"David I. Raines" wrote:

Jim Dauven wrote:

[...]



Actually the distillation of wood will produce methanol which
when added to Rapeseed oil and place under pressure at 350 C.
produces a biodiesel that is only slightly dirtier than petroleum
based diesel fuels but with no sulfur dioxide emissions and lower
CO2 emissions, yet delivers 94.5% of the power out put of diesel.

The methalesterfication of rapeseed oil as well as peanut oil,
soybean oil, corn oil, olive oil, cottonseed oil, is a fairly
straight forward process that produces a generally high quality
biodiesel fuel from the oils. The creation of biodiesel fuel
plants are well advanced in Japan, France and Germany were many
commercial busses and taxies are running on biodiesel.

With the cheap manufacturing of Methanol from natural gas
and the abundance of vegetable oils in this country it is thought
that biodiesel could be economically competitive with petroleum
based diesel but with lower toxic emissions of green house
gases such as elimination of SO2 and lower CO2 emissions.
The dirty emissions from biodiesel is mainly soot which is
carbon and filters out of the atmosphere very quickly.

I am looking at the method of the methalesterfication of
rapeseed oil, and other oils too, in order to make biodiesel
in event of TEOTWAWKI scenario.

I have the layout of the equipment in a university lab in
Japan that did a lot of research into the methalesterfication
of Rapeseed oil to convert it into RME.

It was a stainless steel metal cylinder that allowed the raw
oil methanol mix to be pumped into the bottom, heated to 350
degrees centigrade (750 degrees fhernhite) and pressurize
the cylinder to 900 psi before the pressure valve allowed the
vapor to escape into a cooling tower to liquefy into biodiesel.

The Independent

Interesting. I know someone who runs their car on "bio-diesel" so it is
certainly feasible. It's just that the work involved in making the
fuel is considerable.

Seems to me that you would have trouble making enough fuel to just till
the land to make the fuel to till the land....and so on.

Remember, agriculture and industry are heavily subsidized in present-day
America. You won't have those subsidies to make things seem easier than
they are.

What if you are driven off your land, which you have admitted in earlier
posts is possible and have very prudently planned for. Planning on
escaping on your tractor? [ meant half in jest and half seriously ]

It's gonna be a lot like Beirut here, after the system fails. We've
decided to plan on being able to split on a moment's notice with nothing
but our back packs. With these stashed well away from the Retreat.

There's only one thing that we need that can't be made from native raw
materials: Seeds. We'll have several caches of these "out there". Real
good thing that plants produce them in massive surplus.

Have you looked into no-till farming?
It's working very well for us on a smallish scale, just to feed ourselves.

-dir

I have planned on using no-till farming with horse drawn
equipment. First I would run the disk harrow behind a two
horse team. That's two acres an hour for 5 hours. Change
horses (you cannot/should not run a horse more than 5 hours)
because the need time for foraging. Then run disk harrow
for another five hours. That way you can disk up 20 acres
a day. The next day run the spring tooth harrow for the
same about of time. (It actually may go faster as the
spring tooth harrow doesn't have the resistance to pulling
that the disk harrow does). Last run the grain drill for
the planting of wheat, oats, barley, rapeseed etc. These
plants are winter planting so you plant them in late september
and let them germinate in the fall rain so they will get
good start for the spring. That way the plant matures while
the moisture from the spring rains is still in the ground.

If you are raising cattle and you keep your cattle in a corral
in the winter you can use a manure spreader to spread manure
on the grain crops in the spring just as ground if thawing
This will provide additional nitrogen for the growing grain
plants. (The object of this is to get the grain as
healthy as possible for increased yield)

Also the rape oil is important here because after fertilization
of the grain heads if you spray the grain with rapeseed oil that
will kill many of the pests like grass hoppers as rapeseed oil
is toxic and does really dry out.

I don't have a horse drawn spray rig yet but it is one of the
things that will have to be constructed.

Crops that you will irrigate, Corn, potatoes, beans, peas,
onions, alfalfa, etc you plant in the spring. One trick you
can do is seed alfalfa over the grain crop that you planted
the fall before. The grain will grow faster than the alfalfa
but the alfalfa will still grow and the plant root nodules will
fix nitrogen into the soil for the grain. You do the same
no till harrow work but then you use a cultivator to make
up the rows. After planting you can then lay the soaker
tubes for a water supply.

Again after these crops have fertilized then a mist of
rapeseed oil will help in pest control.

I have herd that a mist of rapeseed oil will also control
pests on fruit and berries.

So you can see why I am very interested in the rapeseed plant
in a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

The Independent

The Independent

A man with a good supply of horses (6) should be able to
plant 180 to 200 acres of grain crops in the fall and an
additional
up the rows for the planting for crops

--
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making
of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Abraham Lincoln