quote:

Originally posted by jdfoxinc:
FF
I knoticed that the plant parts were very small comming out of the rear of the combine. Do you have any idea how flax is harvested? It's main product is fine linnen. Camilina has been used for fabric fiber also, maby another cash stream?

The daughter of a guy I rent some land off of has been growing flax for fabric fiber for a couple of years. Apparently you harvest at a different time if you want fiber than if you want seed and can't have both. Though I don't have any first hand experience with flax either.

After pressing soybeans and canola we got a chance to press some sunflower seeds.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8DF7xU9VxNI

FF, what kind of press is that? and what did it cost? Any big maintenance problems?

No sunflowers were harmed in the production of this video....

I kow that oil cake from beans and corn can be used to make etoh. What about sunflower oil cake? It is mainly fibrous hulls.

Very impressive... It's great to see a farm moving away from 100% fossil fuel dependence.
Is the byproduct used as animal feed?

fabricator, the press is a 6YL-100 model made in China. We paid $4100 delivered without motor. Two main bearings have gone out on the screw shaft. I am told the press should run for two years before rebuild.

jdfoxinc, I don't know anything about sunflower press cake at this time. I think it can be used for cow food , just don't know the feed value.

john galt, we feed soybean and canola press cake to the cows. The sunflower cake may end up in a cow somewhere.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: fuelfarmer,

The spring canola experiment is over. The crop was planted on some land that is not the best. We also did not spray for weeds or bugs. It was a free for all with the pests. A canola expert bet me a bottle of rum that the crop would not produce any seed. I don't drink. Should have held out for a bottle of methanol. I could use that.

Seed from 10 acres

That looks fantastic to me! (but what do I know?)

How much would you have expected from 10 acres, and how much did you actually get, in pounds, or bushels?

How much canola oil will it yield? Sounds like that's ORGANIC canola oil, right? Very cool....

fuelfarmer -- you posted a picture showing the size comparison between soybean, canola, and camelina seeds, where would mustard seeds fall in this comparison, the white mustard seeds I have in the kitchen cabinet are about 1/32 inch in diameter, web says mustard seeds are about 1 mm in diameter (40/1000 inch).

I have been researching sources and types of plants available in the Arizona dessert that might be used for fuel as I will be moving back there in a couple years. It looks like there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of acres of an invasive wild mustard taking over a huge are of California and Arizona desert. Known as sahara mustard. There has long been a weed plant called black mustard growing in this area, the black mustard and the new invasive Sahara musterd both seem to have been oilseed crops originally. It seems like harvisting this "weed" on government land makes more sence than cultivating a couple acres on my own property. Way early in thinking about this, not even sure if the government agencies will allow it, but the web pages seem to indicate the eradication of this mustard is a priority.

Problem harvesting wild mustard - seems like the bushy plants have to be pulled up rather than cut off to insure eradication? not sure why as they are supposed to be an "annual" (grown each year from seed) crop. How much of the small seed is likely to go through a combine and end up back on the ground? Have you ever heard of some other sort of combine head that pulls the entire plant out of the ground?

May be that the mustard would have to be pulled up and the entire plant transported elsewhere to one centrally contained location to be thrashed to insure minimal seed redistribution? Just started looking into this, way too early get too carried away with the idea.

Another desert fuel source looks like Mesquite beans, they apparently contain about 30% sucrose sugar directly, none of that pesky "mashing" required to convert grain starch into sugar, just soak them in hot water for a while and start distilling the sweet water.

Mesquite beans contain even more sugar per weight than sugar cane or sugar beets. Literally tons of these end up on the desert floor every year. They are great range cattle food but there are still acres of these everwhere that cattle don't get near, I have a couple acres myself. Supposedly an acre of mesquite beans equates to about 300 gallons of ethanol, who knew. The bean mash could also be pelletized for fuel, maybe it could also be used as cattle feed, works for normal starch-based distillers grains.

Your press cake - sort of surprised to see that the cake from your press is in the form of thin leaves, looking at verious press websites it looked like the output from the single-ended press screws was sort of a continuous "turd" (sorry, simplest way I could think of to describe it). I suspect using the double ended press screw makes the screw shaft bearing arrangement much easier to fabricate and allows much simpler bearing mounting.

How dry is your cake, will it form into clumps like damp earth if you squeeze it in your fist? Just wondering how well it would form into pellets if run through a feed pellet machine, could be used as feed or as pellet fuel for wood/corn stoves, larger commercial size 5/8 inch diameter distillers grain pellets are used as boiler fuel in large heating boilers and some ethanol stills. Don't know how much it is worth as feed but wood pellete sell for 4-5 bucks per 40 pound bag here in the winter. any excess of palatable grain, or any unpalatable grain, could be burnt for heat.

Tim, I have never seen mustard seed.

Regarding exotic oilseed crops. I think it is more important to get started using conventional crops. A lot of R&D has been done on soy and canola crops. If you plant a crop on marginal land with little rain you are going to get poor yields. Poor yield on thousands of acres would be better than no crop on good land. I hope something better comes alone. Think of oil crops like computers. Sure if you buy a computer now it will be old news next week. There are a lot of "old" computers doing a lot of work.

The press cake is very dry to the touch. Some fat is still in the cake. It is not possible to get all the oil with a press. It should be very easy to pelletize the cake. The cake is worth to much as feed for us to burn it for heat. We use a grain burner to heat a barn so we could burn the cake.

FF did you plant roundup ready canola?

I don't think mustard seed is considered an exotic crop, it is a known oilseed crop containing around 30% oil in the seed and is cultivated in India and other countries. The Sahara mustard seed yield is absolutely amazing, 750 to 9000 seeds per plant and almost always 100% seed pod filling even in years with little rain. This is what makes it so aggressive, no planting needed, it is self propagating from seed all over the southwest U.S. The seeds are sticky when wet so get carried on vehicle tires, shoes, bird feathers etc. The seed pods also don't drop easily but do drop individually when the dry plant blows around like tumbleweeds. The seeds also don't need disturbed soil to germinate, this is the main differance from other weed weeds, it allows the Sahara mustard to invade areas that have never been cultivated. Still reading.

What I am considering is that a business can be started that would have the verious controlling bodies, (BLM, state, etc) of this government land being willing to PAY to have the plants harvested, income being produced on both the seed collection end and the oil and seedcake output end without any cost or time involved in planting. It is unlikely that one harvest would completely eliminate future growth of the plant in any one area so there should be several years of diminishing yields from each patch of ground, from reading the research papers about this mustard plant, at some point the normal local plants will overtake the mustard weed naturally if the weed population drops below a certain point thus returning the normal native plants to dominance.

If I'm not mistaken canola is a hybridized from the mustard family optimized for oil content, in some places the roundup ready variety is banned from planting as the roundup resistance can be transfered to other unwanted relatives thereby making them resistant to control by roundup.

quote:

Originally posted by fabricator:
FF did you plant roundup ready canola?

No. I was afraid volunteer canola being a problem.

There is an older small 5 ft cut pull behind combine HERE ON EBAY just now, one day left on the sale $199.95, needs some work.

fuelfarmer

I am interested in comparing notes on growing canola and turning the canola oil into biodiesel.

I am the Extension Agent,(in southern North Carolina)and even though I did not grow the canola, I was involved in all aspects.
We grew 7 acres in 2007, with good success and yields with little inputs. Then the farmer grew 25 acres this past year. This year he did apply fertilizer,but no pesticides, with decent yields, despite a very dry fall.

The idea behind our work and experiment is to use the oil for biodiesel, but we are not there yet.

It is good to here of your sucess.

waccamaw

quote:

Originally posted by waccamaw:
fuelfarmer

I am interested in comparing notes on growing canola and turning the canola oil into biodiesel.

I am the Extension Agent,(in southern North Carolina)and even though I did not grow the canola, I was involved in all aspects.
We grew 7 acres in 2007, with good success and yields with little inputs. Then the farmer grew 25 acres this past year. This year he did apply fertilizer,but no pesticides, with decent yields, despite a very dry fall.

The idea behind our work and experiment is to use the oil for biodiesel, but we are not there yet.

It is good to here of your sucess.

waccamaw

I guess I didnt know this but when you say "despite a dry fall" does this mean canola is planted in the fall?

Just so you know, I am not an expert.
In cold climates canola is planted in the spring. In moderate climates canola is planted in the fall. Canola does not like hot weather while it is flowering. Planting in the fall allows the plant to get a good start so if it does not winter kill it can bloom earlier in the spring to avoid the hot weather.
Just for fun this year we planted 10 acres of spring canola. This spring was cool enough that we did get some seed. I am told that we got lucky.

Hmmm, I'm thinking MI would be a cold climate, we usually have wet falls and wet springs, might have to do a small test patch this fall, that would be the dream way to go round here because mid summer is usually hot and dry.