Photo courtesy of the United Soybean Board

The Multi Functional Rural Fuel Platform (MFRFP) includes a mechanical oil seed extruder. This extrusion process produces both a quality high meal cake and a vegetable oil. This vegetable oil is used as the fuel for the MFRFP's diesel engine and for conversion into Rural Fuel. The meal cake is ideal for food stuff and animal feed. Rural farmers are in a great position to grow and harvest vegetable oil bearing seed crops, but the MFRFP enables them to process these seeds without having to leave the community.

What type of seeds can be processed?

The type of oil seeds that can be extruded by the MFRFP, include such oil seeds as soy beans, canola, sunflower and a whole host of other vegetable oil bearing seeds.Soy Bean Oil Seeds

• Soy Beans

  Protein shortage is a huge problem in developing countries. At 55 grams of protein per day, one acre of soybeans can meet a person’s dietary protein needs for 8,400 days. Photo courtesy of the United Soybean Board
  

  Soy is a great diet enhancement

  Based on a normal diet of 2,000 calories per day, a person needs at least 50 grams of protein. This differs according to the age and sex of the person, but to create a balanced diet it is very important to have the minimum amount of protein in that diet. The soybean is an excellent source of good quality protein and compares well with other protein foods. Soy flour is an excellent enhancement for wheat flour and soy milk is an excellent supplement for animal milk. Soybean oil is rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and contains no cholesterol. Soybeans are also a good source of calcium, iron, zinc, phosphate, magnesium, B vitamins and folate.
  

  Soy meal

  Soybean meal represents 68 percent of the world’s protein meal consumption. It serves as nutrition for hundreds of species including poultry, swine, cattle, fish, dogs and cats.
  

  Multiple Soy products

  Every part of the soybean can be used wisely, such as using the soybean hull as a high-fiber ingredient for breads and crackers. Even the soybean stubble that remains on fields after harvest can be collected to make building materials. Soybean meal also creates wood adhesives, biodegradable plastics, printing inks and textiles. Soybean oil can be refined for margarine, salad and cooking oils, plus hundreds of consumer products. The newspaper can be printed with soy ink, the foam insulation used in homes and carpet backing all can be made from soy plastic. Soy hydraulic fluid, candles, cleaners, crayons, cosmetics, concrete sealers, dust control, engine oil, industrial lubricants, paints, roof coatings or varnishes, soy creates natural, renewable products from A to Z.

• Jatropha Oil Seeds

  Jatropha is a very interesting oil seed due to it's high yield per acre, the toxicity of its leaves and its ability to survive in marginal soil, in arid climates. Soybeans will typically generate 55 gallons per acre of oil, Jatropha is commonly regarded as being capable of yielding 200 gallons of vegetable oil per acre. The Jatropha bush is a natural hedge or fence as its leaves are slightly toxic, so animals do not graze them. This enables the Jaropha bush to be used as a fence around a farmers field to protect the crops and this fence provides a crop of its own. A Jatropha plant is a hedge that can live for 20 years and survive in very arid climates. The plant grows well in marginal soil, which makes it ideal as an anti desertification plant and great for use in climates where soy beans would have trouble surviving.

• Moringa Oleifera

  

  Moringo Oleifera, sometimes known as the Horseradish Tree, is a fast-growing, drought-resistant tree native to sub-Himalayan tracts of northern India but now distributed world-wide in the tropics and sub-tropics. The Moringa Tree has some unique proprieties, as it is very high in oil content and the seed cake can be used to purify water. Moringa Oleifera produces long pods with the appearance of giant green beans and they taste like asparagus. The plant also produces masses of very small leaflets that can be boiled and eaten like spinach. The oil seed kernels have a very high oil content, nearly 40% oil by weight, with the oil sometimes known as "Ben Oil" or "Behn Oil". Crushed Moringa seed kernel and seed cake are very effective in water purification. The seeds from the tree are crushed and poured into an open well, which makes all the suspended dirt particles like silt, solids, bacteria and other microorganisms stick together. Once the particles have coagulated, they sink to the bottom of the water and the rest of the water will be left clear. The process can also be applied at home for the treatment of unclean river water as this is cheaper and environmentally friendly alternative to water purification. The meal cake is rumored to be unsuitable as an animal feed as it is supposed to contain alkaloid and a saponin, but it is a suitable fertilizer. Yields are high, estimated at 3.0 tonnes seed/hectare when compared to average yields of sunflower at 2.0 tonnes seed/hectare. The drought tolerant nature of the tree makes it particularly suited to marginal areas and this means that it should not need to displace land used for existing food crop cultivation.

• Algae

  The growth and cultivation of Algae holds the most promise for providing substantial amounts of biomass over the long term. Algae grows at tremendous rates and has the highest yield per acre of biomass, making it the front runner as the most hopeful source of biomass for fuel and animal feed production in the future. There is also an interesting opportunity for Algae cultivation in a rural setting where it might be used to clean up waste water streams. A small, pond based Algae farm could be used to clean the human effluent generated the community before this effluent reaches the water table.