Biodiesel Production

Biodiesel is a complex mixture of mono-alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids. The most common form uses methanol to produce methyl esters as it is the least expensive alcohol available, though ethanol can be used to produce an ethyl ester biodiesel and higher alcohols such as isopropanol and butanol have also been used. Using alcohols of higher molecular weights improves the cold flow properties of the resulting ester, at the cost of a less efficient transesterification reaction. A lipid transesterification production process is used to convert the base oil to the desired esters. Any Free fatty acids (FFAs) in the base oil are either converted to soap and removed from the process, or they are esterified (yielding more biodiesel) using an acidic catalyst. After this processing, unlike straight vegetable oil, biodiesel has combustion properties very similar to those of petroleum diesel, and can replace it in most current uses.

A byproduct of the transesterification process is the production of glycerol. For every 1 tonne of biodiesel that is manufactured, 100 kg of glycerol are produced. Originally, there was a valuable market for the glycerol, which assisted the economics of the process as a whole. However, with the increase in global biodiesel production, the market price for this crude glycerol (containing 20% water and catalyst residues) has crashed. Research is being conducted globally to use this glycerol as a chemical building block. One initiative in the UK is The Glycerol Challenge.

Usually this crude glycerol has to be purified, typically by performing vacuum distillation. This is rather energy intensive. The refined glycerol (98%+ purity) can then be utilised directly, or converted into other products. The following announcements were made in 2007: A joint venture of Ashland Inc. and Cargill announced plans to make propylene glycol in Europe from glycerol and Dow Chemical announced similar plans for North America. Dow also plans to build a plant in China to make epichlorhydrin from glycerol. Epichlorhydrin is a raw material for epoxy resins.

Winter Wheat

Winter wheat is a cereal. In the northern hemisphere, winter wheats are planted in the fall, from September through December. Winter wheat sprouts before freezing occurs, then becomes dormant until the soil warms up in the spring. Persistent snow cover might be disadvantageous; however, winter wheat needs a few weeks of cold before being able to flower. The wheat grows and matures until ready to be harvested by early July.

Barley

Barley can be divided by the number of kernel rows in the head. Three forms have been cultivated; two-row barley (traditionally known as Hordeum distichum), four-row (Hordeum tetrastichum) and six-row barley (Hordeum vulgare). In two-row barley only one spikelet is fertile; in the four-row and six-row forms, all three are fertile.

Two-row barley is the oldest form, wild barley having two rows as well. Two-row barley has a lower protein content than six-row barley and thus a lower enzyme content. High protein barley is best suited for animal feed or malt that will be used to make beers with a large adjunct content. Two-row barley is traditionally used in English ale style beers. Six-row barley is common in some American lager style beers, whereas two-row malted summer barley is preferred for traditional German beers. Four-row is unsuitable for brewing.

Barley is widely adaptable and is currently a major crop of the temperate and tropical areas.

Soybeans

Soybeans are native to southeast Asia, but 45 percent of the world's soybean area, and 55 percent of production, is in the United States. The US produced 75 million metric tons of soybeans in 2000 of which more than one-third was exported. Other leading producers are Brazil, Argentina, China, and India. Much of the US production is either fed to animals or exported, though US consumption of soy by people has been increasing. Although the bean has been praised for various qualities, environmental groups like Greenpeace have complained that soybean cultivation in Brazil is encouraging Amazon rainforest deforestation.

Many traditional dairy products have been imitated using soybeans, and products such as soy milk, soy yogurt and soy cream cheese are readily available in most supermarkets. These products have similar texture and appearance to milk-based ones; however regular soy milk does not contain significant amounts of calcium, since the high calcium content of soybeans is bound to the insoluble constituents and remains in the okara. Many manufacturers of soy milk now sell calcium-enriched products as well. Tofu often contains high amounts of this important mineral since calcium salts are used to coagulate the protein in soy milk when creating tofu. Additionally, soy protein has been found to reduce renal excretion of calcium, an effect that is reinforced by soy products' high potassium content.

Most soy products must not be fed to infants. In some cases, infants fed normal adult soy milk on a long-term basis have become extremely malnourished and even died. In addition, soy allergies are one of the more common food allergies. In recent times, however, specially designed soy infant formula has been made available. Like dairy formulas, these new soy based formulas contains extra vitamins and other nutrients to make it compatible with an infant's needs.

Soybeans are also used in industrial products including oils, soap, cosmetics, resins, plastics, inks, crayons, solvents, and biodiesel.

Oats

The Oat (Avena sativa) is a species of cereal grain, and the seeds of this plant. They are used as food for people, and also as fodder for animals, especially poultry and horses. Oat straw is used as animal bedding and also sometimes used as animal feed.

Oats are often served as a porridge made from crushed oats or oatmeal, and are also baked into cookies. As oat flour or oatmeal, they are also used in a variety of other baked goods and cold cereals, and as an ingredient in muesli and granola. Oats may also be consumed raw, and cookies with raw oats are quickly becoming popular.

Oat straw is also used in corn dolly making, and it is the favourite filling for home made lace pillows. Oat extract can be used to soothe skin conditions, e.g. in baths, skin products, etc.

A now obsolete Middle English name for the plant was haver, surviving in the name of the livestock feeding bag haversack.

Canola

In agriculture, Canola is a trademarked cultivar of the rapeseed plant from which rapeseed oil is obtained. It was initially bred in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson in the 1970s.

Rapeseed oil was produced in the 19th century as a source of a lubricant for steam engines. However, the oil had a bitter taste due to high levels of glucosinolates (mustard flavor). The oil was also thought to cause heart problems due to high levels of erucic acid; however, it was later noticed that laboratory rats showed the same symptoms when fed similar quantities of other fats. Canola has been bred to reduce the amount of glucosinolates and erucic acid, yielding a palatable oil. Canola stands for Canadian oil, or the backronym CANadian Oil Less Acid.

In 2004, North Dakota produced 91% of the Canola in the United States.

Sunflowers

The term "sunflower" is used to refer to all plants of the genus Helianthus, many of which are perennial plants.

What is called the flower is actually a head (formerly composite flower) of numerous flowers crowded together. The outer flowers are the ray florets and can be yellow, maroon, orange, or other colors. These flowers are sterile. The flowers that fill the circular head inside the ray flowers are called disc florets.

The arrangement of florets within this cluster is typically such that each is separated from the next by approximately the golden angle, producing a pattern of spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers, typically 34 in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower you may see 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.

The disc florets mature into "seeds". However, what we commonly call the seeds are actually the fruit (an achene) of the plant, with the true seeds encased in an inedible husk.

Most flowerheads on a field of blooming sunflowers are turned towards the east, where the sun rises each morning. Immature sunflowers in the bud stage exhibit heliotropism; on sunny days the bud tracks the sun on its journey along the sky from east to west, while at night or at dawn it returns to its eastward orientation. The motion is performed by motor cells in the pulvinus, a flexible segment of the stem just below the bud. The stem stiffens at the end of the bud stage, and when the blooming stage is reached the stem freezes in its eastward direction. Thus, blooming sunflowers are not heliotropic anymore, even though most flowerheads are facing the direction where the sun rises.