A Viable Biofuel?

natural rah writes "A laboratory in India has developed a process for making diesel fuel from an inedible plant which grows in barren wastelands. Although biofuels are mass produced and used in USA and EU, they have been traditionally derived from edible oils like soy bean and rapeseed. Using edible oils to make fuels is evidently not an option in a country like India. This fuel is "carbon neutral" (at least theoretically), has potential to make good use of barren wastelands, is clean and sustainable. Read more here -- could you have a SUV and not put excess carbon into the air?"

Comments

Ummmm...

[gottafixthat]

What is "rapeseed"? Is that what happens to soy beans in prison?

Re:Ummmm...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Rapeseed is a plant that made an oil that was too bitter to eat. Rapeseed oil was commonly used to lubricate steam engines until the 1940's. Recently, Canadian farmers have bred the bitterness out of the oil to make an edible product called Canola. (Canadian Oil).

Re:Ummmm...

[jaakkeli]

Rapeseed is a plant that made an oil that was too bitter to eat. Rapeseed oil was commonly used to lubricate steam engines until the 1940's. Recently, Canadian farmers have bred the bitterness out of the oil to make an edible product called Canola. (Canadian Oil).

I see reading a few bits from Wikipedia and answering without actually knowing anything about the subject now gets you modded up. See the article on rapeseed to actually learn something about the subject; it's less nonsensical.

Rapeseed oil has traditionally been the most important cooking oil in many countries, especially here in the north where you can't grow corn, peanuts, soybeans, palm trees or pretty much anything (I live in Finland...). You need some processing to make it edible, but it's been one of the most significant sources of vegetable oil long before Canola was bred. Most of the world hasn't even heard of canola oil but is happy to eat rapeseed oil. I just fried some stuff using some.

See also

[Anonymous Coward]

See also Algae (cow crap), and thermal depolymerization (just about any kind of garbage) as biodiesel sources.

Okay, it's another bio-oil source.

[Engineer-Poet]

Unless this plant is extraordinarily productive, it's not going to address anyone's petroleum dependency or carbon emissions (and it's hard to believe that a plant which grows on wasteland could be as productive as e.g. sugar cane). The reason for growing this plant is that it may make it possible to reclaim wasteland (increasing the carbon content of the soil, perhaps removing salt) while supporting the effort with a cash product (biofuel).

If you want to change the world's energy cycles you're going to need something with at least 20 times the productivity of standard farm crops, like the UNH biodiesel-from-algae thing.

Some information on the plant

[Anonymous Coward]

general:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Jat ropha_curcas.html
potential environmental ("alien invader") hazard evaluation:
http://www.hear.org/pier/species/jatropha_curcas.h tm
Source for seeds:
http://www.tropilab.com/jatropha-cur.html

smoking hemp won't get you high

[Tumbleweed]

Hemp and Marijuana aren't the same thing.

http://www.artistictreasure.com/flier4.html

So smoke all the Hemp you want. :)

Jatropha curcas description and photos

[Futurepower(R)]

Someone thought of using Jojoba seeds for biofuel. However, after giving the Jojoba plant enough water to grow fast, the resulting product was too expensive and too slow-growing.

So, I was skeptical about this plant until I read more. This plant is different. It's a tropical plant, where presumably there is enough water.

See the Jatropha curcas description and cost and photo. The Jatropha System explains the advantages.

--
U.S. Gov.: Borrowing money to kill Iraqis. 140 billion borrowed. With interest, you pay 200 Billion.

Re:The fundamental problem...

[TykeClone]

There's no one good answer, but -

- Converting corn to ethanol leaves some feedstock that is used to feed livestock - the entire bushel of corn isn't converted into fuel, there is some leftover for other uses.
- Hybrid and GMO varieties of corn and soybeans are increasing yields every year.
- As noted earlier, algae can be converted into biodiesel - there are places where it would not make sense to grow crops, but it would make sense to set up algea growing stations (in the southwestern desert perhaps)
- Thermal depolymerization - make oil out of garbage. It's my understanding that you can take any organic waste and run it through this process to make oil. Right now, many communities have people separate out their paper and plastics for recycling - have a separate deal for table scraps too and send them right to one of these plants.
- Methane - capture methane from sanitary sewers, livestock feed lots, and landfills. Not sure what you'd need to do to make it usable, but there is a lot of that being produced and just plain vented into the atmosphere now.
- Right now, the US has something called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) - where the government pays farmer to idle erodable land. Allow them to grow stuff like switchgrass (or hemp) - anything fast growing, harvestable with conventional mowing or baling equipment, and that will regrow without needing a replant (it'd be nice to get 2 or 3 crops per summer out of that).