Years ago I read a very low tech website that was created by an old farmer (neither adjectives are known for web-design) on a farm produced diesel substitute that he called “superfuel”. He was in northwestern Kansas near Nebraska and Colorado border. He was running a sizable “screw oil press” powered by a simple “listeriod” Diesel engine (using his own fuel) to produce SVO (straight vegetable oil) which he blended with RUG ( regular unleaded gasoline) with the blend ratio depending day to day based on temperature. He tells send a simple hydrometer (used in beer/wine making) to determine the specific gravity of any liquid to basically thin the thick SVO down to the consistency of diesel. He claimed to get mileage efficiency comparable to standard diesel, and horsepower that was actually better. Tge web site has been gone for over a decade (assuming the old man passed away).
He had the exhaust from the listeroid piped to a simple jacket that covered the auger that fed the press… a simple 6” irrigation pipe that surrounded the 4” auger that pre-heated the sunflower seeds to increase the oil yield. The “press-cake” was super high in protein and he would use it as part of the ration to feed the hogs on his farm (instead of buying soymeal), and the oil was triple filtered before storing in a simple 1,000 gallon plastic barrel like you would see water or fertilizer taken to the field on any farm at planting season. He had a 200 gallon overhead gas barrel next to this with a blending manifold. The gasoline portion of the manifold had a dial to increase or decrease the ratio of the blend. He had a simple chart that he had created for the outside temperature on any day.
Ran it in his large John Deere tractor, small tractor, combine, grain truck, 4x4 truck and an old Chevy sedan with the diesel 350 from the 70s as well as a diesel lawnmower, irrigation well motors and of course the listeroid than pressed the oil! He ran all of these with no long term issues for decades. He would occasionally use soybeans but these produced less oil per hour and were more valuable to sell.
Not just grid down/SHTF but in times like these with expensive diesel, or times ahead when they government tells us we can’t even buy diesel… this could be a solution. As far as the logistics of a militia goes, having multiple farms able to produce a domestic fuel could be a huge asset. This would allow a limited supply of expensive gasoline to be greatly lengthened into MANY gallons of “superfuel”. The old man even used ethanol blended fuel which could even further extend that limited gasoline with another farm produced alcohol.
