When I returned to the U.S., I did some on-line research which was like one long sales-pitch after another. The plants apparently are used as green manure fields in crop rotations, after the seed is harvested. I didn't see anything particular about its nutrient requirements, but the process itself sounded like 'throw it on the ground and stand back'. (Like growing wheat on the Palouse - rolling hills of eastern WA composed of 100s of feet of top soil deposited by the great floods from Montana during the last Ice Age.)
After the oil is pressed, the cake is supposed to be good supplementary feed for meat animals. And the oil itself is considered one of the best for human consumption.
If used to make bio-diesel, the process is supposed to be quite simple and relatively 'clean'. I'm told that the main reactant is lye, and that the lye can be captured after the conversion and recycled - sort of a catalyst?
Sounds too good. What's the word from ETers? paul spencer
The yellow fields are flowered now and it is a beautiful sight. You can't be me, I'm taken
[From Climateark.org]
Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised. The research team found that 3 to 5 per cent of the nitrogen in fertiliser was converted and emitted. In contrast, the figure used by the International Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the extent and impact of man-made global warming, was 2 per cent. The findings illustrated the importance, the researchers said, of ensuring that measures designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are assessed thoroughly before being hailed as a solution. <snip> Professor Smith told Chemistry World: "The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto."
<snip>
Professor Smith told Chemistry World: "The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto."
i also wonder if pollution in brazilian cities has dropped significantly since the increased use of sugar ethanol. (i kinda doubt it, what with other air pollution sources like heavy industry, diesel transport etc.)
i think sugar cane has a pretty low need for fertiliser, after seeing it grow wild in hawaii, but i'd like more info on that. certainly you're right about monoculture and erosion.
the sea would be stained red where the sugar cane industry was, up on the hamakua coast, and the burning of the fields was pretty toxic too.
if the use of toxic chemicals could be curtailed completely, perhaps sugar cane could be a transition fuel for tropical zones, provided there was mulching to minimise erosion, especially if it could be used in conjunction with land reclamation, or some similar kind of environmental repair, while we head for an all-electric society 50 years down the road...
i don't know if that's the case when grown for fuel.
great diary. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
it certainly was for sugar.
it was a happy day in hawaii when they phased it out, as the trucks hauling the cane to the mills were huge and always leaking bits of plants, whole stems sometimes.
i recall they used the bagasse (leftovers) to burn to fire the mill, but they still were losing money hand over fist.
the overall effects, from environmental to dietetic, were a right mess...
if they do extract the juice to make ethanol, then the bagasse would have serious mulching potential.
i think they burned the cane in order to strip the stems (sugar cane is a grass), so as to make it possible to haul more. the leaves have no juice, so were useless to the sugar producers.
obviously a very high-energy plant, doubtless to figure ever more in our future...though cane cutters did not have a good life, historically, in hawaii.
they worked them to death, and imported portugese overseers to crack the whips over the filipinos, chinese, and other asians. which leads me to wonder what kind of working conditions the cane cutters are experiencing in brazil, in order to produce $50 a barrel fuel...
however, the best replacement crop they've found, afaik, for the best farmland on the largely lava rock and cinders island of hawaii, was eucalyptus, which was burned for biomass, chosen for speed of growth.
which is problematic, because eucalyptus poisons the ground below it for other plants.
sigh. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. Chinese Proverb.
The name canola is commercial, invented by the Canadian agro-industry to kind of pre-empt on the product (the can- is Canada, -ola = oil). Its universal name in English is rapeseed.
It's not in fact that easy to grow (setting aside for the moment whether the methods are industrial or organic). It calls for fine tilling because the seed is very small. So it's not a no-till crop (as wheat can easily be) - at least, I've never heard of it being tried.
It's a brassica, ie the cabbage family, and is fairly demanding in terms of NPK. In industrial growing, it's often sprayed with different pesticides in spring, depending on the year and the weather/bugs it brings.
The oilcake is OK for animal feed. Animals don't like it as much as soy cake, and it has less protein too. But it's used in Europe, where we import (from US, Argentina, Brazil) practically all our soy cake, which is almost certain to be GM... So all farmers who want to certify their meat or dairy products GM-free (whether organic or not), are almost automatically using rapeseed cake somewhere.
It's a good plant in a crop rotation, leaving a large amount of organic matter (even though it's demanding fertilizer-wise).
The oil (preference for organic!) is, as Sven says, one of the best for human nutrition. I consume lots of it.
So, in all, I'd say positive. Including for its use as fuel for diesel motors (can be used as is for older engines). I'd particularly back its use for local farming and municipal vehicles. I'm not enthusiastic about pushing it into largescale industrial projects, simply because that would be calling for increasingly industrial agriculture with GMs and pesticides. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
I worked briefly on a Finnish project to find a better name for rapeseed oil internationally (in Finnish it is rypsioljy, which has no other connotations). One of the smaller pressers, specializing in high quality cold-pressed organic, was thinking about launching the Finnish product in the UK. We didn't succeed to their satisfaction and I don't know where that project ended up.
But right now in southern Finland oodles of hectares of it are visible, driving thru the countryside. Like yesterday...
You can't be me, I'm taken
