How can we extract oil from vegetables, rape, sunflowers etc, a hydraulic press?
Everything that grows contains sugar and oil but in varying amounts, does it go as a rule that plants that have a high sugar content contain low oil and vice versa?
What is the oil content of common garden grass, high medium or low?
Here's what I have been thinking about for a while now; extract oil from grass and process it so there's no water etc, then (as grass has a very high sugar content) boil up the grass pulp to extract the sugar, brew it to an end to get as much alcohol as possible and then distil it, add the alcohol to the oil to make bio diesel.
a little googling on oil seed press should steer you in the direction. large commercial presses are prohibitively expensive. small ones are well, small. nothing seems to be available in between. even with high production oil seeds you get three ounces of oil for a pound of seed at best. with grass as your source i am guessing not anywhere near as much.
now for the alcohol half of it my experience there has been fermenting and distilling with the intent of having
NO methanol in the finished product. grasses just don't do that at any reasonable price(in terms of dollars or btu's), in spite of the many university labs here in the us spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to do it. on the other hand to make biodiesel you need methanol, not ethanol, which may mean grass and high cellulose stuff work. i don't know enough to advise you here but it's worth looking into.
there is some very interesting research going on now with algae. there are several species that are 60 or more percent oil by weight. current research shows that if you just scoop them up and run them through an essentially similar process to cracking using the same equipment that refineries use now you get diesel. not gasoline, diesel. refineries really only operate on a huge scale, but i think a home brewed way could be found here.
Suggest you steer yourself to Biodiesel and WVO (SVO) forums and websites. Plenty of research studies discussing the topic.
Jotrapha is promising to grow with it's higher oil yield (up to 40% of the nut is oil). Rap Seed is talked about often cause it too has a high oil yield which is why it is prevalent as a cooking oil.
I once made a small press to extract oil from kernals. It consisted of a close fitting plunger in a tube with some small holes drilled. I operated the thing in a vice but jeez, it was hard work just to get a few drops. I'd wind the vice up, get a few drips and then wind her in again for more. But it worked
If you were aiming to make one to extract enough oil to run a bike on you'd definetly need to use an hydraulic press of some sort.
Stuart. M1030M1, Honda NC700S, Grom!, Toyota Corolla 1.4 Turbo Diesel. Favouring MPG over MPH.
When I moved here I investigated oil production. Not for engines but for central heating and cooking purposes.
It turns out you can expect about 800 litres of oil from a hectare of rape or sunflower seeds. The cake by product is useful as a protein supplement for animal feeding. Rape cake has to be limited due to naturally occurring toxins.
The cost of a suitable electrically driven mill is about £1000, but the big cost is the combine harvester for the seed. It would be cheaper to buy the oil direct from a farm collective that produces it. Storage of the seeds prior to milling is a logistical problem that needs a large building.
I then switched to wood, which is much easier to harvest, store and process although more work in using it.
At the back of my mind is a desire to use wood to make gas. The gas would be used for cooking and the by product (charcoal) for heating.
I was thinking about extracting my own oil (ooer wishful thinking) bit by bit, as and when the grass gets cut, and then I could say;
Yes it is a diesel bike I made it myself, bio diesel grew it myself, now I'm off to do 200 cost free miles on my tax free bike.
I'm also thinking my hydraulic pipe bender could be put to another use. The damn thing cost me enough and it's just sitting there reminding me of my outlay.
Dont know that youd be able to get oil from your grass - dont think there is much oil in it? I only know of oil being extracted from plant matter with high oil content - normally seeds / nuts.
I've seen a couple of working oil presses. One was pressing linseed the other rapeseed. Both were screw presses. The linseed oil was pressed using a relativity small Taby press http://www.oilpress.com/ The rapeseed press was a much bigger operation, pressing oil for fuel using German made equipment (where plant oil fuel presses are most developed)
