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New Wonder Weed to Fuel Cars?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Sep 10, 2007 01:34 PM
from the be-a-great-shift-in-the-balance-of-power dept.
from the be-a-great-shift-in-the-balance-of-power dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Jatropha, an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed that has been used as a remedy for constipation, may someday power your car. The plant, resilient to pests and resistant to drought, produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content that when crushed can be burned in a diesel car while the residue can be processed into biomass for power plants. Although jatropha has been used for decades by farmers in Africa as a living fence because its smell and taste repel grazing animals, the New York Times reports that jatropha may replace biofuels like ethanol that require large amounts of water, fertilizer, and energy, making their environmental benefits limited. Jatropha requires no pesticides, little water other than rain and no fertilizer beyond the nutrient-rich seed cake left after oil is pressed from its nuts. Poor farmers living close to the equator are planting jatropha on millions of acres spurred on by big oil companies like British Petroleum that are investing in jatropha cultivation."
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Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't get high from smoking industrial hemp.
See:
http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm [fuelandfiber.com]
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're going to take things from the system, you have to add things to the system somewhere. Whether those resources are added naturally or artificially, there has to be input somewhere.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Informative)
Means of nutrient replacement:
- Tilling animal manure into the soil.
- Tilling composted plant material into the soil.
- Planting nitrogen fixing plants (peas, beans, etc.) and then tilling them into the soil.
- Leaving the field fallow (without a crop) for several years (a slower version of (2)).
- Adding fertilizer
So what this article is claiming is that the seedcake left over from oilpressing contains all of the nitrogen and other nutrients needed to restore the soil using just technique (2). That's an extraordinary claim. This plant is not a legume or one of the other nitrogen fixing plants [wikipedia.org], so by itself, cannot increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil. Some of the nitrogen will be unusable in the seedcake, some of the nitrogen needed to grow the plant will go into other parts of the plant that will have other economic uses or take too long to compost. A 100% cycle of nitrogen back into the soil would be great, but doesn't make any sense.As for the sun and water, well, they can only do so much given that neither one is a supply of the nutrients needed to keep the soil healthy.
Regards,
Ross
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Funny)
<grin>
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
The 85% SOLUTION (Score:5, Insightful)
The other 20% would still need some form of internal combustion vehicle for dealing with heavier loads. But this would be much easier to provide with biodiesel than all of the vehicular needs of North America.
Parent
Diesel-electric trains work this way... (Score:4, Interesting)
The main reason for doing it is that you don't need a gearbox. A train which had to change gears would be a real disaster.
Electric motors have mountains of torque to get the train moving and the fact that the diesel part runs at constant RPM means the engine can be highly tuned for efficiency.
I don't know if a car could work this way, but it's a thought.
If you include some capacitors in the system they could give you a huge push for a quick getaway at traffic lights, overtaking, etc. This would reduce the overall power requirements of the generator and improve efficiency even more.
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!" - The Writings of George Washington (1794)
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Informative)
Hemp seed yields 15 gallons per acre.
As much as I think hemp is a valuable crop - which it certainly is - the jatropha seems like a better choice for biofuel production. Over 12 times better, in fact.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Hemp isn't that useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how the hemp promoters are uninterested in other coarse-fiber crops, like jute, sisal, kenaf, and manila. Or in other low-cost sources of cellulose, like straw, bagasse (sugar cane after sugar extraction), and similar agricultural waste. No, somehow they're attracted only to hemp.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a terrible fuel crop, yeilding far less biodiesel than many more popular options like soy. It's better than corn, but corn is a terrible biofuel crop.
Your reasons for pushing Hemp surely have nothing at all to do with it's biofuel properties.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only is it a weed, it's practically a menace, damned near impossible to kill, grows over acres in a season, requires only rain as it produces its own nitrogen (no fertilizers needed) and grows almost everywhere in the USA and most other countries. It's also NOT poisonous, and actually smells quite nice (I wouldn't make perfume out of it, but at least not offensive).
Using celulostic conversion processes (like the new facility being built near Atlanta Georgia will be diing using wood from trees) it can produce massive ammounts of ethanol easily, efficiently, and most important, cheaply. It's easy to harvest and transport without complicated equipment (an industrial lawnmower would do just fine). We don't need any massive investments to start doing this TODAY. Other than building cellulostic ethanol factories, and some ethanol pipelines, we alredy have everything else (unlike corn, sugarbeets, biodiesel, hydrogen, dirtect electric, or other proposed systems)
In terms of ethanol per pound of material, it's not the best choice (some forms of algae do better), but in terms of ethanol per acre of land, or ethanol per dollar spent, I challenge you to find anything better!!!
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point here is not that any one strategy will solve everything- as you note, it won't. That's no reason to shoot down something better than what we've got.
Re:Signs point to nuclear fusion. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Dude! Where can I get these diesel engines with 6 times the fuel economy of my gasoline car? (By the way, my car gets about 36 mpg - gasoline - on the highway...)
...Seriously...
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hemp makes better paper with fewer chemical processes than wood pulp. It makes an outstanding fabric, and has been demonstrated to produce excellent building material- and it grows much faster than trees. It's a damn shame we've outlawed it.
Parent
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Interesting)
The simple facts are that industrial hemp is a useful product, and it's dumb that it's as regulated as it is, but it's not some sort of miracle plant. Its fibers make good rope, but as far as cloth manufacture goes, it's too coarse for most applications (most hemp fabrics used in clothing and upholstery are blended with linen, cotton, or silk). It's not even a standout, fiber-wise, when compared with jute, sisal, or manila -- similar strength, but hemp is more susceptible to rot. It's hardly the only replacement for wood pulp for the paper industry -- kenaf looks better, for example (whiter (less bleaching needed), higher yield, stronger, cleaner, etc). 15 gallons per acre is pretty absymal for a "next generation" biofuel; switchgrass ethanol is expected to produce hundreds of gallons per acre, and grow on similar "waste" land. Hemp oil is similar to linseed oil -- it dries on contact with air. Great for oil based paints, but not so much for many other oil applications. It also goes rancid relatively quickly, and is poorly suited to frying.
Yes, hemp has good things about it. And, wow, are they ever trumpetted from the hilltops by hemp advocates. Google search anything related to hemp products -- hemp paper, hemp rope, or whatever, and you'll be treated to result page after result page of all sorts of wild claims from sites like druglibrary.org, organic-items.com, marijuanalibrary.org, hemp-union.karoo.net, beyondpeak.com, hemptons.co.za, ecomall.com, hempline.com, webofcreation.net, hemphasis.net, and on and on. All sorts of "trippy" URLs (often, strangely, with "marajuana" in the URL, despite the invariable repeated pointing out that there's little to no THC in industrial hemp), with "trippy" sites, with crazy claims. You find very little from legitimate sources until you get way down the list, and the picture is no longer completely rosy.
Seriously -- settle down people. It's a plant, not manna from heaven.
Parent
Poor farmers (Score:3, Funny)
Plus, this takes important jobs away from corn farmers in the USA.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just wait 'till someone like the evil Monsanto figures out a way to genetically modify this weed to either boost the oil contents even further, or make it capable of growing in Antarctica, or both... Then we will get the showdown...
Sounds similar (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be a problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happens when we start planting this thing everywhere? Could this turn into the next kudzu?
Re:This could be a problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
Goats, on the other hand, go to fricking TOWN on the stuff...They'll eat it right down to the roots, and can actually permanently clear kudzu from an area making them and napalm the best methods for getting rid of it. Considering how much goats eat, the two could form a hell of a relationship, assuming we could persuade anyone in this country to eat goat.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am more impressed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a simple thought. They are still an "evil oil company" thus far as I can see... but at least they have vision for the future and aren't thinking oil will last forever as the Bush administration thinks it will.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, it makes perfect sense that an energy company wants to maintain their dominance even after their original product (petroleum) runs out. Now if BP is busily publishing their research results on all of the alternate energies, cool... but if they're keeping it a secret (or at least hard-to-get), then it's merely a matter of going from being a dominant force in one segment of the energy industry towards being a dominant force in the others, before the rest realize what's up and
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Nut pressing (Score:5, Funny)
Anybody else cross their legs and cringe when reading this?
It'll never happen in the U.S ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It'll never happen in the U.S ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's what tends to happen when energy policy is influenced by knee-jerk alarmists.
Parent
That new car smell (Score:5, Funny)
So many colors...
Wait... what?
Not cost effective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What the article fails to mention... (Score:3, Funny)
Incineration (Score:3, Insightful)
You're going to have nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and depending on the fuel & control devices used, varying levels of particulates, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). You're going to get this whether you burn the horribly-connoted "coal" or the relatively-benignly-connoted "wood". Plant matter, like that specified in TFA, isn't all that different from "wood", and actually used to be lumped together in the "biomass" definition until the US Supreme Court vacated the appropriate legislation set forth by the EPA.
Point being... all of this is the generation of additional waste stream for fuel, instead of utilizing an existing waste stream for fuel. I applaud the thought and intent, but why not use the garbage we already generate for fuel? RDF (refuse-derived fuel) boilers already exist for electrical generation...
And if BP changes it's mind? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeds? What about the whole plant? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is old news, like 20 years old. Mainstream old, it's more like 5 years. Still old.
Real biofuel folk know that Algae is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
J-plant's seeds are 40% oil. Some breeds of Algae are 50% oil by TOTAL PLANT MASS.
Not to mention it's the fastest growing plant - faster than bamboo.
Not to mention it's the easiest thing to grow (water, dirt, shit, sunlight). Just think about how much work people go through to keep it out of a chlorinated pool. What would happen if actually tried to grow it?
Not to mention you don't need arable land to grow algae - desert works exceptionally well. Beside a nuclear (pr. new-clear) power plant will let you use waste heat to keep the green stuff growing all winter as well.
Industrial algae production, 100's of hectares of 1m deep concrete pools and greenhouses. Constantly skimming fractions of the population allowing re-growth. We're talking constant production, no expensive equipment to harvest.
The man doesn't want you to know.
NZ (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Some numbers for comparison. (Score:5, Informative)
For comparison, corn produces about 0.15 tonnes per hectare, hemp about 0.30 tonnes, and canola (rapeseed) only 1.0 tonnes.
So if he's right, it's a very good oil producer, on the order of much harder to grow oil producers like avocado (2.2) or coconut (2.3).
Still 1/5 of algae though.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
There is a lot more than this one (Score:3, Informative)
You can get more info on Petrobras site:
http://www2.petrobras.com.br/portal/frame.asp?pagina=/minisite/bioenergia/terra/index.asp&lang=pt&area=bioenergia [petrobras.com.br] (portuguese). There is even a list of used plants.
A similar example here in south america is getting bio-diesel from Mamona (castor oil plant - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil_plant [wikipedia.org]), that is also poison if eaten and very strong to plagues and easy to grown.
Fun stuff (Score:5, Informative)
"Western Australia banned the plant as invasive and highly toxic to people and animals."
"Jatropha needs at least 600mm (23in) of rain a year to thrive."
"20 per cent of seedlings planted will not survive"
"farmers in India are already expressing frustration that after being encouraged to plant huge swaths of the bush they have found no buyers for the seeds."
"needs two to three years to develop into a cash crop."
Sentence that really hurt (Score:5, Funny)
i'm reminded of a quote by Raplh Waldo Emerson (Score:4, Insightful)
Jatropha Photo's and my research on it. (Score:5, Informative)
My wife's father S.W. Mensinkai founded University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, near Hubli in Karnataka India (8 hrs by train north of Bangalore). He is considers the father of plant genetics in India. They are doing genetic engineering of Jatropha there.
See photo's
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/index.html [dnull.com]
One of the programs they are pushing is for farmer to plant Jatropha on the borders of other crops in the fields, turns out the bulls that wonder freely in India will not go near the stuff, so a row of these trees keeps them out of the farmers crops.
Very interesting work.
I brought back a hand full of seeds with me, and planted them, but they didn't take, maybe the Airport X-ray scanners killed them.
Anyhow;
Jatropha is related to the Castor bean plan that is responsible that the neurotoxin ricin is derived from.
It also have a toxin called curcin that is similar to ricin.
I don't know if burning Jatropha oil release this curcin toxin into the air?
But apparently when it's pressed to get the Oil out, the curcin remains in the "Cake" this is the solids left behind after the seeds have all the oils squeezed out.
From: http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/plant/jatropha/jhast.htm [intox.org]
-------------
2.5 Poisonous parts
All parts are considered toxic but in particular the seeds.
2.6 Main toxins
Contains a purgative oil and a phytotoxin or toxalbumin
(curcin) similar to ricin in Ricinis.
------------
Apparently Canola oil (Short for Canadian Oil)is a genetically modified Rape seed (in the mustard family) with the toxins removed.
So if Jatropha had it's toxins removed through genetic modification it could also be a valuable food product.
Later in 2006 I moved to Santa Barbara and it turns out the first company in the US to start producing Jatropha Oils and Bio-Diesel was here in Santa Barbara. http://www.biodieselindustries.com/ [biodieselindustries.com] They were even doing a project with the local High School to grow Jatropha.
Also Jatropha Oil is being use on the Indian Railways for some time too. I guess the plan is to plant Jatropha trees along the tracks, it keep the animals off the tracks and also since labor is very cheap, they would use the same trains to harvest the tree's for oil to power the trains.
One of the projects I was thinking of was to develop an engine optimized to run on Jatropha Oil.
More importantly these three wheeled auto-rickshaws (called Tuck Tucks in Thailand) all use the exact same engines, so the idea is to make a direct drop in engine for rickshaws. The rickshaws there are Two-stroke gas engines and are a major source of pollution there spewing clouds of choking soot behind them. Maybe some day.
More good links:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html [journeytoforever.org]
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/20/stories/2005102002021100.htm [thehindubusinessline.com]
http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/ [biodieselt...sindia.com]
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/tnt_starts_biod.html [greencarcongress.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)