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Walnut Grove MN USA | Dgrimm you are correct to question wether soybeans are the best crop to use for biodiesel. Soybeans are actually one of the poorest crops to use. Not much oil yield per acre and not a good quality oil to refine. Sunflower, canola/rapeseed, safflower, palm are much better. Only advantage soybeans have is the infrastucture is already in place and a desirable byproduct in soymeal. Everybody in the midwest wants that magic third crop and it is sitting there just waiting for the crushing plants to be built. I have looked into making my own biodiesel and thinking it is very doable with just 80 acres of canola or sunflowers. Also learning that I can make my own ethanol to use in the biodiesel refining process as well as potassium hydroxide which after used can be a fertilzer. I am leaning towards thinking the future of biodiesel/ ethanol is growing and refining on the farm and selling the excess to your local gas station. As far as ethanol goes unless the car companies get behind it is going to face major resistance in the future. Some people I have talked to that support and use E-85 (non-farmers) say it is a break even deal at best. They are having substanually less mileage and starting problems. I believe the car companies can resolve the problem by designing an engine that is made to run on e-85 and work on regular gas instead of an engine that is designed to run on gas and adapted to e-85. I do know engines so I know it can be done quite easily.
Ethanol also has a couple of other issues as well. If we took our entire corn crop and made ethanol out of it it would still only replace about 20% of the gasoline used in this country. We need other sources for ethanol, the future of ethanol depends on it, corn can't do it. That my be a moot point any way because there is a new product on the horizon that solves some of ethanols problems. It is called butanol. It has a btu content only slightly below gas at about 110,000 btu's per gallon. Gas is about 114,000 btu's. ethanol is about 75,000 btu's. It will burn in any gas engine with no modifications and has mileage similar to gas. That is important because nobody likes to get less mileage even if they can justify it economiclly. Just something in human nature I guess. Butanol is currently made from oil because it is easy to do but can be made from corn and organic waste products (cornstalks, grass, etc. imagine city folk bagging up lawn clipping and leaves and garden/yard waste to sell to the local butanol plant). Currently Dupont and another company are doing research on it. Something to watch. | |
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USDA: More corn needed for ethanol
