BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

Last year I was looking for some canola seed to run through an oilseed press. Soybeans could be found, but finding canola seed in the east was a problem. This year we grew 20 acres of canola. It did not yeild as much as I had hoped for. We got around 27 bu. per acre. It was a fun project  and I am sure we will plant more this  fall.

If any one is looking for some canola to try in a small oilseed press I now have over 500 bu. of seed and could spare a few bushels. I am in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia near Harrisonburg. Shipping could be a pain and the cost is more than the seed is worth but if you are close  and would like to try some let me know.
 

Yes, I am looking for some canola seed to press, I currently have some seed but would enjoy talking with you about your experience with the seed. We are also going to plant more this fall.  I live in southern Virginia around the Martinsville area, and would like to talk with you about our experience as well.  My email address is redbirchenergy@gmail.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Can you provide me any advice on growing canola?  We are in the process of clearing land now to start a small self-sufficient sustainable farm and one of the things we wanted to try our hand at was growing canola or rapeseed to press to make our own biodiesel.  We are new at this, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Tracy

Hey fuelfarmer... Id be interested in something with you. Please send me a private message and we can talk.

fuelfarmer:

We got around 27 bu. per acre. It was a fun project  and I am sure we will plant more this  fall. 

Dont be so hard on your green thumb. Jeeze it was your first year with a crop that is rare in your neck of the woods. I find it takes 3-5 seasons to really understand a new crop vs your farm. Sometimes even varieties takes that long (like apples).

Granted you are in the east but 27 decent for first year. Memory servers, Canada/ND gets 25-40bu/ac

portert0224:

Can you provide me any advice on growing canola?  We are in the process of clearing land now to start a small self-sufficient sustainable farm and one of the things we wanted to try our hand at was growing canola or rapeseed to press to make our own biodiesel.  We are new at this, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Tracy

Sorry I did not see this until now.  

I am not an expert yet but I will try to help. Where are you located? 

I am looking at possibility of rotation of Canola/Rape seed in a fall cover planting with black oil sunflower seeds. I have been pressing soybean for 2 years ... and it works fine, but it takes a lot of beans to make a gallon of oil ... 

We have formed a coop near Gettysburg and will pressing around 8000 bushels this year ...Presscake is recycled back into cattle and dairy operations. We are a two crop community ... soybean and corn ... and I'd like to expand that thinking to include rape seed and sunflower ... both are good livestock feed and much better oil producers.

Where did you get your seed? Any particular methods in ground prep? Have you tried it as rotation crop?What about herbicide/pesticide/fertilizer ... I'd like to limit those as much as possible? Do you havea supply of seeds?

Anything you can add would be of help. thanks Ken

kswick, This will be our second year planting canola. Last year we got a good crop of silage corn that was planted after canola. This year we planted 75 acres of canola and we will plant beans after the canola comes off. We also are going to try 15 acres of spring canola this year. I was told spring canola does not do well  this far south, but we are going to try anyway. Then we will plant barley after the spring planted crop comes off

The seed should be planted very shallow so you need a good seed bed. We plant 5 lbs to the acre. So far poultry litter has been the fertilizer. Canola also likes sulfur. Not much in the way of herbicides. You can get Round-Up ready canola. We have not planted any Round-Up ready. We need to look in to pesticides. Had some pest damage last year.

Some of our seed came from Cropland Genetics and some from Johnston's Seeds and a few bags from Virginia Stste University. 

What type of press are you running? I would enjoy seeing your set-up

. 

I am running 2 Chinese presses ... 6yl-120 ... advertised as 6 ton a day, but in reality a good 8 hour day would be 2-3 tons. I drive the presses with Chines 25 hp diesel engines ... the added advantage being that I use bio diesel and # 2 offroad diesel blend. In fact I am running the diesels and my home heating system on biodiesel blends. I also have a large press filter and processing setup to make the biodiesel. At present all of our biodiesel use is off road ... heating, tractors etc ... all of it blended with # 2 diesel. 

It seems that you like the Canola since you have increased acreage ... how do you combine it ... and do you use any of it for forage? Do you use presscake in animal feed ... dairy or beef? 

 As a starter ... would you be willing to sell some harvested Canola for us to do several trial press runs. We might be able to work something out with providing an oil share for the pressing ... or do you already press your canola on-site.

My sense of it all, is that it is going to take a fairly large cooperative system to make it all work ... and that as we get down the road, if you are not well established and large enough, the Big-Boys will gobble you up and spit you out. We are running our operation as a coop ... we press for local farmers return the feedcake for animal feed ... and split the oil. We charge a minimum fee for processing into biodiesel ...and at the end of the year share profits. The whole concept was begun with the goal of sustainable farming ... and to sustain a farm operation you have increase the bottom line ... to increase the bottomline you either need to spend less or make more $ ... so the project is a search to increase profit centers and find new markets.  

We are a project in process ... canola and sunflower clearly are more profitable in terms of oil than soybeans.

Thanks: Ken

We are running a 6YL-100 press. We feed the soy and canola press cake to dairy cows. Soy cake piles up faster that canola. Soy oil is easier clean than canola oil. Canola oil has more very fine particals that settle much slower.

Harvesting is done by swathing the canola and drying it in a windrow. We bought a pick-up head for our John Deere 7720. The pick-up head is the only thing we bought extra to grow canola. We had a 24 ft. swather.

I am sure a co-op is a good way to go, but on farm pressing is also works. The small presses are cheap enough that most farmers could buy one and keep the process on the farm. I am sure that not everyone wants to mess with an oilpress.

If you want some canola to do a test run I am sure we can work something out.  

I started pressing soybeans on my farm ... the processed oil and blended in fuel oil for the furnace.

A large operation near me saw the process and wanted to do their beans ... if you press you don't have to have the beans roasted, which also saves money. Problem around us is labor. Farming is pretty labor intensive and labor costs a lot of cash around here, so most farms don't want to commit labor to press and process oil.

I did some sunflower seeds, and they produced three times the oil in half the time ... and sunflower cake can also be used as a dairy and cattle feed.

My real interest is creating more income centers for farms and lowering operating costs. In order to do that there has to be an economy of scale ... there has to be a reasonable return for everyone concerned. That includes the small mill owner I'm working with who is just making ends meet. There is no doubt that biodiesel is going to have an impact on things over the next several years, but my guess is the small producers are gonna be snuffed out by state and federal regulation. That will be particularly true once big business gets fully invested.

So the coop was one idea for involving more businesses in the project ... and for increasing raw supply of oil seed for pressing. And yes, I'd like to give some rape seed a try ... maybe I could interest a couple of farms around here in planting it ... it's supposed to be good forage too. Thanks for you help and advise: Ken

Hello,

I came across this site and have a few questions.  My brother-laws ranch here in MT and with the cost of Diesel going up I wonder if it could be cost effective to grow canola, feed the cake, make biodiesel. I like the idea of coop, get a few operators in the area to share in the operation.

What kind of seed press are you using? how much do they cost?  How much oil comes from a bu. of canola?  Does the cake need to be dried or feed rright away?

Thanks

 If you have equipment to plant and harvest canola it can cost effective. Feeding the press cake to your own cows is the best way to use what you grow. On our farm the oil is almost a byproduct of processing soybeans and canola for protein. We do want the oil.

The press we run is a 4 ton a day press from China. The press was $4000 without a motor.

You can get close to 1 gal. of oil from a bushel of soybeans and 2 gal, of oil from a bushel of canola.

Press cake is dry and will keep for a month or two, maybe  longer . We feed it in a week or two.

Hi Kswick,

please  can help, I am from South Africa, I recently obtained some Canola oil, to be used in Bio diesel production, however the oil is a very dark color, my question is this: how do I remove this dark pigment from the oil.

Would you mind sharing your recipe for making the Bio diesel.

Thank you & God Bless

Chappie