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]
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Funny)
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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)
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
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Nutrients come from all sorts of sources. Erosion can lead to dust, and dust deposits provide nutrients (one of the prime seeders of life in the open ocean). Lichen can also break down rock. Microbes and simple abrasion can do their share in more typical farm environments. Then there's the waste and remains of transitory animals (birds, rodents, etc). As for nit
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That list is of the means that can supply agriculturally significant quantities of nutrients. i.e. agricultural replenishment. Sure there are other mechanisms that create natural topsoil, but they operate over timeframes that don't permit dedicated agriculture.
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Regards,
Ross
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Funny)
<grin>
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Interesting)
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You fail.
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.
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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.
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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 g
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.
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Take a look at the 80/20 myth [joelonsoftware.com] for a good explanation of how this dynamic works out in practice.
Re:hemp is a gateway fuel (Score:3, Funny)
Problem in the math (Score:2, Informative)
To meet the gasoline consumption needs of the USA would require about 9 billion acres at the above rate. This is about 4 times the size of the USA, including Alaska, and thus is probably not a workable plan.
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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)
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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:4, Insightful)
"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!" - The Writings of George Washington (1794)
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=
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Re:Just use hemp. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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No, but I might start using a lot more ketchup.
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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!!!
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Uh... Yeah, "uncontrollable growth" isn't exactly what I call a strong selling point for agriculture.
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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 c
How do you harvest it? (Score:3, Interesting)
ok, I'll bite. How do you plan to harvest kudzu? It's not like wheat that just stands up in nice rows ready to be cut. Kudzu wants to climb something. If you plant it in the middle of an empty field it'll spread out, but not get more than two or three inches off the ground until it finds something it can climb. I hardly think the amount of usable biomass you get from something three inches off the ground justifies the cost of clearing the field. When kudzu climbs something, it wraps
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.
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To make room for more help fields.
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.
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True, but that's a different problem, and it's one we've already got (as you point out).
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 probl
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One thing we've got today is corn-based ethanol, soaking up appalling amounts of subsidies, sitting on prime farm acrage. Hemp would, among other potentials, be a much better use of those resources with today's technology. As noted elsewhere in this thread, not a miracle plant, but it is regulated in a dumb way.
Oil and coal are easier and cheaper because:
Poor farmers (Score:3, Funny)
Plus, this takes important jobs away from corn farmers in the USA.
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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...
Patent infringement (Score:3, Insightful)
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Please do.
The court there found that it was not a matter of his fields being contaminated, but of him using Roundup to kill the regular plants before harvesting "his" seed . . .
hawk
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From your own source:
As established in the original Federal Court trial decision, Schmeiser first discovered Roundup-resistant canola in his crops in 1997.[2] He had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to an additional three to four acres of the same field. He found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed approximately 1,000 acres (4 km) of canola. ...
While the origin of the plants on Schmeisers farm remains unclear, the trial judge found that "none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality" ultimately present in Schmeiser's crop.
And then, from the Supreme Court decision itself,
Tests of their 1998 canola crop revealed that 95-98 percent was Roundup Ready Canola. ... ... ... ...
In this case, the appellants' saving and planting seed, then harvesting and selling plants that contained the patented cells and genes appears, on a common sense view, to constitute "utilization" of the patented material for production and advantage, within the meaning of s. 42.
By cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, the appellants deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the monopoly. The appellants' involvement with the disputed canola was also clearly commercial in nature.
Second, the appellants did not provide sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption of use.
The appellants actively cultivated Roundup Ready Canola as part of their business operations. In light of all of the relevant considerations, the appellants used the patented genes and cells, and infringement is established.
Amazing, actually reading the case utterly wipes out the claims made as to what happened (not a rare thing on slashdot).
But wait, it gets better. From reading your post (and the similar ones in oh-so-many-threads, one might think that this farmer that deliberately selected for the monsanto genes had been wiped out.
Now I'll switch to being a *real* wet blan
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And worse, they become less self-sufficient and have to import all their food.
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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.
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I agree. It is a difficult decision.
You can doom millions of people for generations of torture, starvation, and genocide by helping them.
Or you can allow a few million of them to die and then they learn to stand on their own feet, stop overbreeding, stop tolerating and supporting screwy belief systems
* unprotected sex is good!
* males should have sex with many female partners!
* It is a good thing to treat women like property and slaves
* you should have 8 babies even when there is no arable land lef
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?
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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.
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I for one, would just welcome our new, fast growing, poisonous weedy overlords.
It's easier that way, besides I hate yardwork.
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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.
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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
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Why does this seem vaguely familiar? Can anyone help me with this? Twitter? Erris?
Well, that's why their tagline is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Frankly, I'm not impressed with BP. This big bad oil company is doing nothing more than chasing the $$$. You'd better believe that if oil prices dropped, they wouldn't hesitate to cancel these programs.
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Great (Score:2)
Great. Does it also require so few farmers and so little arable land that it has no effect on the production of food crop? Or will it push up the prices of food significantly in poor countries, as other biofuel crops have done?
Nut pressing (Score:5, Funny)
Anybody else cross their legs and cringe when reading this?
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Contradiction? (Score:2, Funny)
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If only... (Score:2)
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You can if your car is a horse.
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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.
All of North America under this weed? (Score:2)
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That new car smell (Score:5, Funny)
So many colors...
Wait... what?
Not cost effective (Score:3, Insightful)
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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...
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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)
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)
Coincidence. Info on efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard about Jatropha before. While I don't have anything specific to
say about Jatropha, there are some general comments I have about
bio-based approaches.
1. Plants can absorb light only in the range 400nm-700nm, capturing
only 43% of the of the radiation.
2. It has to collect CO2, and hence can use only 25% of the available
energy.
3. That brings down the theoretical efficiency of photosynthesis to
11%. Figure in the absorption of light, and the plant has to spend
some energy on itself, what it can give you comes down to 6.5% at best.
I don't how Jatropha compares to algae, but you can can be sure that
it is not going to exceed 6.5%. Put the fuel in an IC engine, you are
probably talking 2% efficiency of photon-to-wheels at best.
i'm reminded of a quote by Raplh Waldo Emerson (Score:4, Insightful)
Environmental impact from industrialized growth (Score:3, Interesting)
Got to go (Score:3, Funny)
I can hardly wait to be stuck in a traffic jam where the smog could instill yet another kind of 'need to go' to the situation.
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]
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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.
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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]