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Self-Sufficiency Acreage Requirement? (getting fuel)
"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 |
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