Sunflower power — at 120 kilometres to the gallon

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 13

Sunflower power — at 120 kilometres to the gallon

. If you were passed by a BL 1.5 or 2-litre car on the roads of Britain’s Midlands recently, you could have unknowingly witnessed the beginnings of a new epoch in transport: flower power with a vengeance.

For the overtaking car chugging effortlessly by in the other lane might well have been a test diesel-type model running on liquid flower power — sunflower oil. Its engine, run entirely on ordinary sunflower oil as used by thousands of housewives in their kitchens, is claimed to do up to 120 kilometres to the gallon. It is one of several engines being perfected by scientific experts at Perkins Engines, the American-owned diesel specialists based at Peterborough, England, and in Brazil; the others drive tractors, lorries, and motorboats.

Research by this company has been going on for the past four years or so, primarily to find alternative fuels to mineral oil, but also to produce an engine that will function effectively,’ with only a simple interchange of heads, on such fuels as palm, peanut, or corn oil, as well as carbon-hydrogen gases. But the oil extracted from the heads of giant sunflowers seems as good as any and better than most unorthodox fuels. Experiments at Peterborough have shown that many hours of ordinary driving, farm ploughing, or water cruising are possible on cans of oil available to anyone. “For our experiments we often just pop down to local supermarkets and buy gallon cans of sunflower oil and pour it straight into the engine without further refinement. It works very well,” says David Bacon, combustion and performance manager at Perkins. “It smokes a bit more than diesel but the difference is

hardly measurable.” Farmers, too, may soon be running vegetable-oil tractors on sunflower, and it has already been reckoned that the yield from a seed crop of 10 acres would be sufficient to fuel a tractor ploughing or harrowing a field of 100 acres, so the oil’s efficiency is high, although it is not cheap.

At present prices in Britain, sunflower oil as sold retail works out at around twice the cost of petrol. But as the Perkins chairman, Mike Hoffman, stresses: “Vegetable-based fuels are a serious study now so that new engines can satisfy the needs of people in different parts of the world. It is time to rationalise thinking on the whole subject of fuels for the future, and to devote research to really viable alternatives.”

On present results achieved, sunflower power is just that. Not that mankind has hitherto neglected the sunflower and its seeds; only that its previous uses have not included fuel for transport by land or water.

The seeds that yield the valuable oil come from “Helianthus annus,” the giant or common sunflower, native to Mexico but long grown extensively under apt variety names like "Mars” and “Russian Giant” in the Soviet Union (especially the Ukraine), the United States, South Africa, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Argentina, and parts of the Balkans. It is not to be confused with the shortergrowing, less grandiose garden varieties.

Although only an annual plant, the giant sunflower grows swiftly to a firm 10ft or more, each sharply-hairy stem topped by one or two gigantic yellow flowers. These soon tilt earthwards under the weight of their 12inch discs of ripening brown,

white, purplish, or black striped seeds. A “head” contains a large number of seeds, closely packed together, each containing up to 30 per cent clear pale yellow oil. Sunflowers thrive anywhere the soil is rich and deep enough to sustain their lusty and rapid growth, yet well-drained enough to keep their long roaming roots happy, and there is enough sunshine to produce their huge flowers and ripen the seeds. When the seventeenth century French explorer Samuel de Champlain, on one of his trips to North America, visited the Red Indians settled on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, he found they had already, cultivated this large-headed sunflower, doubtless having originally brought the seeds from Mexico up the Mississippi. Its stalks gave the Indians

a tough and useful textile fibre, its leaves served as fodder for their animals, its flowers offered them a bright yellow dye (still used today for textiles and artists’ colours), and its seeds were used for both food and oil. Subsequently, early European settlers along what came to be the Canadian border were quick to appreciate the enormous usefulness of this lofty and showy plant, and they sent seeds home. Some were germinated in England before 1600. However, with the country’s variable summer climate, it has never caught on as a successful large-scale crop, although serious efforts were made in this direction in East Anglia during food shortages in the Second World War. The name sunflower refers not to the plant’s yellow daisy disc, nor to its need for

lots of sunshine, but to the whole family's marked habit of turning all their flowerheads towards the sui.. In spite of the seeds’ hard fibrous husk constituting 45 per cent of the whole weight, they may be eaten directly by humans as well as by parrots (which neatly if laboriously de-husk the kernels with beak and claw). It is still a common habit in Russia to have a handful of sunflower seeds in one's pocket to nibble from time to time in the way Westerners crunch sweets or chew gum. Since analysis of the seeds shows them to be one of the best wholefoods available, this is a sensible custom. In fact, untold numbers of Russians have subsisted entirely on them in days of famine and hardship, in peace and war. Sunflower seeds are rich in protein and carbohydrates, have an impressive range of Vitamins A, E, K and F, as

well as the complete set of the 11 vital B vitamins in a higher content than wheat germ, and have valuable fibre and enzymes useful in digestion. They have a pleasant nutty taste, but need to be well chewed, and some addicts soak kernels overnight before eating them with breakfast cereal. Sunflower-growing countries primarily aim to produce large quantities of oil, second only to olive oil in richness, first for cooking, then in the lesser grades, for margarine and soap-making. The residue of seeds after crushing produces a valuable cattle-cake, poultry meal, and fertiliser. The dried leaves are made into a caffeine-free coffee substitute, and when in full bloom the flowers make one of the world’s finest honeys. No part is wasted.

By

DAVID GUNSTON