Oil Press. By Jeff Cox -- from Organic Gardening, April 1979, Rodale Press IN 2,500 SQUARE FEET, a family of four can grow each year enough sunflower seed to produce three gallons of homemade vegetable oil suitable for salads or cooking and 20 pounds of nutritious, dehulled seed -- with enough broken seeds left over to feed a winter's worth of birds.The problem, heretofore, with sunflower seeds was the difficulty of dehulling them at home, and the lack of a device for expressing oil from the seeds.
About six months ago, we decided to change all that. The job was to find out who makes a sunflower seed dehuller or to devise one if none were manufactured. And to either locate a home-scale oilseed press or devise one. No mean task.Our researches took us from North Dakota -- hub of commercial sunflower activity in the nation -- to a search of the files in the U.S.
Patent Office, with stops in between. Tools Required 1. The Fuel Film. Make your own biodiesel: Journey to Forever. The first two methods sound easiest, but, as so often in life, it's not quite that simple.
Vegetable oil is much more viscous (thicker) than either petro-diesel or biodiesel. The purpose of mixing or blending straight vegetable oil (SVO) with other fuels and solvents is to lower the viscosity to make it thinner, so that it flows more freely through the fuel system into the combustion chamber. If you're mixing SVO with petro-diesel you're still using fossil-fuel -- cleaner than most, but still not clean enough, many would say. Still, for every gallon of SVO you use, that's one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
People use various mixes, ranging from 10% SVO and 90% petro-diesel to 90% SVO and 10% petro-diesel. You might get away with it in summer time with something like an older '80s Mercedes 5-cylinder IDI diesel, which is a very tough and tolerant motor -- it won't like it but you probably won't wreck it. To each his own.
Biodiesel: Homegrown Oil. Related Content Types of Biodiesel Check you vehicle owner’s manual for guidance on which types of biodiesel and biodiesel blends you c...
Fuel Your Farm Ever thought about making your own biodiesel? Here's how. Imagine a renewable, clean-burning fuel that can be produced from local crops and could power a large number of existing vehicles — starting now. In the last few years, many farmers, environmentalists and other renewable energy advocates have begun promoting biodiesel as an alternative fuel that could replace at least a portion of the world’s petroleum-based diesel fuel market. In fact, biodiesel fuel already is widely used in Europe, where tax policies are structured to support its use. In the United States, the public is just becoming aware of the potential of biodiesel, but the development of a biodiesel industry is already well underway. Liquid Solar Energy Using vegetable oil for fuel is not a new idea. Making Biodiesel Fuel Here’s how the process works. Feeding Demand Advantages.