Pacific Biodiesel President Bob King inspects the combine prior to the start of the harvest.
Kaumakani, Kauaʻi Nearly 100 acres of sunflowers were harvested by Pacific Biodiesel in early September. Beginning with the installation of large capacity seed silos in late January, many critical pieces of equipment had to be put into place for the successful planting and harvesting of the the islandʻs first crop. In August, Pacific Biodiesel took delivery of a John Deere S780 combine, capable of harvesting 12 rows at a time and up to 14 acres per hour.
With approximately 25,000 sunflowers per acre, the almost one hundred acre field of sunflowers featured an estimated 2.5 million blooms. Each acre of blooms will yield approximately one ton of harvested seed, with about 100 tons of the high oil yield seed anticipated from the harvest.
After roughly 120 days, the sunflowers reached maturity and dried out to an acceptable level of moisture and they were ready to harvest.
The seeds were transferred from the combine to a truck and driven to the Pacific Biodiesel crushing mill. The seeds were dispensed into the drive-over unloader into the lift-leg elevator and up to the top auger. The auger dispensed the seeds into to the designated silo, where the grain spreader distributed them. Automated stirrers keep the seeds moving so the fans at the bottom of the silo continue to dry all the seeds evenly.
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- The sunflowers must dry down to 10% moisture or less before harvesting.
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- The combine harvester removes the heads from the stalks and the seeds are shaken off the heads.
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- The combine can harvest up to 96 acres in 8 hours.
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- The seeds are transferred from the harvester to a truck for transport to the mill.
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- The seeds are trucked to the mill and dispensed into the unloader for transfer to the silos.
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- The seeds will continue to dry in one of three storage silos at the Kaumakani mill.
Director of Agriculture Operations James Twigg-Smith was on the team for this memorable milestone.“Our
Pacific Biodiesel Director of Agriculture Operations James Twigg-Smith listens as Bob King points out future fields for cultivation at Kaumankani, Kauaʻi.
first sunflower harvest on Kaua‘i went very smoothly. This was a new scale of operations – jumping up to the 12-row platform and trucking our seed to the mill; we had many working parts that came together to yield a successful harvest.”
“This was also our first test of the silo system, which conveyed and stored our seed without issue. In all, 91 acres were mechanically harvested by the combine, completing our single largest field in company history, with much more to come,” he said.
Once the seeds have thoroughly dried, they will be processed through the companyʻs new, larger expeller press, which naturally crushes the seeds to extract the oil. It can process up to 40 tons of the harvested seeds per day.
The Pacific Biodiesel team is currently preparing a new field for the next planting on Gay & Robinson land in Kaumakani, Kauaʻi.