March 12, 2020

Stabilization with minimal CBD loss is the primary concern once a successful harvest is achieved. Hemp growers have options of “line drying” like you would tobacco, using air “tunnel dryers”, using fuel powered dryers, or wet baling to stabilize their valuable harvest.

The fact to keep in mind is that trichomes fall off. The more you handle, the faster you handle, the more you move the hemp around… the more money you lose.

Traditional field drying methods used for hay and alfalfa have been a popular approach for many early hemp farmers; utilizing the sun and wind energy to perform the drying function. But there are abundant horror stories. Multiple farmers have experience of starting with 15% CBD by volume in their hemp at harvest, only to have 8% once they field dried, collected, and baled. Losses are known to be in the 25%-50% range. In many parts of the country field drying is not an option considering atmospheric moisture and prevailing weather conditions.

An efficient option for ensuring minimal loss of CBD is to harvest, collect, and then to line dry the hemp inside buildings similar to tobacco barns. This approach has both a very high manpower and facilities cost, thus rendering it impractical on large scale. Once again once the hemp achieves low moisture content the trichomes are inclined to lose attachment to the biomass and either fall to the floor or blow in the wind.

Another proven approach in the U.S. for stabilizing hemp at harvest is to wet bale; either with large, long feed silage bags or with the smaller round bales typically used for haylage. At that time you vacuum-pull the oxygen out, or even introduce a nitrogen blanket. Doing so prevents the hemp from degrading or fermenting. These bales can sit for 4-8 months before being sent for oil extraction. ORKEL Balers have been the most popular, and we know of 60,000+ acres in 2019 which went with this approach.

The process gaining significant interest and traction is to run the fresh harvested hemp through a Vincent screw press, ahead of a dryer. Starting in 2018, Vincent spear-headed this with our alfalfa screw presses. Presses were used at harvest for removing excess water (juice). The results were significant, with removal of 40%+ by weight as press liquor with only a very minor CBD oil loss. Physical volume is typically reduced by 50%, with drying time being reduced by 2.5x. Presses were sold for running up to two acres per hour for this application.

Last season Vincent supplied every press available for purchase for this specific application at time of harvest: one VP-24, four VP-16’s, one TSP-12, a KP16L, one CP-12, three CP-10’s, and a CP-4. Of interest, an Oregon farmer ran 21 acres (21,000 pounds of handpicked flower + leaves) through a CP-4 at a rate of around 100 pounds per hour.

The energy saved when the material is pressed before going into a dryer amounts to a third of the fuel consumption. “Free Water” removal is the highest energy demand phase of any dryer option. With the Vincent Corp. dewatering method this bottleneck stage is removed. We currently have four dryer companies working with us to put a screw press in front of their dryers.

Dryers are expensive, $250 – $400K at a minimum, and lead times reached five months in 2019. Many farmers were stuck without options other than to resort to tradition field drying. Some dryer manufacturers capitalized on this. With the scarcity, prices shot up from the normal $370,000 to $500,000 per unit.

One good story exemplifying the tangible value of screw presses is a grower in Colorado who wanted to send his hemp to a processor in Nevada. They ran the full harvest through a screw press and then into a wet baler, reduced shipping cost significantly. By pressing their 75% moisture material, weight and volume were reduced significantly. Bulk density goes from seven pounds per cubic foot to twenty four. The end result was less trucks required for that 18 hour haul.

With approaching 170,000 hits on our hemp dewatering video, we know that there are thousands of farmers who are growing hemp and searching the internet for a solution to this problem, and who are drawn to the benefits of utilizing our equipment. Attached here is a short video of a skidded-up VP-16 for ten tons per hour operations: https://www.instagram.com/p/B136vNQh7us/utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Our current dewatering video featuring a TSP-12: https://youtu.be/J-0g6NANyhs

Vincent Corporation is proud to be in the forefront of this technology and a true partner with the farmers who use our equipment.

ISSUE #322