Farmers to grow own tractor fuel?

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 3

Farmers to grow own tractor fuel?

PA Dunedin New Zealand’s farmers may soon be able to grow their own tractor fuel if experiments by Fletcher Agriculture, Ltd, at Dunedin prove as successful as early trials show.

I The company pioneered the growing and processing of rape-seed oil for cooking, and markets the product under the Sunfield label. The same product has proved in early trials on tractors to be an adequate diesel substitute capable of producing onethird to one-half more horsepower. The oil is particularly successful when used in heavy load machinery, such as farm tractors, or in engines which have to be capable of performing well under stress loads.

The use of vegetable oils to drive machines is not new. In South Africa, for example, sunflower oil has been used to drive tractors for many years. Two developments resulting from the fuel crisis have led to renewed interest in such a fuel in New Zealand. One is the rising cost of imported diesel oil, coupled with farmers being restricted to an annual allocation. The second is that the Government’s choice of the “Mobil process” to produce future liquid fuels means that no diesel fuel can be produced from the Maui field. The manager of Fletcher Agriculture at Dunedin (Mr K. Doyle) said yesterday that

the company became interested in Sunfield as a fuel oil some time ago, and helped by the member of Parliament for Marlborough (Mr D. L. Kidd) did preliminary studies which proved encouraging. Earlier this year, a threemonth trial by Mr R. J. McLeod, of the automotive engineering department at Otago Polytechnic,, was completed. Several types of engine were used. Mr McLeod reported that the use of 100 per cent rapeseed oil in a new British Leyland three cylinder tractor was “very satisfactory” under test for cold starting, hot starting, maximum power output and maximum torque output. “All the above tests compare very favourably with normal diesel fuel, with fuel consumption very very close to a staggering one-third that of diesel for a given power output," Mr McLeod told the company. Rape-seed oil made in Otago appeared to require no engine modifications for satisfactory use in present standard diesel engines, of which there were many thousand used throughout New Zealand under conditions where spark ignition (petrol engines) would not be satisfactory. Fletcher Agriculture is arranging for long-term trials of the oil to be done in Otago with farm tractors to see how the fuel stands up to normal farm use. The cost of vegetable oils against refined fuel oil has always been pro-

hibitive, and even now diesel is much cheaper. But Mr Doyle believed there was a way round the problem. He suggested that farmers should be able to grow, for example, 4ha of rape-seed annually, their “on farm” fuel supply. Fletcher would process the crop at a much reduced cost-a-tonne instead of buying the fuel, and from 4ha would produce 10,000 litres of oil. Because the farmer would be charged a fee for the processing which would be less than the cost of buying the same quantity, (and an additional benefit of a market of the seed husks) coupled with the greater horsepower available from the fuel the price would be “very competitive” with diesel, Mr Doyle said. The rape-seed processing plant at Dunedin had unused capacity, and the types of rape-seed that would be used grew very successfully in Otago and Southland. Trials were being conducted now with new, higher yielding varieties.

“There is no way that we would be able to take over the whole market for diesel fuel,” he said. “But this fuel would be particularly suitable for machinery under severe load or under heavy use.

“Many farmers are seeking alternatives or substitutes for diesel, and on the results so far, it looks as if they will be able to grow their own,” Mr Doyle said. Fletcher Agriculture hoped to begin the long-term trial in about two weeks.