canola seed burner (1st post here)

Gate Lavallee · Mar 4, 2011

A good day to all i wish you. A bit of language barrier to english i am sorry. I am 60 year old and retired industrial electrician. spend a lot time fabbing things for the farm to modernize operation. My dauther and son in law 700+ acres till and milkers. Bin reading and got good ideas from here and injoyed the chats here for about 5 or 6 years but now I give a try at it.
would like to build a burner for canola sead without going to the bio oil process of press and the oil part,,,,just burn the sead like a coal burner with a self feed and maybe secondary gasification burn. I now i cant burn the seed in a corn or wood chip burner furnace, seed to small but looking for ideas or if one already exist. I am not just lookin to get ideas without giving back, in the near future when I get to the coatage i will post pictures here of the winch I install on the boxblade and the use I make of it on the JD 4000 some here may find interest in this. Got all the toys but still looking for inprouving them and maybe make a few more. still dont know how to post picture but i will ask my son when he has time. Thank you all for the many years of entertaining and informative post I read here almost every night. ]

tommu56 · Mar 4, 2011

Welcome!

I never though of it but those seeds are small!

what about a piece of stainless steel mesh in the burner chamber of the corn stove?

McMaster-Carr

part number 85385T393

tom

Gate Lavallee · Mar 4, 2011

THANK Tom for the come back with the small mesh that would solve one of the problems but the big one would be.if I bote a corn furnace with auto fead to minamize the time tending furnace and also (to control the quanteties dish out a big problem).
While searching for ideas i remember a round coal burner made of cast and fed from the center with a ratchet that woold turn this burner to fead it and get rid of the clinker just dont remember where I sean this. Dont know how long stainless small mesh like this would last with the oil in the canola seed. Not lookin to re invent the wheal here but, one of the cash crop we have is canola and a few extra acres a year and you could heat the two houses,the garage and the milking station. We also grow corn and other grains but they take alot more out of the earth then we have to fertilze then more broblem with hardening of soil and more expence.......Salut

retiredIW · Mar 4, 2011

i am not to familiar with corn stove but i understand there i an auger that turns and allows corn to fall to a tray. maybe you could take the auger out and make one for canola seeds. How big are they.lets say take a rod to make a auger like thing for the seeds. take half washer and stagger them so far apart and a timer on the rod to turn it ever so often to dump seeds in. if you need say 10 seeds at a time space the washers so they hold ten seeds the it self reloads when it turns. just trying to think of a way to do this

forgeblast · Mar 4, 2011

How fast, compared to the corn, will the smaller seeds burn?
will you get the same amount of heat?
will you have a smell from the oil contained in the seeds?
With the oil in the seeds will you have to dry them before you use them?
Just wondering out loud.

JohninCT · Mar 5, 2011

First welcome to TBN!

This is an interesting topic. Have you burned the whole seeds? Can you tell us how well they burn? As one other poster mentioned, the seeds are very small. One thought is to build something similar to a corn or pellet stove but with a very small auger and burn pot sized for the small seeds.

However, after doing some reading about the canola seeds on the net, I have to ask why you don't want to go the route of extracting the oil from them? It appears that technology to extract the oil is readily available. The oil can be made into diesel fuel which can then be used to run farm machinery, furnaces/boilers, or sold on the market to others for these uses. The residual seed meal is useful for cattle feed. Does your son in law use it this way? The other possible use for the leftover seed meal is to make it into pellets with a pellet mill and burn them in a conventional pellet stove.

With the price of diesel fuel these days, it would seem that making excess seed crop into diesel would be a worthwhile venture for a farmer or farm co-op.

Gate Lavallee · Mar 6, 2011

appriciate all the come back on this one and why we would want it burning the canola seed direct. First off we burn wood...bout 55 cords a year with one a the bigest wood doctor one can buy,to mutch time for fire wood and most we have here is soft wood. The main money thing here is the milk production and time spent is for what they eat to produce the most milk per head. I have always figured one was better spending his time on what he specialize in then trying to do another man job. Those canola press are expencive to buy for what they produce and to satisfy the fuel needs here you would have to have a big mother and spend full time on it so if there lots a money coming in with the milk we can buy the fuel for the tractors but I just though if something like this allready exist or if I got the good ideas i could fab one and automate it and with a bin full of seed id just have to check it every day. Guess there is something I must admit, Idid some reserch and went to farm show askin for this and I dont think its bin done. got some ideas in my head and after the post i got im a thinkin may a real long wood bit about one half in. inside a small stainless pipe would work to fead this thing. The burner well I seen this soft coal burner feed from the center. gowing to have to build prototype of this and see how she work. Will be folowing this tread and with a bit a time I will start and i show the progress. To many ideas and not enough time, that is my problem......Salut

smiley · Mar 6, 2011

Very interesting subject. In trying to check it out, I don't find much info on canola seed other that the btu content of the oil is nearly as much as diesel fuel. My thoughts on it are that it would be worth a try to run a very small amount through a pellet or corn stove. I'd try it in my pellet stove if I had some. The auger might mash the seeds and make a sticky mess but running more pellets through should quickly clean it up. It certainly seems like with the right feed combo, any oil producing seed should work. Here is a link to the iburncorn forum where they do discuss burning of some small seeds like rye etc, and another link to a chart for heat output of various fuels including pellets and corn.
Search - Cornburning, Heat Smart/Save Money - biomass, alternative fuels beat the competition!

Please keep us informed on what you may find.
Smiley

CBW1999 · Mar 7, 2011

I would tend to agree with smiley that- since the seeds have a high oil content, you may end up "pressing" the oil out in the feed auger. That would likely end up with a fire in the feeding system.

What about running wood or paper pellets mixed in with the canola seed? This would help drag along the seed and any oil that comes out. You wouldn't be able to run 100% canola seed, but it would help bring down the cost of the pellets.

The other thought is to build your feed mechanism like a water wheel. Small cups spaced around the wheel to scoop the seed and then dump over the top of a chute that goes down into the fire box. set the wheel up on a shaft to a motor (maybe even a 12dc motor on a solar charge system) that has variable speed so you can adjust the burn rate. You may have to play around with gearing the motor up or down depending on what RPM is needed.

The size of the hopper would be tricky though, you want it big enough so you don't have to fill it often but- the weight on the "wheel" may cause problems with it turning and feeding the fire.

Hope these thoughts help!

Treemonkey1000 · Mar 7, 2011

I worked at a brick manufacturing plant. Part of the process there is to add calcium carbonate to the raw clay to keep bricks from getting moldy looking after being installed outside. We used a big hopper that had a vibrator mechanism on it to shake the powder down the trough into the machine. You could rig up one of those on a timer to shake down the seed every so often. It might take some tweaking on the timer and how much vibration to keep the seeds moving down hill into the burner. The device to vibrate could be a simple motor with a weight attached or something more fancy.

smiley · Mar 7, 2011

CBW1999 said:
The other thought is to build your feed mechanism like a water wheel. Small cups spaced around the wheel to scoop the seed and then dump over the top of a chute that goes down into the fire box.

CW and I are apparently thinking along the same lines as I was thinking about a wheel with buckets at the back of the hopper, dumping in a chute to the firebox. I also thought about the buckets mounted on a chain running inside the existing auger tube, but seeds would be ground up in the sprockets.. One of my ancestors built and marketed a water pump on that principle.
After mulling it over I thought about the Archimedes screw pump inside the existing auger tube. . That might work by using a smaller auger so the seeds didn't get ground up. You'd have to weld a metal strip along the edge to keep them from spilling off on the way up.
If it was a closed tube like the pic below, it would be more efficient but probably prone to plugging.
Just another thought.

The iburncorn also has some discussion of burning soybeans, saying that because of the high oil content they have to be very dry and smoke badly unless mixed with pellets or corn. They also mentioned the economic factors that a bushel of soybeans or canola seed is over double the price of corn or wheat, but do not produce twice the amount of heat, therefore not a good economic choice for heating.

Craig Clayton · Mar 7, 2011

To Gate
I been looking over the posts and my thoughts are to burn the Canola in an off the shelf burner and alter it as needed.
I have looking into the Enviro models of muli fuel pellet stoves. They have augers to break up the clinkers that clog regular stoves. Friendly Fires in Peterborough Ontario is the closest to me and they are on the net . Look at the muli fuel stoves. I have been reading about switch grass which has some energy but is also known as buffalo grass.

Craig Clayton

oughtsix · Mar 7, 2011

Maybe a pellet stove might work better if you made pellets out of the seed first? My initial thought was the small seeds would just be blown away by the air supply instead of staying put and burning.

You might need to find some other material to add to the seeds to get a good pellet from a pellet mill. Any of those you just mentioned might work well? Mix the seeds with recycled paper to up the BTU content of the paper? Just thinking out loud too....

CBW1999 · Mar 8, 2011

I would worry that when going through a pellet machine, the canola would express oil and do one or more of several things.

If the oil did not get absorbed into the product, then you have lost the majorit of it's BTU power. It might clog the machine and make a big mess or even possible cause a fire...which I know is the point of this thread- but that would be an expensive furnace!!!

the point about the seeds being blown around is a good one- never really thought of that. Perhaps- as suggested, using an "off the shelf" pellet stove with some modifications would work. I think the best scenario however- would be a double auger system- one for pellets, the other for canola seed.

I would think that building an auger system that uses some type of brush to "sweep" the seeds up the chute might prevent pressing the oil.

CBW1999 · Mar 8, 2011

Another though (sorry) would be to make "bio-mass logs" similar to what oughtsix was saying.

Not familiar with the production process but, the idea of mixing seeds in with the other materials might work

Treemonkey1000 · Mar 8, 2011

Ok well maybe make a tube out of some strong pipe and use your wood splitter to compress and make canola presto logs. Just squeeze the log out of the end of the tube after a compression cycle.

FarmerPaul · Mar 10, 2011

Have been using grain stoves for about 10 years now to heat my work shop. Started with an old Dovetec model. Too many troubles with auger system and gear head motors. Through trial and error the best solution I could find to meter out the fuel ( grain / seed ) was not an auger but a paddle wheel of sort.
( Augers were to hard to make reliably )

The idea was to make the stove/burner as simple as possible. No auger timers and no auger. So I ended up making something similar to a seed cup on a grain drill. Chain driven by a electric motor from my barbque rotissere. Open or close a gate for more or less fuel to the seed cup. Best of all it was near impossible to jam.

Not sure if I have a picture of the mechanism or not.

Gate Lavallee · May 24, 2011

THANK ALL for the replies on the canola burning stove. Bin havin lots a seat time with all the planting but we got bout all 600 acres done and must say mother nature was on our side. When I was filling the sead drill for the canola planting got the idea to look at the metering mechenisim case uses and by gosh I THINK this wood solve the metering part of the stove with a bit of automation and I would need to find the parts but I tell ya all if the price a canola is as good this year as last with all the bad weather all are having we will just sell the canola and be able to buy all the heat we need for electric. So meny repairs to do on all the farm machinery it sure is hard to get a good project started and to progress on it. Its a hard job farming but seedin all done so guess we is good for five days off fishing before we start with the silage. Good luck to all on getting the planting done......sure bin a tryin year....well I mean not as good as last year up here in the NearNorth.......Salut

NormL · May 25, 2011

I know zero about pellet stoves and how they work but I believe canola seed is round and therefore rolls easily. No one has focused on that and I'm wondering if the seed was introduced to the burner chamber via a sloped tube from a remote enough entry point, would any additional mechanism be needed to feed the fuel to the burner?