The Industrial Hemp Economy - Hemp: Industrial Production and Uses - page 158

Bale opening & separation

Feed homogenizer

Metal
detection

Crushing & Cleaning

Cleaning and press
for fibre bales

Crushing, cleaning and transfer Fine opening

Fig. 9.7. Diagrammatic representation of the general fibre extraction line produced by TEMAFA and used
by BAFA.

Working on this idea, a Dutc h 7 company has
designed a prototype which, at the time of
writing, appears to have treated only a few
hundred hectares.
A Canadian company 8 from Ontario has
marketed a mobile piece of machinery for the
decortication of fibrous plants using 14 pairs of
rollers organized in the horizontal plane. This
machine moves from one storage place of
straw to another and processes the material in
the field. The concept appears to be ingenious,
but performance appears to be poor. The the-
oretical yield is 1 t/h using this model, but it is
unclear what actual yield this corresponds to or
how many machines have been sold.
These machines may constitute a means
of reducing the cost of production in areas
that are considering starting hemp production
but that do not want to invest heavily in a
costly and uncertain sector. That said, the
performance of these machines appears to be
poor.

Very large fields are farmed in Australia,
with areas for hemp production typically meas-
uring some 100 ha. Due to this, they have
adapted slightly different means and methods.

1. Hemp is cut by a machine that churns out
straw chopped into 1 m pieces and spreads it,
without overlap, in order to facilitate drying.
2. A first fibre extraction is undertaken in the
field by a machine that takes in the straw con-
tinuously and decorticates it by 60-80% before
loading it into a container.
3. This container is then emptied into a press
that produces a parallelipipedic rectangular bale,
weighing 14 t, called a ballot in French. The bal-
lot is covered with tarpaulins in order to ensure
its preservation until it is processed at the mill.
4. The mill, when ready, sends for the ballot .
5. At the mill, the ballot is fed into the system,
which processes straw at a rate of 10 t/h.
6. The first decorticating process in the fac-
tory reduces hurds by 50%.
7. The second decortication removes the rest
of the hurds, bringing the amount of residual
hemp down to 15%.

Australian fibre extraction processes

Hemp production was relicensed in Australia
in 1998. Over the past few years, Australia has
developed a large-scale production programme -
a complete production process from field to
factory.

The total cost of this procedure, including col-
lection, is estimated at AU$275. Using the
exchange rate current in October 2005, this
equates to

€ 162/t.