August 9, 2005

Farm Diesel Prices

farm diesel prices

Is it economically feasible for farms to make biodiesel from cooking grease?

So, here’s what I know:

There are cases online of “homebrewers” who make biodiesel to fuel their diesel-engine cars.

Farms in general a lot of diesel engines.

People commercially sell biodiesel, but many farms don’t make biodiesel themselves.

Gas prices are going up, and depending on the system, the costs of making biodiesel (initial setup, methanol, lye/potash) can be lower than the price at the pump.

If farms have some restaurants or food chains nearby, would it make sense for them to use the cooking grease and make biodiesel to fuel their equipment?

In general, it would take a lot of restaurants to provide enough waste vegetable oil to run a farm. The amount of time and fuel to collect the WVO would be more than the amount of biodiesel you could make. You don’t want to use trap grease for making biodiesel.

As a farmer, your best approach is to grow an oil-seed crop. These include rapeseed (makes canola oil), sunflowers, soy beans, and peanuts. I know there are a lot of legal issues around selling peanuts, but it is perfectly legal for you to grow peanuts as long as no by-product leaves the farm. Did you know that peanuts actually provide nutrients to the soil?

Corn is not a good option because of the low oil content (relative to the others).

You should contact or create a growers co-op near you. The best use for a co-op is to collectively purchase a cold press and the biodiesel refinery.

The advantages of a cold press for oil extraction is:
* the resulting oil has longer hydro-carbon strings, which is better for biodiesel.
* you can sell the resulting “seed cake” (what’s left over after pressing) as animal feed (especially if it is soy beans).

Don’t be misled into thinking you have to you have to build a 30 million gal/year refinery. You should match the size of the refinery to the expected yield of the co-op members (with some room for growth). Choose a continuous process (not a batch process) from the beginning, and adding capacity will be straight-forward.

If you don’t have a growers’ co-op near by, don’t be afraid to start small with an acre of soil, your own oil press and small-scale biodiesel refinery. You can always scale up when you decide how much land to allot to your fuel needs.

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