New Wonder Weed to Fuel Cars? 484
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."
Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't get high from smoking industrial hemp.
See:
http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm [fuelandfiber.com]
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?
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:Poor farmers (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...
It'll never happen in the U.S ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:I am more impressed... (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 tries to muscle in on its new-found turf.
Now if BP was busily passing knowledge of its research along openly (a'la FOSS), then props to 'em. Otherwise they're not much more in my eyes than, say, MSFT adapting their products to run in some new technology with a lot of growth potential.
Not cost effective (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Problem in the math (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:I am more impressed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not cost effective (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Just use hemp. (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: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.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hemp isn't that useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Done and done. (Score:3, Insightful)
If we would just back off for 10 years*, leave africa alone, a lot of people would die but afterwards they would have their act together.
* including large multi-national quasi governmental corporations.
Patent infringement (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Insightful)
To make room for more help fields.
i'm reminded of a quote by Raplh Waldo Emerson (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hemp isn't that useful (Score:2, Insightful)
I see no reason to grow hemp that does not get peopel high, waht a huge waste.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Insightful)
Using hemp solves a specific set of problems: it's better fuel than corn, better fiber than cotton or lumber, and it grows in places unsuitable for either. It's better than what we've got, and it doesn't introduce any new problems we don't already have. Is it the answer to all our ecological and energy problems? As you point out, no. But it's better than what we've got. We should use it, just like we should also use algae tanks, switch-grass, solar, wave, wind, and whatever else we can that'll be better than what we've got.
Re:The 85% SOLUTION (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that sort of range covers city driving. But people don't like having options eliminated from them, and don't want to have to rent or borrow someone else's vehicle when they need to go long distances. For good reason, too.
I think the right solution until we can get battery power densities up is that used by the Volt -- a plugin hybrid. There's a small gasoline motor that only runs a generator (so it's light, simple, and cheap), and stays off unless you're going on long trips. When the gasoline motor is running, the car isn't quite as efficient as a normal hybrid, but is still more efficient than a regular car. It's similar to how modern trains work (except they use diesels for the generators).
Around town, you run on batteries. When you want to go far, you still can. Seems ideal to me until the tech catches up..
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of cellulose processing is that? I don't know of any methods that can do any one of those three, let alone all of them. I claim that processing cellulose, hemi cellulose, and lignin is difficult, inefficient, and expensive. To me, this explains why tech has not developed commercially. Since you deny each of my claims, what do you propose have been the commercial constraints?
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)
Um except the science. Please forward me to a description of a process that is "easy, efficient, and cheap." No top secret Company X propaganda either please.
Me and several environmentalist friends have been screaming for years
Screaming nonsensical claims won't advance your agenda.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just a skeptic. Not that I wouldn't be excited if this stuff was real, but the claims made by the proponents seem way beyond how all other plants work.
Regards,
Ross
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:2, Insightful)
The US consumes [doe.gov] about 400 million gallons of gas and 70 million gallons of diesel per day. At 200 gallons per acre per year, we'd need to plant 850 million acres of jatropha to replace petroleum. According to Google [google.com], that's about 1.3 million square miles, or about a third of the land area of the United States.
Since we currently only cultivate 440 million acres [usda.gov][pdf], that would be a significant challenge.
Re:The 85% SOLUTION (Score:3, Insightful)
The parent post talks about the right way to do it - a small, simple gas or diesel engine used only to charge the batteries. No complex gearbox, no need for a lot of power from the engine, no bloat. And the engine can always run at peak efficiency.
When ordinary small cars get comparable or better mileage than high-tech, expensive hybrids, you know marketing has run amok.
Everyone goes rushing in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Problem number 1: Not really good for anything but fuel. Plants currently grown provide food, clothing, or, in some cases, building supplies. Some plants grown now even provide for multiple outputs. Corn (food, feed, fuel, chemicals) is a great example. Soybeans are another good example.
Problem number 2: As I'm sure at least a couple of folks will figure out from the numbers, you'd need to grow this stuff on a truly massive scale to put a dent in the amount of hydrocarbon fuel now supplied by petroleum. That scale would be so massive as to make #1 a significant problem. Do you want to eat or drive your car?
Problem number 3: Some people will look at #2 at either a small or large scale and answer that they want to eat and to drive (or sell fuel to the people that drive). And that will likely mean cutting down and/or burning more forests to make more farmland which seems a bit counter-productive.
Problem number 4: A high enough demand for biofuel will tip the balance on what gets produced. As acres of land previously growing food are switched over to growing biofuels, the cost of food will rise. There are a couple of ways of looking at or explaining this the easiest being that as the supply of food drops against a constant (or, really, growing) demand the price people are willing to pay for that food rises. In any case, the poorest people, many of them in fact farmers, will then suffer a proportionally higher cost to feed themselves even though they may participate only indirectly in petroleum or biofuel consumption.
Problem number 5: YAIS (Yet Another Invasive Species). Read about this plant. It is a badass. It's a badass because it comes from a place where hardly anything else can live and all the animals and insects are looking for something, anything to eat. You don't want to plant this in Ohio. Or Brazil. Or China. Or anywhere else that you don't plan on having this as an invasive and problematic pest plant for the next 1000 years.
F'ed up, huh? I know things like biofuel are meant only to be a stopgap to bridge us over to more efficient and/or less immediately damaging fuel conversion technologies and fuel sources, so it's not 100% right to bash them and say 'This does nothing!' but I think it is useful to play the Devil's advocate given the amount of excitement often heard in the same breath and the corresponding lack of analysis that too often accompanies it.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I'm saying it will work; just that it doesn't seem as blatantly impossible to me as you say.
Re:The 85% SOLUTION (Score:2, Insightful)
All-electric drive allows for very efficient accelerating, cruising and regen-braking. (and if four individual motors are used, good traction control).
Use a plug-in charger and a high-efficiency, smaller, gasoline engine with a generator to extend battery life (not having it run drive train means the engine runs at peak efficiency).
Charge it at night, or while parked at the lot (run the motor for a little while). The gas engine doesn't have to be big enough to continually power the car, simply to extend the distance to something well within to daily commute.
Combine that with the 6-cycle engine (injects water into hot cylinder to create steam, adding a second, weaker power cycle re-claiming waste heat), and you should have a pretty efficient hybrid car. Or perhaps use a different power-generating technique involving gasoline.
I would wager that there are LOTS of people who don't need to go on >200 mile trips very often, and could use such a vehicle quite effectively.