Improving Biodiesel Production on Family-owned Farms

The rising cost of diesel fuel is hitting small, family-owned farms particularly hard. So some farmers are taking matters into their own hands, growing seedstock on part of their land and converting it locally into clean-burning biodiesel. The problem is that some of the presses used to crush the seedstock to extract oil are highly sensitive to moisture levels.

“If the moisture content of the oilstock is too high, the press gums up; if it’s too low, the efficiency drops off,” says Jim Long, a professor at the Oregon Institute of Technology, who, along with fellow OIT professor Mark Timmerman, received research funding from Oregon BEST to try to solve this problem. “So farmers have to employ an extra person to monitor the moisture content and carefully adjust the input of water.”

For small farms, the cost of hiring another employee can be prohibitive, especially since monitoring the moisture content is no easy task. The presses require a 0.1 percent tolerance in an overall moisture content of seven percent, which is hard to hit when water is being added using a garden hose held by a human being.

So Long and Timmerman are using Oregon BEST funding to develop a low-cost, computerized system that will monitor moisture levels using microwave probes or radio frequency sensors and then automatically adjust water flow at nozzles using an actuator. Watch the video.

“If the overall cost of the system is low enough that a family-owned farm can afford to install and use it, farmers could potentially make enough cost-effective fuel for their farming operation by growing the oilseed on their own land,” Long says.

If this Oregon BEST research team can also monitor the oil content of the seedstock, keeping it at exactly 12 percent in the mash after crushing, the mash can then be sold as feed stock for dairy cattle. Using technology to create a value-added product from what would normally be just waste, could make the system even more economically viable.

And if the system comes together as Long and Timmerman envision, it could be the seed for a new Oregon startup company, which means more jobs for Oregonians, in addition to relief from high fuel prices for Oregon farmers and ranchers.

Read the Final Report (PDF)

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