froggy:

Hey Rolf, next time I go to Spain, I'm staying at your place. I hope you dont snore and can cook...

<<< I love cooking and never heared me snore!  Whenever you want,come before it gets too expensive -or sail !

<<< than in private you can tell me about your latest findings on fertility and char. I´m very curious! 

I have wondered what % was not available to the mechanical press. ~55% mechanical/45% chemical extraction seems like a good # to work with (tho I could imagine that each plant has wildly different #'s b/c of lignin and how/where/why the oil is bound up)..

Could it be said that the reason one presses is 2 fold; to get the easy oil and to mash the feedstock to prep for 2ndary processing?

<<<In argentina they put the soy through an extruder , also to warm the smashed beans. 

Using the above #'s, if 1.75g of oil are available and 55% of that is mechanically pressed = ~.96g/bushel is an 'optimized target'. Fuelfarmer is getting ~.7 so he is 73% optimized.

Tho I noticed that Fuelfarmer was adding a pre-heater, and then repressing, then his 'secret loop' to get better yields (but noting here at a cost in energy and processing)... my guess is that pre-heater and repressing and... also plays into that optimized #.

So I suppose in the end, it seems Fuelfarmer is doing a pretty good job overall on his numbers are decent to good. Congrats on a job well done Fuelfarmer.

Im curious as to how the economics of it on a local level look. IE would you recommend this to someone to make a few extra $ based on your experience?

<<<As for the economics, my argy friend says the farmer benefits more from mecanically pressing his own and keep the fatter expeller for his cattle rather than sell the beans and buy dry expeller or even balanced pellets.

Rolf 

Rolf Uhle:

   

<<<As for the economics, my argy friend says the farmer benefits more from mecanically pressing his own and keep the fatter expeller for his cattle rather than sell the beans and buy dry expeller or even balanced pellets.

This seems to make a lot of sense.

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Shining

fuelfarmer,

Could you elaborate more on the flex auger?  Maybe some detailed pictures of your oil collection and desludging setup as well?  We are running a machine that looks quite similar to yours.  It presses a fair amount of fine meal and sludge through the rings.  This can be messy and time consuming to stay ahead of.

How are you filtering your oil before processing to biodiesel?

Many thanks,

Jim

The loop is 4 inch  conduit with flex auger inside. At the top a gear motor drives a cog wheel slowly  that drags the auger.

 At he bottom of the loop the top of the pipe is cut away to expose the auger and allow the meal to get picked up

The bottom of the flex auger loop was above the oil level in the catch tub. I built a hopper that allows oil and sludge to drop straight down into a catch tub under the press. I had a shield that funneled everything to the auger and the oil would drain out small holes in the bottom of the auger tub or spill over the side and the meal would get dragged back up to the hopper. This worked well with soybeans. Canola has more oil flow and a lot of sludge would spill out with the oil and soon fill the catch tub with gunk. Not good. I had a V bottom catch pan built and I am going to extend the bottom of the auger loop down to the bottom of the catch pan where the sludge will settle and get picked up by the auger. That is the plan. The flex auger flighting has to be braze welded after it is fitted around the press and inside the conduit. It has to be cut to be removed.

   
 

How do we filter? The oil gets pumped from the catch tub into a 100 gal. tub to settle. Then it is pumped into 55 gal. drums with stand pipe drains to settle more. The oil is drained through a sock, like you wear on your foot, and into 15 gal drums. The 15 gal. drum system will change soon. To small and to much work. Then we run the oil through a centrifuge and into a blending tank where diesel is added. We run a 30% oil 70% diesel blend. Hope to brew biodiesel soon. Wanted to see if we could get the oil first.

 

 

It looks like you've got a pretty good system working.  There sure is a lot of trial & error involved in getting one of these presses set up and running efficiently.  Thanks for taking the time to post pictures of your auger setup.

 

Jim

JimD, What are you pressing and how is the press working? What powers your press? I would like to know if you have discovered anything that works well for you that you had to find out yourself.

We are pressing canola.  We harvested about 14 acres with a yield of about 1.25 tons per acre.

The press is a CLB 500.  I believe it is rated for 5 tons per day.  There were a few hitches to work out along the way.  First, the diesel engine that shipped with the press ran terrible out of balance- it shook so hard it broke the mount frame.  It was changed out for an electric motor.  Then we found the the the cutting dies installed backwards- no meal passed out the discharge end of the extruder and oil backed up into the hopper.  The finish machining on the dies and screw seemed quite rough as well.  I estimate it took upwards of 15 hours running to smooth it up.  It seems to work better as time passes.

We found that we had to add a spray mister to raise the moisture content of the seed to optimize oil extraction.  Also, we are running the the seed, then rerunning the meal. We found that we get as much oil out of the meal on the rerun as we do when running the seed initially.  We're not sure if we are extracting all of the oil available from the seed.  We are extracting about 45 gallons of oil from about 1450+/- pounds of seed.  This seems low.  We probably should send out a sample of seed to be assayed and adjust our expectaions accordingly.  Our county extension hasn't been much help as the county has become highly urbanized over the last 3 decades and services have been pulled accordingly.  Hopefully the extension service at WSU can get us pointed in the right direction.

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions.  We are hoping to make our process a bit more automated and hands off like your setup.

 

Very best,

 

Jim

JimD:

We harvested about 14 acres with a yield of about 1.25 tons per acre.

http://www.canola.okstate.edu/cropproduction/economics/index.htm

1.25t/ac = 2500lb/ac / 60lb/bu = 41.6bu/ac. Depending on where you are in the world, that seems about ave. http://www.canola-council.org/acreageyields.html

2500lb/ac x $.15/lb = $380/ac - costs. http://www.canola-council.org/canolaprices.html    Side note...look at the effects of the falling US$ on the Loonie over the past few years.

 

JimD:

We're not sure if we are extracting all of the oil available from the seed.  We are extracting about 45 gallons of oil from about 1450+/- pounds of seed.  This seems low. 

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/canola.html    With canola having 40% oil/lb, 1450lbs  yield has a theoretical topend of 1450lbs/ac x 40% oil = 580lbs oil / acre. 580lbs / 7lbs/gal of oil = 83 gal of oil yield limit. Jims 45 / yield limit of 83 = 54.2% is Jim's oil yield efficiency.

As Rolf said earlier in this thread; Soy will give you roughly 10-11 % oil with good mech.presses. The rest (8-9%) comes with chemical extraction. 19% is good yield.

So it seems that 54.2% fits with the Rolf's soybean numbers. So congrats JimD on a job well done.

Canola 

Most crops grown in the U.S. and Europe to make "green'' transport fuels actually speed up global warming because of industrial farming methods, says a report by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen.

The findings could spell particular concern for alternative fuels derived from canola, used in Europe, which the study concluded could produce up to 70 per cent more planet-warming greenhouse gases than conventional diesel.

The study suggested scientists and farmers focus on crops, which required less intensive farming methods, to produce better benefits for the environment.

Biofuels are derived from plants that absorb the planet-warming greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as they grow, and so are meant as a climate-friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

But the new study shows that some biofuels actually release more greenhouse gases than they save, because of the fertilizer used in modern farming practices.

The problem greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, is more famous as the dentists' anesthetic "laughing gas,'' and is about 300 times more insulating than the commonest man-made greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

zed,

Perhaps you would like to visit our operations and observe our methods before condemning them, no?

Today I pressed some more canola.  I repressed some press cake and did not get much more oil although some did come out I did not measure the amount. The press is cranked down pretty tight.The texture of the cake changes after the second pass. It comes out of the press in sheets a lot like soy cake. I took samples to send away and check the fat remaining.

zed:

Canola 

Most crops grown in the U.S. and Europe to make "green'' transport fuels actually speed up global warming because of industrial farming methods, says a report by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul J. Crutzen.

The findings could spell particular concern for alternative fuels derived from canola, used in Europe, which the study concluded could produce up to 70 per cent more planet-warming greenhouse gases than conventional diesel.

The study suggested scientists and farmers focus on crops, which required less intensive farming methods, to produce better benefits for the environment.

Biofuels are derived from plants that absorb the planet-warming greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as they grow, and so are meant as a climate-friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

But the new study shows that some biofuels actually release more greenhouse gases than they save, because of the fertilizer used in modern farming practices.

The problem greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, is more famous as the dentists' anesthetic "laughing gas,'' and is about 300 times more insulating than the commonest man-made greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

Well... Im not sure the complete LCA of biofuels can be catagorically stated because there are many different 'biofuels'. Poop brewing is biofuels yet likely has a much lower LCA than landdressing the poop and letting bugs do the dirty work. Soy doesnt need N fertilizer tho I would be curious as to how much NOx is formed thruout the year because of a monoculture of soy? Perennial grasses likely have a very good LCA vs annuals like corn.

But generally, I would agree that complete LCA's need to be determined for biofuels and its quite likely that once these are done, many scenarios will drop off to the wayside.

 

Thank you for the reply

I wish you had said the post was flat out wrong.

American biofuel has driven british biofuel producers broke.

we are selling our fuel under the price they can produce it and recive triple subsidies.

europe horified by enviromental damage sold indonisian biofuel development to China.

We still have tarifs on Brazilian biofuel.

I think there is or will be another way to produce biofuel from any biomass, the farmer won't be able to do this.

I don't think we should be concerned with the enviromental consequences of the fuel the farmer produces.

what the oil drum is mostly saying that in riseing global demand we have reached peak oil production.

www.ldclaypool.com  accepting soybeans to make into biodiesel,  

fuelfarmer,

The results of repressing the cake sound similar to our results.  I am interested to hear your test results.  We are awaiting results as well.  I'll post them up when received.  Are you feeding any cake now, soy or canola?

JimD,

How thick is the press cake coming out of your press? The cake out of my press is very thin. 

hi,

 

Could you please take the political discussion out of this very technical thread?

 Start a new thread if you'd like to talk about something other than presses, please. I'd like to be able to point people here to get technical information, and they won't read the whole thing if it devolves into a long ramble offtopic.

 

I would  have asked this if it went offtopic about something other than politics/sustainability, too, by the way.

 

Thanks,

Mark

The cake coming out of the press on second run is very thin as well.