>Some of my friends here in India (who know more about agriculture >than I do) would have me believe that traditionally castor oilseed >cakes are allowed to decompose by soaking in a little water for a >couple of weeks and then put back into the soil as fertilizer (same >as done with mustard oilseed cakes). Apparently it is a very >effective organic fertilizer and no ill effects seem to be manifest >in the use of the resulting crops. I see no reason to blindly >believe that traditional methods are always free of bad effects, >however, I understand that castor is a native plant species of >India, therefore this practice could well be thousands of years old. >May be we have developed an ability to digest ricin :-). > >Chandan
Chandan, that's not far-fetched. Castor oilseed cake does make a good "fertiliser". A better way to do it would be to compost it, but the ricin will break down in the soil, there's no danger of your eating ricin with the crops subsequently grown there. By the time the crop roots get there it's not ricin anymore. Indian peasants have long known about many things that science has only belatedly discovered, there are many examples of it. Bad practices usually get sifted out when they don't meet the test of generations, but indeed not always, far from it. The wise and noble peasant is just as much of a myth as the dumb illiterate peasant is. Or rather they both exist. Best Keith >Keith Addison wrote: > >>><unsnip from previous> >>> >>> By using one step simultaneous extraction and >>> >>> >>>>esterification , the patented process use crushed seeds to make >>>>four products , the BioD , the glycerol , the protein, carbohydrate >>>>that seem to deintoxicated for animal feed is now being scaled up >>>>to big pilot plant. >>>> >>>> >>></unsnip> >>> >>>I interpreted this to mean that the crushed seeds are subjected to the >>>alkali catalyst/methanol hence the seedcake is exposed to the reaction. >>> I've seen papers other papers discuss simultaneous extraction/reaction >>>with soya bean flakes. the problem was that much more methanol is need >>>to extract the oil during the processing into biodiesel, partly due to >>>the moisture content of the beans. >>> >>> >> >>I'm sure you're right Bob, I have several of those papers. Good >>explanation, sorry I didn't get it first time. I was looking at other >>information to check where the ricin was. Thanks! >> >>Keith _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
