OK ya’ll, here are copies of the “emergency rules” that Washington State has adopted in the face of the 2013 explosions, fires, and Bellevue fatality. See: /washington-state-emergency-rule-on-flammable-and-co2-extraction/
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We turned our CO2 machine on today at Landrace Labs in Rochester, WA super excited to see how things work out. We are using the 2L 2000PSI Eden Labs CO2 SFE and will be in control of everything from soil to oil.
5L*
These are just building code requirements and are not enforced by the Washington state Liquor and cannabis control board. As far as I know a violation of these building codes will result in a nasty letter from the building department.
Unfortunately, these emergency rules give your fire marshal the ultimate discretion. They require TWO permits from the fire department, an installation permit and an operations permit. The Fire Code Enforcement official must first preapprove the engineer who will perform the Peer Review, and only after they have done so, can the peer review proceed. Once the peer review is done, it must then be reviewed by another third party engineer who must then provide a technical report. I am pretty sure this is an illegal scheme that will come back to bite them in the butt. This emergency rule is full of misapplied rules taken from NFPA's, ASHREI, and other sources. They are incorrectly interpreted and the exceptions in these rules are ignored. They are way beyond the scope and intent of the fire codes, attempt to expand the authority of agencies without a roper vote, and place expensive and burdensome requirements on small processors without a corresponding net benefit to safety. Place your storage tank outside, and you fall within exceptions for NFPA's, design your system accordingly, and Class I Div 2 requirements shouldn't apply, add proper shutoff valves and manual pressure relief systems and an electrical backup system isn't required, and trying to make it illegal to vent a little butane to atmosphere? Try arbitrary and capricious, the EPA and other regulatory agencies who have jurisdiction have mandated no such thing. This is just one fire marshal's attempt to give a large lab in Spokane an opportunity to recap their facility build-out expenses (due to his very strict and illegal rules) by reducing the competition for this year's expected bumper crop... Ugh
Actually it references standards that limit the butane present to 25% of Lower flammability limits. That should be no problem for closed loop systems.
The guidelines say that there must be no trace of petroleum gas in the extraction room. This puts severe limitations on Butane extractions.
code 3802.4.9 Liquefied-petroleum gases shall not be released to the atmosphere. This is from the first document. Butane is a liquified petroleum gas.
That is a good point, and one which they need to further clarify, but they further make the point that even if your system doesn't typically release liquified petroleum gas to atmosphere, it still has to be operated in an enclosure that maintains ventilation capable of maintaining less than 25% of lower ignition limits. That is because they correctly assume that shit happens, and things go wrong, go wrong, go wrong..................