ABSTRACT
An assured economical foreign oil supply is a thing of the past, and it is abundantly clear that the United States must solve its energy problem at home. Various alternate liquid fuels are being considered, including vegetable oils. Vegetable oils are an excellent producer of energy. The overall efficiency for sunflower oil is the highest of all the farm fuel alternatives. This efficiency is based on the ratio of fuel output to agriculture plus processing energy inputs. The conventional vegetable oils that could be considered for use as alternate fuels include sunflower, soybean, peanut, cottonseed, rapeseed, safflower, and corn. Peanuts and sunflowers produce the largest yields of oil per hectare, but the production costs of sunflowers are significantly lower than those for peanuts. Therefore, from an agronomic viewpoint, sunflowers seem to be the most promising vegetable oil candidate for an alternate fuel. Technology for commercial extraction of oil from seeds is well developed.
