Was reading the barn lab thread a couple days back and was chatting up some people at the xD store event @OKC Cannacon about our old sites back in the good old days. Anyways. I started breaking down the build out/concepts we implemented, and was encouraged to share.
I’m also launching a new company, aBHOut it Industries…Soo to shamelessly garner a little street cred(read as: internet points) for the new venture, I figured I’d leverage the old days to my advantage. After all, one couldn’t rightfully call their venture “aBHOut it Industries” without some proof that they were really, in fact, aBHOut it.
Since this post is long as fuck, I’m gonna do a separate post announcing the business with a little different style intro… so keep an eye out for BHOmeters by aBHOut it Industries sometime soon.
I’ve been waiting [X] years to post some clips of this site… (where X=statue of limitations)…
We had some neat challenges to overcome there… and I’m happy to do some explaining if anything in the videos inspire questions. This site was processing roughly 250p every 8 hour shift and running 24/7. Running an 8:1 solvent ratio. Which means we were recovering between. 4-5p a minute.(IF everything was going smooth. Which was not always the case)
I’ll list a couple things that I think were pretty sophisticated so you can keep an eye out for them. (at least they were sophisticated… things change quick.
1.) Shoutout to the @710scientific boys. We LOVED the ironfist hydraulic packer/unpacker. Ran 12.5p columns for 50p runs On each side of the rack. Had it mounted on a winch to alternate between horizontal unpacking and vertical packing. For a volume shop like this… the dense pucks we’d push out after runs made for much easier disposal, adn minimal dust/debris to deal with.
2.) Ran a hot vapor loop to the prior run’s columns to extract all solvent and a shitload of crude oil. You could watch a fully frozen column melt off in about 90s. This required a lot of redundant rails/lines and extra honey pots. But Meant we were losing about 1p solvent per column instead of 10ish… and also getting, post crc, a half pound extra of VERY waxy oil. Every run. Had to route this through its own lines, to its own pot so as not to contaminate the good oil. This mattered when trim was fucking $150 a p. Something you newcomers probably can’t fathom.
3.) Rocked 4-5 honeypots with a massive manifold to move things as needed between them. Clients got picky. So given the volume of varying biomass… it was hard to make consistent product. As a solution, we would push batches we didn’t love to different holding vessels.
-Too dark/clear? We’d try and keep a yellow run, orange run, and clear run in the holding vessels to add/dilute color as needed to the main pot.
4.) The extra horizontal bases also allowed us to redissolve return orders and re-crc between side pots without stopping the new production. Goal being to never stop running fresh bio. We would also pour from one of the ancillary bases, as pouring 5 pounds of shatter per run was time consuming, and pouring out of a side vessel and not our main honeypot allowed us to immediately start the next run.
5.) On site nitrogen production. Saved us at least $750 a day in n2. Not to mention man hours, gas, etc. And most importantly… our backs. We could use one T cylinder(300 cu ft) per run. it took a lot of pressure to get through those packed columns, and our 6x48" crcs… not to mention just the amount of total volume of the system… meant we could blow through a tank a run.
6.) Ran two solvent tanks… Always recovering to an empty solvent tank. so we could avoid fighting back pressure. Only way to hit fast times.
6.) Built a cool “off gas silencer”. We were bleeding so much high pressure n2 that it sounded like a fucking train whistle outside the work site. Even with 200 acres of privacy… it was still concerning. so I duct tape engineered a silencer… basically 10’ 1" pvc… duct taped to 10’ 1.5" pvc… we drilled fuckloads of holes throughout. creating a 20’ silencer. This was then buried in a trench… surrounded by several feet of drain rock, with garden fabric on top to prevent clogging… and then covered in dirt. Voile. silence.
6.) Built our own walk in w/cinder blocks and grout… and our own massive copper coil that the chiller fed. This failed due to condensation and the coils freezing… so then we had to design a dehumidification system to circulate dry air in the walk in.
7.) My pride and joy… which I can’t find a fucking picture of right now… but the ULTIMATE trim mixing solution. Mandatory for large consistent batches. Grain silo mounted on a conex recessed into a hillside. The silo was fed by a screw augur with hopper at ground level. Mounted an electric motor on the roof with a massive 3’ diameter, 14’ long augur bit.this worked like a blender… picking trim uo from the bottom… mixing it and pouring it down the sides. We then had a latch in the conex that would fill totes via gravity. Even adjusted the latch springs to roughly fill a tote before closing automatically. Mixing 750p bio everyday required something of this scale. During the mixing process we ducted air in and out between the silo and the conex below which was loaded with dehums to get moisture content right.
8.) The corken t291 rocked the building. Couldn’t get a floor scale to work well. Tried several c1d1 pallet scales… even tried some summit racing 4 scale car units. Ended up with a crane scale, fabricated our own rack, and had rubber dampers on the rack legs.
9.) We had several floor registers(vents) connected to ducting and explosion proof fans.
9.) Flow meter. Running across so many shifts, operators, and varying biomass… the flowmeter was a God send. Hard to determine the point of failure without it. Was it the operator fucking off. Inconsistent trim mix. Not enough media… etc. Knowing the exact solvent entering the bio was the key to identifying the variable where the error took place. Let’s be real. A scale literally doesn’t work if you’re flooding and recovering simultaneously. How does one measure weight change… if the weight isn’t changing accurately. KEEP YOUR EYE OUT FOR BHOmeters. aBHOut it Industries’ first product line
10.) Had an e2M80 Edawrds vac pump to pull vac between runs. Beast.
11.) Made a heated baking rack/sheet system… so while sheets were waiting for oven space, they would offgas most of the way. This, and one flip, got our shatter below 200ish ppm in a matter of 3-4 hours. Also, by way of heat/offgassing on the baking racks, it meant we could keep more shelves in the ovens, as we never dealt with massive muffins. To be safe during this process, the area we did the pouring had several floor vents hooked up to a 12” explosion proof fan.
12.) I think our water system was worth highlighting for several reasons…
a.) We had 2 250g water tanks… fed from our 3x 5k gallon storage tanks via float valve. the first 250 tank acted as a sediment filter before feedin the second. Second tank recirculated via the hot water system. We used a dual burner Takagi on demand water heater. Only way to go bigger was to cherry chain multiples. Fed us with 170 degree water 24/7 for several years.
b.) In the "c1d1’ we had hot and cold inputs right ot the jacket so we could reduce temp as needed towards the end of runs.
c.) Purchased a custom made 1hp pump for the checmical industry. It was rated up to 275 degrees. No more burning out sump pumps from cycling hot ass water through them.
d.) We kept our solvent tanks for recharging in the ground level of the facility. Had a water barrel witha. hot water feed, and a rigging/pulley system so a single operator, with one hand, could lift a full solvent tank into the barrel… apply hot water, and then via a valve in the upstairs operating room, charge fresh solvent right into the actively recovering honeypot. More solvent, faster recovery in our honeypot. and this meant that charging added virtually no time to our recovery process. Fresh solvent was also routed through our customized 1 micron sock filters… (which I can tell you more about later… when we offer them to the masses via our new venture) but we never had an issue with black speck or mystery oil… and we never distilled our solvent. The hot water made for fast ass charges, and the tanks staying downstairs made for minimal transportation/hassle dealing with the tanks.
13.) -This one is pretty cool…-One of the keys to hitting our recovery times was reducing some of the heat coming off the corken without taxing the fuck out of our chiller. We achieved this by way of running a tube and she
ll with water direct from the 15k water storage. This water came out of the tube and shell around 90 degrees, and reduced our gas temps off the corken from 170ish to 130ish… Big jump. We realized pretty quick that if we cycled all that 90 degree water back to the storage tanks, it was just too much heat and we lost efficacy. Instead, I routed the water from the first tube and shell where it gained heat… to a second tube and shell… post columns, pre crc. To warm up our solvent some 20ish degrees. Which served several purposes.
-We noticed the crc was more effective at slightly warmer temps… and actually had to reduce all our media ratios as a result.
-Warmer solvent entering the honeypot, required less energy/time to phase change back to gas… and helped us keep up with maximum recovery rates.
-lastly, we were returning water to the storage tanks closer to the original temp it entered our facility at. Recycling energy is cool ya’ll.
So yea. Keep an eye out for aBHOut it industries and the BHOmeter. We’ll live up to the name.
