find that much biomass, you then have to pay to ship it to you to pelletize it and then to your retailers.
When you add all the cost, it it becomes very hard to compete with the timber bi-product industry.

If this is something you actually attempt. I have waste that you can have for free.

Hemp stalk doesnt pelletize good at all.

I’m told once the machine warms up it binds pretty good. Have you tried it, and what were the issues?

There’s not enough residual oil in pure stalks to act as a binding agent if you just chip. Might be easier if you take it all the way to powder though.

Burning hemp pellets? What is the actual benefit to saw oak pellets or beech pellets? Heat efficiency ?

I have stacks of stems and have been wanting to buy a pelletizer off of ebay. A friend says there is too much carbon to burn them straight.

@Future did your pellets work out for you? Did it make the meat taste different at all?

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I think a better option is drying the biomass out and using it as cattle feed

I know someone doing this who uses pure ethanol to extract

He lays his biomass out after extracting for a month then sells it to a cattle farm down the street as hemp cattle feed

I guess it’s great for cattle? @future might know something about this

Another option is burning it for fuel for your ffe

I know someone doing this and it works great for them

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I was told of a farmer here in Middle TN that feeds his Wagyu beef spent biomass… Im still waiting to get contact info.

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I’m waiting on some pellets from a farm up north. I think the novelty of using them in a traeger is your best bet economically, other than that you are gonna have a hard time competing with timber byproduct prices afa pellets go.

Cows are optimized to eat grass and other pasture crops. You can force them to eat other shit, like corn which is sort of a grass still, or hemp which is definitely not a grass, but their gut won’t be very happy. This is immediately evident by the change in pH of their urine. Feeding them these random plants makes them fat and sick (like humans) and then typically requires antibiotics to keep their livers working.

Goats and Pigs are exponentially more suited to eating hemp waste than cows.

Mushrooms are an order above that, and they kick out two valuable waste streams

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Wrong friend. Plenty of cattle browse in addition to grazing to get nutrition and variety. The issue lies in force feeding any one thing.