Oilseeds for Fuel, Feed and the Future
Innovations Grant Report
Chuck Merja
Sun River, Montana
April 2008
1) What did you hope to accomplish?
I wanted to increase acreage of camelina, modify seeder, combines and storage, get some collection equipment and containers for waste vegetable oil (WVO) and lastly try to make some straining apparatus for WVO and some biodiesel.
2) What did you do?
I did all of the above, but I did not convert a unit to use WVO.
3) What were the results this year?
We planted on about March 25th with Valmar air boom spreader, but didn’t pack the seeded ground with a roller. We had nice snow the next day, so thought we had a good seeding job. Wrong. On April 25th, we reseeded with Flexicoil 5000 air seeder, because not much of a stand from month-old seeding. My advice: don’t seed that late, period. We got a yield of about 566 lb/acre on best continuous crop.
The crop did respond to N though — at 37 lb. Nitrogen/acre, we got 19.6% increase in yield, but I needed about 15 cents/lb for the camelina seed to break even on the increase. Also did a test of 74 lbs. of Nitrogen — the crop yield from that test was actually less than the 37 pounds. Significant biomass increase with fertilizer — think there will be more seed response with earlier seeding. We got a High School Science Fair Project out of this effort; the student will be at state in Missoula later in April.
We made some special screens for our John Deere 9600 combines. It still looked like we lost a lot of camelina during harvest, and the harvested sample still looked dirty. However, the mill manager said our canola was the cleanest they’d received, so we did a decent job of getting it clean. We may put low speed fan kits on next year.
I have collected some WVO — tried small hand batches and titrations are all pretty high, so we have not made batches with decent yield yet. We got a real nice 8 th grade science fair project out of this. The student measured the biodiesel conversion yield of several oils – virgin canola, safflower, camelina, unused frier oil, fresh-out-of-the-frier oil, used frier oil and very used frier oil. Camelina actually yielded the highest volume. MSU Northern is just getting their lab set up. The student was going to do qualitative testing, but timelines didn’t work. We will probably make some more and ship it off to MSU- Northern, now that their lab is up and running. [Editor's note — The MSU-Northern Testing Lab opened in late March 2008.]
We made a rotary screen cleaner for camelina — works pretty well. And we now have decent collection equipment for waste vegetable oil.
4) Were there any unanticipated results or surprises you encountered along the way?
Yup, camelina bloomed into late July, so we cut it AFTER winter wheat harvest, not before. I had an “expert” tell me how to estimate yield — estimate came in at 1300 — 1400 lb/ac, but combine only captured about 566 lb/acre. Hand test yields got as high as 850 lbs/acres, but I believe our scale (566 lbs) rather than the “expert”.
Camelina has tough stubble — very tough to harrow. The stubble poked a couple holes in seeder tires while I was seeding winter wheat back into camelina.
5) Were there any particular practical or policy barriers you encountered as you conducted this project?
Policy — getting feed approval, but I think that finally happened — GRAS or something like that?? [Editor's note – Many Montanans anticipated the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) certifying camelina as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) for animal feeding in early 2008. However, FDA's approval is not expected till January 2009.]
6) How will you use what you’ve learned?
In late fall 2007 I sprayed with glyphosate and a surfactant to get prickly lettuce, cheatgrass, volunteer, etc. I then seeded with air drill, done several weeks ago (mid to early March 2008). Fertilized at about 37 pounds nitrogen per acre.
We are still working on getting titration right for heavily used WVO. We have a nice collection system.
I'm looking at Winter Wheat (WW), peas, WW, camelina, then another crop-to be-determined rotation. I have Winter Wheat on both camelina and pea stubble this year. I will do some fertilizer studies on that WW this year (2008).
I may convert our diesel spray truck to diesel/biodiesel and WVO combo — but haven’t finished yet. Most use of that truck is in warmer weather. It has a little GM V8, so pretty cheap engine to replace if we smoke it.
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