Biodeisel Fuel from a Weed - Pennycress

A common weed called pennycress may become an increasingly useful source of environmentally- friendly biodiesel oil. Biodiesel is a blend of oil, drawn from processed pennycress, or any oil-bearing plant, combined with diesel fuel to create an environmentally-friendly result.

The weed is a variety of oil-rich plants related to mustard and canola which can be cultivated as a winter crop and harvested right before soybeans are planted. As a result, it is not in competition with food crops.

Pennycress packs twice the oil of soybeans. Field pennycress has a 36% oil content compared to soybeans' 18%. It can be grown as a winter weed crop and harvested right before planting soybeans. Each acre can produce two tons of pennycress, or about 100 gallons of oil per acre. Net energy output for pennycress is about 10 gallons out for every gallon in. By comparison, the corn-to-ethanol ratio is about 1.4 to 1.

It won't replace a farmer's primary crop, but it is fresh money that would supplement his income. Pennycress would be planted by airplane among standing corn in September, followed by early June harvest using conventional combines, three or four weeks before the winter wheat harvest. An added benefit is that pennycress would provide a cover crop for 40 million acres of land in the upper Midwest, where it thrives, where it would otherwise remain bare and unproductive through the winter, subject to erosion. The pennycress crop requires no spraying of pesticides or herbicides and no soil preparation.

An option for the leftovers is livestock feed. Research is underway on using the by-product of the processing of pennycress for oil, called presscake, to feed farm animals. Presscake is comparable to distillers grains fed to livestock it has had the oil content removed. Glenn said this looks like a promising approach since presscake has more than 30% protein. Naturally, the growing industry would also create jobs.

According to the Grow Pennycress website, the USDA, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, and its New Crops Research Unit have been conducting research and development on pennycress potential for 10 years.

Brad Glenn, a farmer and former president of the Illinois Soybean Association, said the proposal to raise pennycress as a winter crop for oil content began with the USDA Agricultural Research Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria.

Environmentally, pennycress, with higher per acre yields, is expected to at least equal the results from biodiesel created from a plant called Camelina, which produces an 89.4% greenhouse gas reduction compared to petroleum diesel. Research continues on the value of pennycress oil, but it appears that pennycress biodiesel may be better suited for use in cold climates than competing biodiesel fuels, including biodiesel derived from soybeans.

Sources:

Grow Pennycress, GrowPennycress.com
John Pulliam, Pennycress Could Mean Dollars Galesburg.com
Steve Tarter, Three Peoria Start-Ups Update Progress at Green Showcase, Peoria Journal-Star