Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigD
Here’s my not-extensively researched and vetted, “executive summary” of plant-based renewable combustion fuels, with petroleum fuels and hydrogen for comparison:[list]
...[*]Hydrogen requires all of the energy it contains, and then some, to produce, as bad as some alcohol producing processes, is about the hardest fuel in the universe to store and handle, but produces no carbon when burned....
show, their per-acre productivity varies widely, with palm seed oil more than twice as productive as the nearest competition, and over 30 time as productive as a low-scoring plant, such as corn.
So that’s the rundown. It’s surprising, to me, how similar fuels of various kinds actually are, explaining perhaps why no single fuel offers an obvious “silver bullet” solution to the world’s energy needs.
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Hi,
Jatropha is a very thrifty plant grown all over the tropics, since the Portuguese brought it from Brazil all the way to India and beyond centuries ago. I have follwed this for over a decade now, helped by Reinhard Henning of jatropha.de who had fostered planting of Jatropha as windbreak hedges in Mali, twelve thousand kilometers was the score a few years ago. One meter of fence produces about one liter of oil per year.
Can be used directly in listeroid diesel engines, both as fuel and lubricant.
About seven hundred villages in Mali got their first electricity this way. Another twelve thousand villages and engines to go.
For plantations in India and elsewhere the numbers quoted are far too high for yields. Reckon with one ton of oil per hectare per year in the fourth year.
The real purpose of Jatropha is to protect the Pongamia pinnata trees planted with it, and these trees really yield oil fruits comparable to palm trees in Brazil. Sarch for
jatropha karanj
as this is the name of Pongamia in India, aka Honge or Karanji or Karanja.
The good thing about Jatropha is its pioneering quality on poor soils, where not even thistles will thrive. Can do with rainfall as low as 250 mm per year, but only just. More rain is better, if available (pray...).
diazotrophicus
