What plants might be grown, just for bio-fuel?

[Rev]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Hopefully a title that might come to Australian scientists with their new Sliver (not a typo) Cell Tecnology.
If they can solve mass production method problems. it looks tricky (show was on "Catalyst" might still be on ABC on -line)

i saw that
crazy crazy
why on earth did they go to germany when the sun king wanted to commercialise it in china?

sliver cell meets sun king - and we all get better cheaper cells

the sun king? An Aussie educated chinese entrepreneur - Zhengrong shi
google "sunking china"

i swear its so obvious the only reason i can imagine they wouldnt is that they are being precious and are scared of chinese success

back to char plants...

Eucalyptus
Pine
Acacia
-because they grow easy, we are already planting them (systems in place) and theres already lost of waste to add to the above ground carbon credits if charred or put into the grid as syngas

Sugar cane
Miscanthus
Bamboo
Vetiver
Imperata blady grass

all great to soak up urban stormwater and effluent and recaptures N and P pollutants very well

[diazotrophicus]

Originally Posted by Rev

back to char plants...

Eucalyptus
Pine
Acacia
-because they grow easy, we are already planting them (systems in place) and theres already lost of waste to add to the above ground carbon credits if charred or put into the grid as syngas

Sugar cane
Miscanthus
Bamboo
Vetiver
Imperata blady grass

all great to soak up urban stormwater and effluent and recaptures N and P pollutants very well

Hi,
alley cropping is a good system. In Nigeria they found out that alley cropping with Leucaena leucocephala (coffee bush in Oz) with Cassia siamea (2:1) increased yields of cassava planted between the rows (spacing eight meters) by another thirty percent, compared to alley cropping with leucaena alone. (cgiar which now has been renamed to agroforestry).

Leucaena also makes good coppice and fodder (not for sheep) and grows really fast.
In Brazil they intercrop leucaena with elephant grass (Pennisetum purpureum) as pasture, getting ten animals (Zebu cattle) per hectare fattened to 300 kg per animal in 110 days, irrigation once a week, as researched by embrapa semi-árido in Petrolina.

There is plenty of scope for happy experimenters.
And for soaking up storm water see Yeomans and city forest. Find it at yeomans plow.
diazotrophicus

[Rev]

how could i forget
although i reckon bana grass is better, the pearl millet elephant grass hybrid and it wont go weedy

leucaena is a bit of a weed in the subtropics too. though they are putting in large areas in central qld these days

if you want woody biomass australia has some amazing native families. Casaurinas, acacia and eucalyptus.

Mallee eucalypts i think would be especially good in winter rainfall arid areas, Acacia harpophylla is not only vogoirous and coppiced but is also an endangered community that could benefit from extension

on a previous note - jatropha

it is naturalised in qld and the NT
J curcas is not that much of and issue but another species is..
hmm try google on bellyache bush

[diazotrophicus]

Originally Posted by Rev

how could i forget
although i reckon bana grass is better, the pearl millet elephant grass hybrid and it wont go weedy

leucaena is a bit of a weed in the subtropics too. though they are putting in large areas in central qld these days
.......
on a previous note - jatropha

it is naturalised in qld and the NT
J curcas is not that much of and issue but another species is..
hmm try google on bellyache bush

Hi Rev,
that was quick. Eucalyptus is highly controversial, from Spain and Portugal to Brazil, better keep this can of worms tightly closed.

Melaleuca in Florida seems to be another problem hailing from Oz.

Jatropha is very useful, I have kept contact with Reinhard Henning of jatropha.de (English) for more than ten years now, and those wind breaks or live fences in Mali really are taking off. They now have 17 thousand kilometers of it. And each meter produces about one liter of oil per year. Go figure. That makes seventeen million liters, over four million gallons of oil, straight for the Listeroid field master.

But for agroforestry: the beneficial effect seems to be the synergy of nitrogen fixation, wind break, goat repellent, root growth factors and soil cover, aka living mulch.

And char in the soil works as a wick and storage medium for anything mobile, including water.
diazotrophicus

[Rev]

i should have added a caveat

my comments are meant for Australasia

Aust mainland, Tassie, PNG and east of the wallace line

outside of that - take your own chances

[Michaelangelica]

Vetiver?
Wouldn't it be more root than anything else and difficult to harvest?
What is the Wallace line pls?

Biodiesel could reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Submitted by News Account on 27 November 2007
“The results of this study show biodiesel has the potential to reduce emissions from the transport industry, which is the third largest producer of greenhouse gases in Australia, behind stationary energy generation and agriculture,” Dr Beer said.

“The greenhouse gas savings do however depend on the feedstock used to produce the biodiesel. The highest savings are obtained by replacing base diesel with biodiesel from used cooking oil, resulting in an 87 per cent emission reduction.”

“Palm oil can produce up to an 80 per cent saving in emissions provided it is sourced from pre-1990 plantations. The palm oil source is critical as product from plantations established on recently dried peat swamps or cleared tropical forest will in fact have higher greenhouse gas emissions than regular diesel due to factors such as land clearing.”

The use of biodiesel also reduces the particulate matter released into the atmosphere as a result of burning fuels, providing potential benefits to human health.

Biodiesel could reduce greenhouse gas emissions | Scientific Blogging

[diazotrophicus]

Originally Posted by diazotrophicus

Hi Rev,

Jatropha is very useful, I have kept contact with Reinhard Henning of jatropha.de (English) for more than ten years now, and those wind breaks or live fences in Mali really are taking off. They now have 17 thousand kilometers of it. And each meter produces about one liter of oil per year. Go figure. That makes seventeen million liters, over four million gallons of oil, straight for the Listeroid field master.

But for agroforestry: the beneficial effect seems to be the synergy of nitrogen fixation, wind break, goat repellent, root growth factors and soil cover, aka living mulch.

And char in the soil works as a wick and storage medium for anything mobile, including water.
diazotrophicus

Hi,
from my list of bookmarks some sites of interest showing plants and systems for soil improvement and biofuel production.

From Thailand some encouraging pictures about Sesbania rostrata, the world champion in nitrogen fixation (with Azorhizobium caulinodans living on the stem of Sesbania)
Pictures of the Systems

The amount of biomass is astounding, grows very fast in humid climate. If some of that biomass is turned into char and worked into the soll, as shown in the pics, you have the best of two worlds.
Also Azolla would be a fast growing source of biomass, fixing nitrogen on the way.
Role of green manure crops in lowland rice based farming system of northern Thailand

In the USA the land institute with Wes Jackson has good experience with native perennials
The Land Institute - Illinois Bundleflower: Prospects For A Perennial Seed Crop

And from Tasmania some encouraging report on getting more with less input
Farming for Fertility part 3

Spread the information, it is the only thing we have to distinguish us from our stone age ancestors.
diazotrophicus

[Michaelangelica]

Marine algae get the green light from Shell

* 20 December 2007
* From New Scientist Print Edition
Shell plans to begin construction on a pilot plant in Hawaii immediately, which it expects will produce 15 times as much oil for a given area as other biofuel crops, thanks to the efficiency of algal photosynthesis.

Marine algae get the green light from Shell - earth - 20 December 2007 - New Scientist Environment
Like many technologies/(plants?) this has been around for a while but is being dusted off now as the price of oil has risen.
Gopher weed also should be economic by now?

[Monomer]

Perhaps more Cacao trees should be grown...

Chocolate is a guilty pleasure for some, but could soon prove highly nutritious — for your car! Thanks to a process created by British company Ecotec, it is now possible to take waste chocolate from confectionery companies and turn it into biodiesel. And to prove that it works, two British adventurers just completed a trek on a chocolate powered truck that went all the way from Europe to Timbuktu!

Inhabitat » TRANSPORTATION TUESDAY: Chocolate powered biodiesel

[freeztar]

Cool article Monomer. Where HAVE you been hiding btw?

Here's some simple math from the article:

4,500 miles/80,000 chocolate bars=approximately 0.056 miles per chocolate bar
So you'd need about 18 chocolate bars to travel 1 mile.

I think I'd rather eat 'em!