Ken R. and how he handles moisture

Our customer, Ken R. was experiencing issues with condensation/moisture in his plant material. He operates out of southern Oregon where the humidity is a factor. To combat the problem, he grinds his material, then freeze dries them. This removes the moisture and also improves the shelf life of his material. We caught up with Ken recently to ask him about it.  

What system do you have?
Apeks 2000-5Lx5LD

 

When did you buy it? 
October 2015

 

How much do you process a day? 
15lbs/day

 

You’ve experienced a problem with condensation in your plant material. How did you get around this? 
Yes we have. In the past we used to whip the extracted wax and remove the water by draining, then using an ultrasonic bath to breakdown the rest of the water in the wax, drain, breakdown, drain, etc. Depending on the amount of moisture in the trim this could go on for a while. We would then perform a final “muffining” step to satisfactorily remove what we felt was the remaining water.
Since usable marijuana in Oregon can have up to 6% moisture content we knew that we had to remove at least this amount plus any other moisture introduced in the extraction process. 
We started looking for ways to remove the water moisture out of the process before and during extraction. I looked into other extraction processes in food processing, perfumery, pharmaceutical industries and noticed that some of them were freeze drying their material before various processes. Based on this research we took a leap of faith and purchased a scientific freeze dryer. We tested the theory and it works like a charm.
Instead of the hours it took to remove the water, we spend minutes before the muffining process and go straight into winterization without fear of the dreaded “cloud up” at the end of the alcohol removal process.

 

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