As I understand it Canola is the PC name for Rape.

OK, I have 63 acres to play with, probably could farm ~20 of it.

If I wanted to grow rapeseed. What kind of equipment would I need to harvest it?

How do I extract the oil?

Take a look at this: www.attra.org/attra-pub/oilseed.html

Wow, those English/Sweedish oil presses are expensive. And I'd rather not feed the Chinese machine by buying a cheap one from them.

Have you ever had one apart Joe?

It would be a nice project to build my own... They don't look terribly complicated.

I'm confused on one thing.

I have to run the rapeseed through an extraction press, then a press filter?

I looked online to see if there was a biodiesel coop in my area, didn't come up with anything.

I've looked at some old presses that show up at the shows occassionally, but plan to pick one up from auction or used and they're not terribly rare. Considered building one but oil-palm has fairly decent sized fruit whereas canola and similar are smaller. Check this out for some "DIY" info: journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html

Yeah, I came across that too.

I'll keep digging.

I'd like to make about 1500-2000 gallons of biodiesel/year.

Unless I want to be in the garage forever using a bottle jack, I'd need to invest in some serious equipment.

First off, I've never really farmed. So I'd need whatever is required to farm 20-30 acres. Tractor to work the soil, planter, combine, grain elevator, silo?, etc...

Guess I need to talk to some farmers in my area.

An oil press system, and a biodiesel brewing system.

All in all, I'm probably looking at in the neighborhood of $40,000-$50,000 to get the ball rolling on this...

Last year I spent ~$6000 on gasoline and ~$5000 on off-road diesel. Just for personal use!

Somewhere I saw photos of a roller press? It had a high pressing rate with a good recovery percentage.
If you have a crawler, then you have a tractor to do field prep. Contract your neighbor with good planter to plant and fertilize. Contract him to spray your fields when he sprays his. Contract the harvesting to be done also. These last 3 items are cheaper contracting in the long run for you. Pay off his fee in partial trade by offering to work part time doing things you are capable of.
Farmers appreciate help any time, they can get it!

Boy, I would cringe at the UC wear on my D6C for doing the field work...

Hell, my land is fully wooded, it would take a lot of work to clear the 20 acres. Might be cheaper for me to find a piece of farmland to buy instead.

But yeah, I have a farmer 4 houses down who plants in a field right next to me. Usually soybeans... He has all the equipment for grains...

I believe all the commercial oil presses are basically an extruder of some type, usually a heavy screw forcing the mash into a tapered (narrowing)chamber with some perforations in the initial section for the oil to run out of and than a spring or hydraulic regulator valve on the end to fine tune the amount of pressure more than the resistance of the cone. Part of the process is that the meal is heated by the expeller screw as it is compresed. Meal frequently came from the mill still hot when it arrived at the farm even after the "cake" being reground and standardized with hulls as needed to meet the protein content spec. Expeller process meals usually retain somewhere around 5-10% ether extract (oil and other lipids) if I remember correctly.

The most yield efficient/energy efficient type of process is solvent extraction which I believe uses hexane and yields residual oil levels on the order of 2-3% for soybean and cottonseed meals.

The old expeller process meals are better cattle feed because of the residual oil, but tended to cake severely. I have shoveled and poked many a semi load of cottonseed meal because it would not flow out the hopper bottom trailers. Then it went into a storage bin where it would also not flow, so it had to be shoveled again to get it to unload:D

Now we handle it all with dump/live bottom trailers unloading onto a slab and handle it with the 910 to store it in 3 sided bays in a shed. Much easier all around.

I am unaware of any oil mills remaining that use the expeller process, but I expect that is to only viable alternative between the hobby batch process with a jack/press and the solvent extraction that is the dominant industrial process.

I'd start small, say an acre, just to see if it's you're cup o' tea or not. Use what you have, maybe see if your farmer neighbor will help or hire out the initial work just to see if you can pull it off and still enjoy it before investing in something you know little about. At least with a crop like canola you'll get quick returns, plus with just an acre you'll get a better idea what to scale up to with more realistic expectations from learning what's involved and the "real world" results.