cattle feed biodiesel

Deep in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Glenn Rodes is carrying on tradition.

Rodes has lived here all his life, as did his parents, grandparents, and several generations of farmer ancestors before him, since before the Civil War. Now he's making biodiesel, motivated by a spirit of self-reliance and self-preservation.

In a summer of $5 diesel, diesel machinery roars to life on farm-brewed B100. Producing his own fuel is "an insulation against market forces," he says. "You could call it risk management, or an attempt at it. I'm not here save the world, I've never hugged a tree. But I've smiled at a few."

A few years ago, Rodes dove headfirst into the world of vegetable-oil fuels. Using a modified centrifuge, he was mixing SVO right into his diesel fuel, about at a rate of about 30%. But he got skittish when he heard about other folks having problems. "When you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in a piece of equipment, you start to worry. What if it's coking the injectors?" he thought. Now he has switched to biodiesel, and uses it throughout the year: 100% in the summer and B30 in the winter.

Sometimes a "turn-key" biodiesel system leaves a lot to be desired. Rodes got his processor in trade for some of his canola. The original owner had outgrown it, and was eager to get upgrade. Rodes soon found out why.

The mysterious system manufacturer, Dogwood Energy, had since gone out of business.

They had marketed the processor as a 2,000 gallons-per-day unit, able to produce fuel at ambient temperature (no heaters). Rodes thinks it's possible someone could have reacted 2,000 gallons in 24 hours using the original configuration, but never make that much fuel. ASTM quality would be out of the question.

Rodes wanted to make sure his fuel quality would be up to par. Using knowledge gleaned from his own biodiesel research, he set about revamping the system. He added heaters to the reactors, replaced hoses, and installed an air-dry system.

Almost all feedstock for the farm's biodiesel is fresh oil from the adjacent seed press. Raw canola, sunflower and soy oil gets settled and decanted several times, then moved into a a salvaged stainless steel milk tank. There it preheats for three hours, making use of a slow agitator and two 7,000W heating elements. It's an energy-saving device that brings the oil up to temperature without requiring pumps to run. Safety measures include an Aquastat temperature control Rodes added, as well as a high-temperature cut-out switch taken from an old deep fat fryer.

NaOH for methoxide comes from pre-measured five-kilogram bags. Rodes makes them up into these rations when the chemicals arrive.

For transesterification, three 80-gallon reactors operate simultaneously for 2-2 ½ hours at 130F. After that, everything settles for at least a day in two 240-gallon tanks. The glycerin drains off to storage.

Water washing involves a constant shower of well water misted through a showerhead; the total amount of water is approximately equivalent to the total amount of biodiesel being washed. As the dirty water drains away, it goes through a grease trap Rodes devised from an old plastic drum.

A heavy duty bubbler then dries the fuel, assisted by a "squirrel fan" drawing off moist air at the top, then the finished fuel is filtered and dispensed to equipment.

Since he uses new oil, Rodes has seldom felt it necessary to do a titration. However, he recently had a scare that's made him more cautious.

After a batch failed the 27/3 test badly, Rodes tested a sample of the oil he'd saved and got a titration of 5.0 (far above the 0.5 he was used to). It turned out the sunflower seed he'd crushed to get the oil was a year and a half old.

"I've learned if you change something, go ahead and test it. It only takes five minutes to titrate it."

Rodes has promising options for his glycerin. He'd like to pump it right into a huge pit that holds the cattle manure. The pit looks like a small weed-covered dirt arena with a curb around it. In reality, it's a 16-ft deep concrete cistern with thousands of gallons of material in it. A crust of dried manure on top is fertile ground for a few weeks worth of weeds that grow in between pumpings. Crude glycerin might be great addition to this rich stew of decomposition, but he doesn't know the regulations. "I've got an extension agent looking into it," says Rodes. He'd also like to feed it to his cattle as a supplement, or burn it to heat the shop.

Some goes into simple homemade soap.

But for now, most of the crude glycerin gets stored, standing by for a value-add.

Today, crops from a couple hundred acres at Riverhill Farm are used at least partially for fuel. Rodes, his dad, brothers and nephews have done plenty of soy, corn and barley, and experimented with some other crops. In 2007 and '08 he had a big section devoted to a variety called "Virginia Canola."

Besides fueling machinery, Rodes also tries to meet heating needs for his 30,000 square foot turkey brooder house. Turkey hatchlings need a lot of heat until they're five weeks old. Rodes uses a system that can burn the corn and barley he grows.

"When my Dad started farming, a third of the crops went to energy. You had to feed the horses all year long," says Rhodes.

Glenn Rodes, known to the online "infopop" community as "fuelfarmer," is proud to say he's bringing back a traditional cornerstone of farming. Renewable fuel. S