D4—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 16,1981
MINNEAPOLIS, Mn. - A third
of a typical farmer’s acreage used
to be hay and oats to feed old Tag
and Bess, the team that provided
the power for fieldwork.
But now, say some researchers,
you can logically begin to think
about devoting as little as 10
percent of your cropland to
growing sunflower; then squeeze
the oil out of the seed produced and
run your diesel tractor on it.
The dynamic new energy source
is sunflower oil also called sunoil
or sunfuel. Research in North
Dakota and other states is running
full speed ahead on how-to-do-it
details.
Known as far is that sunoil will
work in a diesel tractor you can
actually substitute it 100 percent
for diesel fuel and do your field
work. What isn’t known, and
toward which research at North
Dakota State University and on
North Dakota farms is being
directed, is how long an engine will
last running on sunoil.
Most researchers suspect pure
sunoil won’t work for very long,
that what’s best is to blend sunoil
and diesel, plus perhaps make
engine design modifications to
accommodate sunoil.
“This new source of fuel
sunflower will grow successfully
just about anywhere, though
they’re now grown primarily in the
Dakotas, Minnesota, and Texas,”
says Dick Schulte, Northriip King
Co. sunflower product manager.
“We’re seeing an increasing in
terest in sunflower as a doublecrop
alternative. Just think of growing
one food crop... following it with a
sunfuel crop ... then using sunfuel
to plant another food crop. ’ ’
As a part of its recently launched
“Keep Farming Profitable”
program, Northrup King is
promoting further exploration into
the use of sunoil as an alternative
fuel. As the petroleum-based diesel
fuel gets more scarce and
therefore higher priced, sunoil will
look that much more attractive,
according to Schulte.
Comparing sunflower oil with
ethanol, it looks like the work in
volved in getting energy out of
sunflower seed pays off more
favorably. Just one unit of energy
input produces up to five units of
energy. And currently, sunflower
produces more gallons of fuel oil
per acre than other popular
oilseeds. (Peanuts are an ex
ception; however, production costs
are nearly five times as great as
raising sunflower.)
An acre of sunflower at average
seed yield can produce over 50
gallons of sunoil: 1,350 pounds of
seed; extract three-fourths of the
40 percent oil content, or 405
pounds of oil. Sunoil weighs 7.7
pounds/gallon, so you’ve produced
S 3 gallons of sunfuel. And
researchers say that sunoil con
tains 94 percent as much energy as
diesel fuel.
To boot, there’d be sunflower oil
meal residue enough to provide the
high protein supplement for a
dairy or beef cow herd. Because of
tl
make it best suited for ruminant animals. Protein content,
with hulls, runs about 28 percent. Due to sun meal's high oil
content, researchers suggest limiting animals to less than
three pounds per day.
Sunflower
meal must be fed quickly before it
turns rancid. Researchers
recommend feeding under three
pounds per animal per day.
An early attempt at burning
sunflower oil in a farm tractor was
made in the spring of 1980 by a
North Dakota farmer. Farming
1,800 acres, the sunflower, corn
and wheat grower bought a 55-
gallon drum of sunoil and burned
35 or so gallons in an old John
Deere he’s used for years as a
chore tractor
“It ran well,” he says “Some
mornings the temperature was
down to zero outside, but the
engine started and ran fine I’d say
1 was running on 90 percent sunoil,
because there was a little diesel in
the fuel tank when I put the oil in. ”
He used the tractor for about
three weeks on the sunoil, grinding
feed and generally doing an lot of
stopping and starting. He also
burned about 18 gallons of the
sunoil in his diesel-powered
automobile, however with less
success.
“About half -the time it didn’t
want to start. After it did start, and
got warmed up, it ran OK. I was
probably. burning about 50-50
sunoil and diesel fuel.”
He’s had no complications with
either engine. He does point out
these were only short-term tests.
Problems may show up in long
term tests.
After conducting a year of
research running sunoil in test
engines and through diesel engine
fuel pumps, Ken Kaufman,
research; ag engineer at North
Dakota State University, Fargo,
said he feels strongly that a sun
flower oil/diesel fuel combination
shows the most promise on a
sustained basis in present-day
diesel engines.
Says Kaufman, “You get a
carbon buildup on injectors in the
cylinder that can eventually bring
about a change in the automization
of the fuel. Eventually the sun
flower oil can get down into the
crankcase oil and solidify it so that
it doesn’t lubricate well.”
Kaufman points out that
research work in the country of
South Africa has contributed
greatly to what is known about
burning vegetable oils such as
sunflower oil in diesel engines. _
Research also is being conducted
at Ohio State University, the
University of Idaho, the University
of Missouri, the University of
Illinois, and the University of
Califomia-Davis.
Kaufman indicates the tests
using a 50-50 sunoil and diesel
blend look promising.
“There is no doubt you can bum
sunflower oil in a diesel engine,”
he says. “We just don’t know for
how long, and what mixture ratios
are best. We’ll have a lot more
answers after another year to year
and one-half of work.”
The engineer points out that
sunoil is not yet as economical to
burn as diesel fuel. On a gallon-for
gallon basis, No. 2 diesel fuel is
selling (late April) for
oil runs diesel tractors
m
m
A
Ken Tweten, Grand Forks, NO, farmer and the words “Sunflower Oil" posted on the
president of Flower Power, Inc., a non-profit meter. Actually, the fuel’s a 50-50 blend of
corporation testing sunfuel in actual on-farm sunoil and diesel fuel
situations, fills his test tractor from a tank with
plant. Processing 25 or more tons
of seed a day, such a plant could be
owned cooperatively, he says, and
investment for machinery alone
would be approximately $200,000 to
$250,000.
Daily production from such a
plant could be 2,600 gallons of
sunoil. The average North Dakota
farmer, according to Schaffner,
uses 3,600 gallons of diesel fuel a
year, so operated 240 days a year,
the small community plant could
serve 175 or more farms, depen
ding on the ratio of sunfuel and
diesel used.
Such a plant would still not yet
produce sunfuel competitively to
diesel fuel at present-day prices.
Sunflower breeding research by
companies may. eventually ■ help
bring down the cost of sunqil.
According to Northrup King
Company’s sunflower research
' l '"'Steven Shein, the outlook
flower oil’s price is |2.08. Two
hundred proof ethanol, he adds, is
selling for |l.BO/gallon.
Looked at on an energy output
per gallon basis, diesel fuel at
$l.lO/gallon is far the cheapest
fuel. Kaufman calculates that
100,000 BTU’s of energy as diesel
fuel costs $0.80; as sunflower oil
$1.59; and as ethanol $2.14.
Sunoil produced by a small on
farm oil expeller worth $4,000 to
$B,OOO, according to figures
prepared by the Department of Ag
Economics at NDSU, would cost
$2.20 to $4.01/gallon, depending on
how the farmer figured costs.
In an attempt to answer the
question on what ratio of sunoil and
diesel fuel is best, an extensive on
farm test is under way in North
Dakota under the cooperative
effort of a non-profit organization
called Flower Power, Inc., and
NDSU.
According to Ken Tweten, Grand
Forks farmer and president of
Flower Power,' Inc., the
organization is testing 12 tractors
in actual on-farm situations this
crop season. By late April, 10 of the
12 tractors were actually in use on
10 different North Dakota farms,
burning either 25 percent or 50
percent sunoil along with diesel
fuel.
Tweten himself, farming 1,850
acres, of which 200 will be sun
flower this year, is operating a
model 2390 Case 160-horsepower
row crop tractor, new at the start
of the season. He’s burning 50-50
sunoil and diesel, and comments,
“I can tell no differences yet no
misfiring, no hesitation, good
power. We haven’t cleaned the fuel
filter yet (25 hours).”
It is expected that each of the 12
tractors on test, varying in size,
will be operated about 600 hours
each. Then, engines will be tom
down and carefully studied.
Engineer John Walter at NDSU is
heading up the university’s effort
to support the 12-tractor ex
periment, considered com
plementary to on-campus lab
research
Tweten is optimistic about the
future of sunoil as tractor fuel- “I
believe it will be useful as an
emergency fuel, if the Arabs cut us
off completely. Also, sunoil as fuel
might increase the price of sun
flower seed in a depressed market
situation.”
Tweten doesn’t forsee himself
making sunflower oil on his own
fann with a small expeller
'‘EVeiuually,” he says, “a
medium-sized commercial
production plant might be the most
economical way to produce
sunoil.”
Ag economist Leßoy Schaffner
at NSDU currently is evaluating
the economic feasibility of a
community-sized sunoil production
■, •
* <=% I
v>
>
v-
Students present
prize-winning papers
NEWARK, Dela. - Two
University of Delaware graduate
students took both “best paper”
awards in stiff competition against
other entries at a recent meeting of
the Potomac Division of the
American Phytopatboligical
Society in College Park, Maryland.
Papers by Steve Leath and Mary
Lou Casadevall-Keller were
among 26 presented by plant
pathology graduate students, most
of them from the Mid-Atlantic
area.
Leath and Casadevall-Keller are
both candidates for master’s
degrees this spring.
It is very unusual for the same
institution to get both awards, says
Dr. Charles R. Curtis, head of
Delaware’s department of plant
science and past president of the
Society’s Potomac Division.
Papers were judged for purpose,
research rationale, procedures
and approach, experimental
design, quality and quantity of
data, and conclusions, as well as
organization and visual presen
tation.
is good for new hybrids that will
increase sunoil production per
acre via increased seed production
and increased oil content per
centage in the seed.
“While seeds from present-day
hybrids contain 40 to 45 percent oil,
some of our experimental hybnds
have oil contest levels in the low
50’s,” he says. “And oil content is
not the only characteristic we’re
working with. We also must have
high yield potential, resistance to
diseases, and tolerance to in
sects.”
The seed researcher feels there
is good potential for improving oil
output per acre, and feels that the
development of hybrid sunflower
“is about where hybrid com was in
the early 1940’5.”
“The genetic potential of sun
flower is largely untapped,” he
says.
Leath’s paper described a new
technique he developed with his
advisor. Dr. Robert B. Carroll, for
screening soybeans for resistance
to Fusanum wilt disease.
Casadevall-Keller reported on
her study of the genetics of
virulence and toxin production in
two bacteria harmful to plants.
The advisor for her project was
another Delaware plant
pathologist, Dr. Myroln Sasser.
Leath, who spent two months
this winter showing vegetable
farmers in Panama how to identify
and control potato diseases under
an international agriculture Title
XII exchange grant, plans to
continue his studies at the
University of Illinois at Cham
paign-Urbana next year, working
towards a Ph.D. in plant pathology
and international agriculture.
After she receives her master’s
degree, Casadevall-Keller plans to
work for industry on bacterial
genetic research-possibly in the
areas of crop protection or human
medicine.