Penn State Turns Canola Seed Into Fuel

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

Penn State’s Farm Show canola press

In the far north­ern cor­ner of Harrisburg’s Farm Show com­plex – past the food court, the trac­tor dis­plays and the model cab­ins in the Exhi­bi­tion Hall – there’s a row of energy displays.

The Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion has a booth. So does America’s Nat­ural Gas Alliance. Solar energy advo­cates are rep­re­sented, along with real­tors sell­ing geot­her­mal home heat­ing units. I spot­ted a scaled model of a wind tur­bine, too.

Penn State University’s Col­lege of Agri­cul­tural Sci­ences anchors “energy row,” with a large dis­play show­cas­ing alter­nate energy and fuel efforts being researched at the school. I vis­ited the PSU for a story on the Farm Show’s but­ter sculp­ture, which will be con­verted into energy after the show ends. (Stay tuned — the but­ter story will be pub­lished tomorrow.)

Dur­ing my visit, Daniel Ciolkosz directed me to a machine that was qui­etly chug­ging away in the cor­ner, squeez­ing oil out of canola seeds.

Ciolkosz, an asso­ciate at the school’s Bio­mass Energy Cen­ter, explained Penn State is now run­ning diesel-powered trac­tors on a canola oil-based fuel. One bushel of canola seed yields a bit more than two gal­lons of fuel.

In the video below, you can see Ciolkosz explain the process. A press squeezes the canola seeds, which are packed with oil. The liq­uid drips into a bucket, where it’s col­lected for fuel use. The solids are pressed into a meal, which can be fed to ani­mals. And as Ciolkosz explains, the canola oil can some­times be used to fry food before it goes into the trac­tor fuel.

A lot of yield from a tiny canola seed.