Western Wisconsin Biodiesel Press and Reactor Tour
October 26th, 2006
Paul Porter, Lissa Pawlisch, Joel Haskard, Seth Fore
Tour hosted by Kim Odden and Jerry Ranallo from Wisconsin Indianhead Technical
College
Kim and two partners have spent around $25,000 for the equipment to produce their own
biodiesel (not ASTM standards) from canola or sunflowers. The equipment cost them
about $25,000 and includes:
$17,000 two screw press from Komet http://www.oekotec.ibg-
monforts.de/en/20.html.
$3,500 fuelmeister biodiesel processor
http://www.fuelmeister.com/home/home.asp.
$1,200 for a three phase power converter (press comes from Germany in 3 phase
power only)
$500 electrician
$200 stand
$25 tote tank
$90 meal tank (150 gallon plastic stock tank)
$160 oil tank (300 gallon plastic stock tank)
$1000 500 per auger and motor (have 2 or so)
About $25,000
How it works:
1. A gravity box is filled with canola. The gravity box holds 350 bushels
2. An auger takes the canola up about 13 feet to a storage box which holds about 50
bushels.
3. The canola then feeds down into the press. The press runs 24 hours a day.
4. The canola is pressed and the meal drops down into a 150 gallon stock tank and
the oil flows down a rain gutter into a 300 gallon stock tank.
5. The meal pellets are augered up into a second gravity box. Kim noted that they
empty the meal twice a day (5 minutes each time) and refill the storage box above
the press twice a day (5 minutes each time). So total maintenance of the system is
20-30 minutes a day.
6. Once the oil tank fills, they will pump it into a tote to take to the biodiesel
processor, where it could take 3-4 days to make 300 gallons of biodiesel on a slow
run or about a day and a half on a fast run.
This system took a weekend to set up. Issues they have seen have been an overflowing
storage box, a squirrel getting into the storage box and getting caught in the press, and
letting the press accidentally run dry. The quality of the canola matters because it affects
the life expectancy of the press screw (you don’t want it too dirty) and the recovery rate
of oil from the grain.
What it produces:
A one month crush of either sunflowers or canola can do 70-90 gallons/day. With
soybeans it is only 30-35 gallons/day. With soybeans you would only produce 10,000-
12,000 gallons a year, but with sunflower you could 20,000-24,000 gallons a year and
with canola even better, around 30,000-35,000 gallons a year (canola has less fiber than
sunflower). You can extract more oil from canola in a day or month because canola
weighs more per bushel and the press works on volume not on weight. Thus, a bushel of
canola weighs more than sunflower, so you can extract more oil per volume with canola
than sunflowers.
NOTE: You could stop right there with the straight vegetable oil. There are modified
waste oil burners that can burn the oil straight off the press or waste vegetable oil. This
might be an affordable heating solution for some farm buildings. And there are more
BTUs in straight canola oil (150,000-160,000 BTUs/gallon) then #2 fuel oil (135,000-
150,000 BTUs). Once you take the glycerin out of the biodiesel it only has 123,000-
125,000 BTUs. Kim mentioned that the makers of KingBuilt http://www.kingbuilt.com/
out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, had tested the canola oil in their products and were very
excited about its clean burn and energy value. He estimated you could heat your house
and hot water for the year with one of these burners and 10 acres of sunflowers. Kim is
now a sales representative for the company.
Besides the canola or sunflower oil, you have meal. Canola meal is 37% protein and 14%
fat; sunflower meal is 24% protein and 20% fat. The meal is very good livestock feed.
The sunflower meal stays in pellet form and is currently being tested in corn burners to be
burned as heating fuel. The canola meal tends to turn to dust, but feed trucks are covered
anyway, so transport should be no big deal. A lot of Wisconsin dairy and beef farmers
have been buying canola meal out of Canada to feed their cows, so this can be a better
source.
Moving on, here is how their biodiesel processor works:
1. Hook a hose up from the oil tote tank to the 55 gallon drum to preheat. Being a
chemical reaction, it works faster if the oil is heated to 80-130 degrees F.
2. Transfer from drum to reactor tank (50-100 gallon).
3. Do a titration test to check pH, want beginning pH of oil, would be same for every
batch of canola. With a standard oil from a press, you would never need to change
the recipe.
4. Select correct recipe of oil, NaOH of lye/potassium hydroxide and 20% methanol
5. Add lye (by weight) in chamber, goes through screen mesh to methylhydroxide
(causes mix with methanol)
6. Slowly inject (10 gallons takes 15 minutes) methyl hydroxide and allow to mix
for 40 minutes to 1 hour, let chemical reaction run/circulate.
7. Let settle 6-8 hours.
8. Drain off glycerin (from bottom).
9. Then rinse fuel with water because the water will combine with remaining
methanol, whose reaction is only 95% efficient.
10. Drain, water & methanol mixture from tank, remember- fuel always floats
For about 60 gallons of oil, you will get 10 gallons of glycerin. You must take the
glycerin out or it will gum up the engine system, but glycerin can also be used for animal
feed, organic fertilizer or used in methane digesters or pure glycerin soap
Water will pull methanol to the bottom during the process and need to be drained out
(you could also heat the fuel mix to push off (evaporate) methanol at145 degrees).
This biodiesel is not up to ASTM standards and is for on farm or personal use only. It
costs between $1,000 to 1,500 per sample, and there are no testing places in Wisconsin.
Kim and others are forming a biodiesel club in Baron County and members plan to chip
in to get one sample tested.
And now for something completely different. Oekotec, the German parent company of
the Komet press, also makes a self contained biodiesel plant http://www.oekotec.ibg-
monforts.de/bio-e/030.html that fits in its own shipping container
http://www.oekotec.ibg-monforts.de/bio-e/041.html. They come in 4 different sizes,
roughly, 125,000 – 250,000 – 500,000- and 1 million gallon/year sizes. The press, grain
bins, working capital and everything should be about $1.2-1.4 million. It produces a
million gallons (1000 gallons every 8 hours or 3000 gallons a day at 90% efficiency=
2700 gallons a day). If it costs $3 to produce and is sold at $3 a gallon this is a zero net.
BUT if the federal incentive is $1/gallon or even .80/gallon this is money in your pocket.
It could pay for itself in one to two years with the tax incentive. The biodiesel plant could
be up and running within nine to twelve months from the date of order. Remember to
factor in labor for handling the grain, meal, oil, fuel and administrative expenses and the
pros/cons of disposing of the meal. The plant runs remotely from Germany and after
they’ve passed a certain number of tests they are only need spot quality/assurance
quality/control tests to continue to meet ASTM standards.
Finally, Kim gave the following example of his on-farm diesel use. Kim and his wife use
1500 gallons of diesel a year. If they heated their house with fuel oil, they would need an
additional 1200 gallons a year. So combined they would need 2700-3000 gallons of
vegetable oil/biodiesel a year. They could buy a smaller single screw press for $5000,
plus another $5000 for augers, fuelmeister and setup costs, and be up and running for
around $10,000. With 30 acres of canola or sunflowers they could produce between
3000-4000 gallons a year, more than they could use. That is a three year payback, and the
equipment should last 20 years. All the equipment could be kept in a 20 X 50 pole shed.
And, if they wanted, they could potentially use the sunflower meal in a corn burner and
then sell the sunflower oil instead.
Kim believes that within a 30 mile radius of where he lives there are enough crushers to
do 400-500,000 gallons of on-farm biodiesel in Wisconsin next year.