A grease made from soybeans is on its way to farm supply stores in the midwest. The director of the University of Northern Iowa’s National Ag-Based Lubricants Center, Lou Honary, helped develop the soy grease several years ago. Honary says it’s only been used by industrial clients like railroads until they decided to expand its reach.
Honary says they had done the work to make sure the soy grease performed as good as petroleum-based grease. But, he says the higher cost of the soy product was a drawback until after the recent hurricanes which have driven the cost of the petroleum-based products higher. Honary says the product called SoyLube has now come full circle.
Honary says they hope that farmers going to the fields can now use the soy-based product. He says the soy grease is environmentally friendly and handles heat better than the alternative. He says there are some 600 stores considering stocking the product, and at one-thousand tubes of grease each, Honary says that could be three or four million pounds of grease. Honary says it’s good to see an Iowa grown product put to use.
Honary says you get about 11 pounds of oil from one bushel of soybeans, and you get about 20 tubes of grease from 11 pounds. He says at 50-bushels of beans per acre, you get about one-thousand tubes of grease from every acre. Honary says he hopes Iowa farmers will chose the grease made from their own crops.