With all this talk of fuel crisis' and many people looking at alternatives, how many litres of fuel can you realistically gain from an acre of average OSR? know i should really be asking someone in the refining industry, but funnily enough, i dont know anyone! Any ideas? regards, Mud

If an acre of rape yields 1250kgs of seed at 42%oil content equals 525litres of oil per acre. add 20%methanol and a touch of sodium hydroxide and you will get approx 500 litres of biodiesel and the rest is glycerol. plenty of info on web. just bought a seconhand oil press and starting to make BD myself.

If you can buy gas oil at 22p why use rape oil with your figures that will give you an out put of £110 per acre. does not add up to me?

Nail on the head

Ned, I bet that press wasnt cheap.....what are you doing with the meal after the first cold-pressing......how long before it goes rancid? Dont get me wrong,we should be growing fuel crops but there are lots of drawbacks til there is a reduction in Duty.

by gas oil, do you mean red diesel or is it something totally different? A guy near me told me (mums the word) that he ran his Rover diesel on filtered cooking oil from the local kebab house, could he be actually telling the truth? My Fourtrak is fairly robust, im sure it'd drink chip fat! With fuel prices rising surely there are already many people out there taking diesel from the tractor tank to run the family car? Regards

they reckon every land rover in wales is running on chip fat oil.....

It adds up if you can find a good market for the rape seed meal. You can buy rape seed oil for 99p/litre in our local supermarket - that doesn't stack-up unless the meal is found a good home.