screw press

[kinger214 Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close kinger214]

i am looking for a screw press to extract sunflower oil to make biodesiel, but being new to this i have no idea where and how i can get 1

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Hi there
Do you grow the seeds or are you intending to buy them?
Keep in mind you will have a lot of meal remaining after pressing the oil out that is useful as animal feed Have you stock to feed or are you intending to sell the meal
We are expelling oil from sunflower as well as canola we sell the meal as we are in the city
Lastly how much oil do you need to produce per day Oil expellers come from a few pounds a day to a few hundred tonnes per day (24 hours) you can get all sizes for all sorts of money as well as hand operated ones for a days worth of cooking oil
If you where to consider the above I can possibly suggest a few choices for you
Are you in Canada?
Cheers
Chris

[kinger214 Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close kinger214]

Re: screw press

i do live in canada, i also grow my own sunflowers and have cattle to ffed the meal to. I am only looking for a low scale screw press to make a low amount of biodesiel. for farm use, close to home and cheap would be nice too

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Here are some photos of our screw press as well as the small fliter press associated with it This press will do about 150 to 200 kg of seed per hour We have done Canola as well as Sunflower with it yields about 26% of oil on sunflower a bit more on canola about 30% of oil

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

A bit more on the oil expeller screw press
The design of the machine is a two expansion chamber with three oil extraction zones
Most of the oil is extracted at the beggining of the screw with a bit more coming out in the middle the remainder comes out at the very end
The percentages mentioned are with a single pass of the seeds a second pass does yield a bit more oil out of the cake The white bucket shown in the photo is the meal or cake after the seeds have gone through the press
The motor is a six pole three phase tefc rated at 15 kw It certainly takes all of it to drive the screw
The machine is reasonably priced It comes just bare we built the base as well as mounted the motor on it
We also put a small gear drive motor to drive the feed screw inside the hoper with a variable speed controller so we can alter the feed rate
The press normally has a belt to drive the feed screw from the main shaft However this presented some problems with a constant feed into the press regardless of the material
It has performed much better since the feed was altered to be user controlled
The oil coming out is fairly clean however it has what they call in the industry "foots" dont ask me where it come from but it means fine particles as well as fibrous matter that is extracted from the seed
The filter works quite effectivelly the filtered oil is drawn out of the little taps shown on the photos
The next step is to built a small preheater for the seeds prior to loading them into the hopper we expect the yield to go up as high as 35% for canola and a bit more for sunflower Apparently due to the fibrous nuture of the sunflower seed coat a bit of the oil is absorbed there
So much for now, we have been at it for two weeks now more as we go along with further alterations

[Maxwell Member Find all posts View Profile Close Maxwell]

Re: screw press

Hi Chris,
Was looking at buying an expeller but due to the price of canola have decided to see what next year brings.
But have the chance of using one to put through a couple of ton in the next few weeks, would like to know of any difficulties or advantages that you may have experienced?
Cheers
Maxwell

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Hi
If the press you are going to use has been used for canola prior and the operator is experienced with it I don't think I can add anything
If not PM me with your no and I can give you some tips on the phone

[Maxwell Member Find all posts View Profile Close Maxwell]

Re: screw press

Thanks Chris,
I'll wait and see what happens when the press arrives.
It's new and only in transit to somewhere else so I don't think it will be set up for anything in particular.
It should arrive in the next couple of weeks, which is lucky because they will probably be harvesting canola by then.
Cheers
Maxwell

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Maxwell
If the press is new you have to "run it in"
Other wise you will find yourself wasting a lot of good material
If it is a chinese job you have to pull the screw out of the chamber and spend a day or two polishing it up to almost chrome finish
You also have to take the chamber apart and polish the rings
They are all numbered so you have to take note where their go so as you can assemble them back the exact same way
If you are then ready to start, mix about 10% of rice hulls with the canola as you are feeding them into the press so as to further polish the internals
If rice hulls are hard to get there run the press in on sunflower seeds they have a coarse enough shell to do the trick but expect to feed about 2-3 tonne through it before you are done
Run the meal through a second even a third time so as to speed up the process
If the feeder is driven from the main shaft with a belt the thing will give you no end of trouble as the feed rate cannot be controlled
If it has its own motor with a variable speed drive you will be fine
Assuming the feed rate is constant it is best to keep about 3" of material in the bottom of the hopper
We had to put variable drives for both the main shaft as well as the feed screw
It still took a lot of time to run it in It now runs like a dream
Most important is to get the barrel up to temperature first by running meal through the press first then start feeding new material through it
Finally they run like a dream once you settle them down starts and stops seem to play havoc with them
We now have 3 of them running doing the job quite well but they all gave us heartaches until they get run in

[Yakov Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close Yakov]

Re: screw press

Dear Sir,
Please, inform us, which kind of China press you have using.

Regards,
Yakov

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Dear Sir,
Please, inform us, which kind of China press you have using.

Regards,
Yakov

Yakov
I have bought these machines here in Australia It has no name so I cannot help you But I do have two more here that are still in the original packaging not ever have been taken out from them We are having a very bad drought this year here with very little canola or anything else for that matter in regards to oil seeds therefore we never installed them If you want one or two I can talk to you about price You can PM me if you want

[Yakov Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close Yakov]

Re: screw press

Thank you very much for reply!
Please, inform me about data of your press - price CIF Israel ( Ashdod or Haifa), capacity and etc. . Motor I may find here. That about reliability of your machine? How much workers it requests?
With my best regards from Holy Land,

Yakov

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Hi There
The press is able to do 6 tonne per day 24 hours of canola seed It needs a 7.5 KW motor at 960 rpm
It comes with a belt that drives the feed screw in the hopper from the main shaft which we have replaced with a geared motor and a variable speed controller so as to have control of feed rate
If you set it up correct no need to have any one in attendance all the time
In other words if you have material to feed the press as well as means to take the cake away there is no need to sit there looking at it
They run well un attended for periods up to whatever capacity you have in feedstock related to the rate of expelling I would have thought a visit every 4 hours or so which means about 1 tonne of feed
Reliability it depends on the electrical setup to protect the machine from damage
The machine is built very robust When we got a bolt of 3/4 inch by 2 inches in the screw it just jammed the screw while the motor went out on overload no damage at all
Keep in mind that they do wear out which means you need to replace the rings at certain intervals according to whatever you expelling oil from Canola seed will give you the longest life if it is clean while sunflower the shortest as it is a bit more abrasive
As a guess about 50 KT will be the time you need to move the rings around as wear is different along the length of the screw In other words you can move the rings around from high wearing to low wearing areas and most likely get another 25 KT out of a set of rings You need to replace the lot than which is about $1,800.00
I cannot provide you with a cif price but an fob price you will find in your PM box this is a price with no motors

[Maxwell Member Find all posts View Profile Close Maxwell]

Re: screw press

Hi Chris,
We got some canola the other day but unfortunately didn’t get to process it, as things became a rush to send the press overseas.
The press that we got was pretty rough and would have had to be rewired if it was to be used in Australia!
$1800 per 70-80 tonnes would make it quiet expensive!
It looks like it is going to be a lot more expensive to set-up and run than I had hoped.
Any chance that I could get some response to some questions that would really help?
1. What is the running cost per tonne?
2. How long does the screw last for?
3. Did you put a hopper on the feed funnel (we made about a tonne hopper to fit on top of the funnel but didn’t get it finished)?
4. Do you run the electrical heaters or heat it by other means?

Cheers
Maxwell

[Chris Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Chris]

Re: screw press

Hi there Maxwell
The press we have consumes abot 8 Kw of electiricity per hour so according to what your cost of power is you can work it out
We preheat the grain with power to 100 C which is another 3.6 KW
so say 12 KW at about 8.5 cents per kw/h
1.The press does about 6 tonne per 24 hours so about $4.10 per tonne is the cost of Juice
2.Look at my previous post on this thread for the next question
3. We put an auger screw to take the grain to the hopper from the ground and a variable speed geared motor to drive the feed screw Putting a 1 tonne hopper is a bit of a pain if you get a blockage at the feed neck
4. We used a pre heater from the plastics industry to preheat the grain
I have Two of them spare Have a look at the pictures I posted for the setup do a search from the members list under my name of all the posts you will find them