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."
Sounds similar (Score:5, Interesting)
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... Being environmentally conscious is money-making--for the time-being...
Re:Just use hemp. (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.
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.
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.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Goat is del-licious, mon. (Score:3, Interesting)
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!!!
Environmental impact from industrialized growth (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 nitrates in particular, there are all sorts of ways they can enter a given patch of soil (for one, they're water soluble...), and plants vary greatly in their need for them.
Basically, what this article is saying is that the oil from this weed removes so little nutrients that if you return the remains to the soil, whatever was lost is made up for by various means of natural replacement.
Another Weed (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems to me you can say the same thing about Hemp.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:2, Interesting)
Given jatropha is described as a weed, easily grown in soil too poor(eg. low in nitrogen), rocky or dry for crops , I really doubt this is a concern. Certain plants are so easy to grow, they are damn hard to kill. Ask any gardener.
Re:The 85% SOLUTION (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd hardly call today's US suburban sprawl *perfect* though.
We need something that can do the routine driving around town jobs, reliably and efficiently without the negative impacts we're seeing from the internal combustion engine of today. Batteries do have environmental impact, but given how heavily recycled todays car starter batteries are (like 95%) this isn't something that can't be handled.
200 miles on a charge would go a loooooong way towards solving our foreign fuel dependency too...
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.
Re:Hemp is not that course (Score:2, Interesting)
100% hemp is going to feel like canvas, which might have something to do with the fact that the word canvas comes from cannabis.
Hemp is good for lots of things, but the only logical reason to wear it as clothing is a political statement.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Done and done. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 left!
* It is best to be evil and corrupt and take all the money and stuff for myself (or my tribe).
Which is ultimately more compassionate?
To me a lot of the "aid" we give does immense harm to the people it is supposedly helping.
I believe letting it fall over as soon as possible is ultimately a lot more compassionate.
I'm not talking about pushing it over... I'm just saying stop propping a clearly broken system up.
Re:Just use hemp. (Score:3, Interesting)
- We've already invested in the infrastructure and technology needed to efficiently exploit them, and
- We don't figure many of the costs of using coal and oil (environmental, health, war, economic, etc) into the real cost- we instead externalize those costs from the way we measure and call it cheaper and better when in fact it is neither.
People are starving today, too- switching to sustainable fuel (if not done moronically, which you seem to suggest is the only way) won't be the cause of it- it'll just be happening at the same time.Economic growth is slowing today, as well- some of that due directly to our use of fossil fuels (think: pollution, environment, health care, mercury in food, etc).
Technology is, I think, the key out: for every gas-pumping job lost (this will probably happen when gas becomes more expensive than the alternatives), there'll be another gained somewhere else- developing infrastructure, technology, installing solar panels or writing software for a domestic energy exchange among micro-producers, whatever. Fuel won't crowd food out in the market, it'll hit the same price ceiling fuel does and people will buy food, or grow it and show a profit- next to food, fuel demand is elastic. As energy production and distribution technology becomes something affordable by the average person (who can't bear the expense of drilling, exploration, transport, refining, etc. themselves) expect to see distributed micro-generation systems that will to some extent democratize the production of energy. To wit, I don't think we're in the best of all worlds and the future is bleak; I think we're pretty hosed now and we can (and will) do better.
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.
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 around it. How do you plan to pull it off a tree without killing the tree?
I'm not writing you off, I'm just pointing out a problem with your plan. Invent some kind of armature that you can let the kudzu climb, and that you can then get the kudzu off of, and patent it, and I think you'll be on to something.