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

[Michaelangelica]

Poison plant could help to cure the planet

The hardy jatropha, resilient to pests and resistant to drought, produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content.
When the seeds are crushed, the resulting jatropha oil can be burnt in a standard diesel car, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power electricity plants.

Even Bob Geldof has stamped his cachet on jatropha, by becoming a special adviser to Helius Energy, a British company developing the use of jatropha as an alternative to fossil fuels. Lex Worrall, its chief executive, says: “Every hectare can produce 2.7 tonnes of oil and about 4 tonnes of biomass. Every 8,000 hectares of the plant can run a 1.5 megawatt station, enough to power 2,500 homes.”[/quote]
Poison plant could help to cure the planet - Times Online

WIKI:-
Jatropha oil is vegetable oil produced from the seeds of the Jatropha curcas, a plant that can grow in wastelands. Jatropha curcas grows almost anywhere, even on gravelly, sandy and saline soils. It can thrive on the poorest stony soil. It can grow even in the crevices of rocks.

Developed in India as a fuel oil, it has received wide attention, particularly in Asia (e.g. Indonesia[1] and the Philippines,[2]) as a source of biodiesel
Jatropha is a one-stage conversion to biodiesel and the oil produces 40-42 MJ/kg, as compared with 42.5-45 MJ/kg for standard diesel.[6]

Researchers at Daimler Chrysler Research[7] explored the use of jatropha oil for automotive use, concluding that although jatropha oil as fuel "has not yet reached optimal quality, ... it already fulfills the EU norm for biodiesel quality."[8

.
Looks lite a potential weed of mighty proportions, then we made need such hardy plants.
I wonder how much water it needs?

I wonder how it compares with Gopher weed, strangely, I can't find Gopher weed on Wiki

It looks tropical.

Distributional range:

Native:

* NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico
* SOUTHERN AMERICA
Mesoamerica: Belize; Costa Rica; El Salvador; Guatemala; Honduras; Nicaragua
Brazil: Brazil
Western South America: Bolivia; Peru
Southern South America: Argentina; Paraguay

Other:

* widely cultivated & naturalized elsewhere in New World & Old World tropics

It may have some medicinal potential

n.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

I wonder how it [Jatropha] compares with Gopher weed, strangely, I can't find Gopher weed on Wiki

According to this very useful journeytoforever table, Jatropha is nearly 4 times as productive a biofuel source as Euphorbia lathyris (Gopher weed), yielding 1590 vs. 440 kg/ha. Both greatly exceed the lowest yield plant listed, corn, at 145 kg/ha, and are greatly exceeded by the highest, oil palm, at 5000.

More important that yield and oil quality, IMHO, are plants’ geographical growing ranges. Oil palm is a superb oil producer, but tropical, limiting its cultivation to equatorial regions, making getting it to major markets such as the EU and US financially and energy-expensive, and making lower-yield but heartier plants like Euphorbia attractive. Even hemp, at a lowly yield of 305 kg/ha, is attractive, as it grows well in temperate climates, and its post-oil-extraction fibers are useful.

Another important factor is the financial and energy cost of oil extraction. I’m unaware of a good source of this data, but know, for example, that extracting oil from certain fruit nuts is easier than extracting it from certain fiber plants.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by CraigD

According to this very useful journeytoforever table, Jatropha is nearly 4 times as productive a biofuel source as Euphorbia lathyris (Gopher weed), yielding 1590 vs. 440 kg/ha. Both greatly exceed the lowest yield plant listed, corn, at 145 kg/ha, and are greatly exceeded by the highest, oil palm, at 5000.

Thanks craig, meanies won't let me give you rep points.
But with a list like that who needs a thread like this?

They just say Euphobia spp rather than any particular variety??
(opps sorry; seems to be a few, though:- Euphorbia supina, Euphorbia lathyris E. esula, Euphorbia tirucalli and even " The overall process consists of three steps: hybridization of Euphorbia lathyris with E. esula,which produces fewer hydrocarbons than E. lathyris but grows as a perennial rather..". . .)
I thought euphobias were just plants with milky juice that sometime burnt off warts?!)
Transport and local soil conditions would be a big consideration jatropha is a tropical (wet?) plant.
Interesting from an Australian point of view is that Jojoba is nearly as good as Jatropha and is a desert plant. Some small plantings already exist mainly for the cosmetics market!

I am told corporate & superannuation money is buying land everywhere at the moment as they see agriculture as the future.
There are some huge almond farms going in here now; replacing water hungry cotton. This is a boon to bee-keepers who rent out their hives as polinators -bugger the honey!

[Nitack]

I am too lazy to find all of the articles about it, so I am directing you to the wikipedia page instead: Switchgrass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. That is the supposed super fuel source of the future. Everyone except the energy companies seems to know corn is not efficient for biofuel. Your two leading contenders are algae and switchgrass.

Algae grows fastest of all photosynthesizing organisms and many companies are working with algae now to develop fuel farms. They are trying to grow it in plastic bags. The benefit is that it can be grown anywhere, including in the desert where there is plenty of sun, land is cheap and the warm weather will be conducive to the algae growing. Algae just needs water, sunlight and CO2 to grow, and the plastic bags keep the algae free from wild strains.

The leading terrestrial candidate is switchgrass. Natural plant in the US, VERY hardy, produces a lot of biomass per acre (6-10 dry tons per year per acre). Through gasification it can be converted to charcoal, woodgas, and bio-oil. The energy output is about 5 times out what you have to put in to produce it, so it is way more efficient than corn.

[Michaelangelica]

Biofuels seem to come in for afair deal of flack.
Surely they have to be apart of the future energy mix
surely we won't go hungry growing them
EG Some typical headlines of articles:_

All sounds a bit alarmist.
Aren't we looking for weird plants that will grow in salty or marginal soil?
EG

What if you could use plants to turn industrial waste sites into fertile, productive cropland? Better yet, what if you could produce biofuels in the process? By marrying bio-remediation and crop production, a group of Carnegie Mellon University graduates hopes to do just that: produce biodiesel and ethanol on reclaimed land.

Turning Brownfields Into Biofuels | Green Options

Mushroom Secrets Could Combat Carbon, Enable Better Biofuels And Clean Soil

Researchers at the University of Warwick are co-ordinating a global effort to sequence the genome of one of the World's most important mushrooms - Agaricus bisporus. The secrets of its genetic make up could assist the creation of biofuels, support the effort to manage global carbon, and help remove heavy metals from contaminated soils.

Mushroom Secrets Could Combat Carbon, Enable Better Biofuels And Clean Soil
Would BIG OIL be trying to undermine the concept?
Surely not?

Maize for Biofuels: The Ultimate Energy Crop

Maize_2 According to research conducted by Fred Below at the University of Illinois (U of I), maize may prove to be the ultimate U.S. biofuels crop. This comes at somewhat of a surprise, because U of I has been studying and advocating Miscanthus for some time.

The chief advantage of maize, when grown in the Midwest, is that it requires much less nitrogen fertilizer input than corn because it does not produce any ears. The sugar is in the stalks, not in the ears and is in the form of sucrose, fructose and glucose.

This differs from conventional corn and other crops being grown for biofuels in that the starch found in corn grain and the cellulose in switchgrass, corn stover and other biofuel crops must be treated with enzymes to convert them into sugars that can be then fermented into alcohols such as ethanol.

A long, detailed article if interested
AT:-
The Energy Blog: Maize for Biofuels: The Ultimate Energy Crop

[HydrogenBond]

If one is looking for a plant to make bio-fuel, don't use food plants. The logic behind this is, with food crops and farmland shifting toward fuel production, the price of food will go up. This happened in Mexico, where corn land was being shifted to bio-fuel causing the price of corn based food products to rise. The poorest people took a hit. If Mexico entered a drought, flooding or had the 20 year locust, whatever, then the total crop is reduced. With supply and demand, the food prices would sky rocket. Or if ethanol became important, then fuel prices also increase. The food crop based bio-fuels also causes farmers to divert valuable crop land into crops that make the most fuel money. This means other food crops to get less land. This lowers their supply, causing these prices to go up.

If we could use a non-food crop, there is not the same intertwining of food and fuel, where the supply and demand cause a price competition. The ideal would be something that can grow on land not suitable for growing food. Some type of weed that can grow well in crappy soil would be ideal. Weeds are a problem in most cases, due to their selective advantage of growing fast and in almost any type of condition. Maybe all this evolution has produced a type of weed that is very fuel friendly, requiring no care. Maybe these can give the pesky weed, some respect in civilization.

[diazotrophicus]

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.

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

[Michaelangelica]

Thanks diazotrophicus
Do you know where I could get a few seeds of Jatropha for my own interest?
Is it frost tender? Any pH requirements?

The Indonesians seem to be making a mess of their forests to plant palm oil. Saw a TV show on it the other day. They have totally destroyed some areas so nothing will grow. Also destroying the habitat for oranatang (?)

[diazotrophicus]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Thanks diazotrophicus
Do you know where I could get a few seeds of Jatropha for my own interest?
Is it frost tender? Any pH requirements?

The Indonesians seem to be making a mess of their forests to plant palm oil. Saw a TV show on it the other day. They have totally destroyed some areas so nothing will grow. Also destroying the habitat for oranatang (?)

Hi,
for jatropha seeds your nearest source might be echotech.org in Florida, I think. Jatropha is a tropical plant and should not be very fond of frost. But you can always try.
As concerns Indonesia and the orangutans in Malaysia (Borneo), clearcutting is caused by illegal and legalized logging by big greedy companies, some of them based in Singapore. They get their logging permits in mountainous areas pretending to plan oil palm plantations. With a little help from friends in high places and/or bulgy envelopes. Very sad story. I will write more on intercropping of oil palms with sweet potato in Brazil and elsewhere when my ten-post limit for posting links will be fulfilled.
diazotrophicus

[Turtle]

Mmmm...I knew folks were field farming hybrid poplar trees for lumber & paper pulp, but apparently they see a use for them as fuel too.

Renewable Energy Access (REA) reported on a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study published in the April 2007 issue of Ecological Applications. It should put to rest any lingering doubts about the advantageous carbon emissions benefits of cellulosic ethanol production - particularly when hybrid poplar feedstock is used.

BIOstock Blog: Hybrid poplars reduce carbon emissions best