Whole Plant Processing
One harvested in the field, the raw material from the hemp plant will be taken to a whole plant processing facility. The CHPC’s whole plant processing facility is a First Tier Processing Facility which means it will produce raw material suitable to be sold to Second Tier Processing and Manufacturing Facilities for the production of value added products. The machinery for this First Tier Processing is well developed and produces four raw materials that can be further processed into a wide variety of products. These raw materials are the Seed, Flower, Bast and Hurd.
When the seed and residual flower are harvested and transported to the whole plant processing facility, the first step of processing is to separate the seed from the flower as well as from the residual stems and leaves that were also mechanically harvested with the seed and flower. This can be done efficiently utilizing machines called deawners, size sorters, and gravity tables. Because the seed does not mature at the same time, there is both immature seed and mature seed which additionally need to be separated by the gravity table. Once separated, sorted and cleaned, the seed and flower will be packaged and labeled for wholesale purchase by second Tier Processors and manufacturers. When the stalks are harvested, they will be brought into the whole plant processing facility and separated into their two constituent parts, the Bast (long fiber) bark of the stalk and the Hurd (short fiber) pith of the stalk. This separation is done with a machine called a decorticator. Once decorticated the Bast and the Hurd can be further process to whatever spec the Second Tier Processor desires. For example, if the Hurd is going to be used in Hempcrete it doesn’t need much further processing, but if it is going to be used to make paper it will need to be further refined into almost a powder-like substance.
A fifth product can also be produced at the whole plant processing facility and that material is Hemp Biochar. Not only can Hemp Biochar be produced from the waste stems and leaves of the Agricultural Hemp plant, it can also be produced from the waste materials from the CBD Industry and the Medical and Recreational Cannabis Industry. As a bonus, with modern biochar ovens electricity can be produced from the syngasses and the excess heat produced by the pyrolysis process which lessens the carbon footprint of the whole plant processing facility.
