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Make your own biofuel?
Originally published in the November 27, 2009, print edition.
The Land — Will farmers eventually be producing their own soy oil for mixing with their diesel fuels as they wish?
That certainly is the ambition of Eric Hamilton of Dodgeville, Wis. His company, Circle Energy, imports screw presses (made in Germany by Kern Kraft) which extract the oil from various oil seeds.
He admits that at this stage, on-farm processing is such a new idea that sales of these $12,500 units aren’t exactly gangbusters. “We’ve sold to a few universities, farm cooperatives and farmers who are getting into biofuels and sustainable agriculture,” Hamilton said, but he thinks there perhaps is a stronger market in edible oils from specialty farm crops for sale to health food stores.
Powered by a 5 horsepower electric motor plugged into 220 volt, single-phase service, this screw-press unit will do about one ton of oil seeds per day in a 24-hour operation. If sunflowers or canola were the feedstock, that amounts to about 75 gallons of oil per day; with soybeans it would be about 20 gallons of oil per day. Once set up with an overhead gravity bin, these units essentially operate 24/7 needing only periodic checks to verify the operation.
He has farm customers now “blending” their biodiesel fuels using oils processed from their own crops. He mentioned that Case has rated their new diesel engines capable of using B100, meaning a 100 percent biodiesel fuel. He indicated different manufacturers have different standards for the utilization of biofuels so it would be prudent to verify those standards before switching to biodiesel fuels.
Hamilton said the residual soybean meal would be of 40 to 42 percent protein with an 8 to 10 percent oil content so the byproduct is definitely a high-energy feed.
“When fuel prices were crowding $4 we had more interest than we do now with gasoline and diesel prices substantially lower,” Hamilton said. “So today more of my conversations are with growers who like the idea of processing their special crops into edible oils for the consumer food market, or the fast food outlets. Used for French fries, chicken nuggets, etc., you have a great flavor and the used oil could then be cleaned and used for biodiesel.”
To date he sees canola as the ideal vegetable oil crop because you get more oil per acre, it’s a good-quality cooking oil, and it’s a good feedstock for biodiesel fuels. Hamilton said canola and sunflower produce about three times more oil per acre than soybeans.
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