New Wonder Weed to Fuel Cars?

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."

Comments

Just use hemp.

[lecithin]

It is a very good biomass source, it grows just about everywhere.

You don't get high from smoking industrial hemp.

See:

http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm

Re:Just use hemp.

[QMalcolm]

Surely you jest. Everyone knows hemp is a gateway fuel. Sure, filling up your car with a hemp once every week or so isn't going to do any serious damage. But then it becomes every week, then twice, three times, and pretty soon you need a heroin fuel injection every half hour to even get to the gas station, just to buy more.

Re:Just use hemp.

[cromar]

The nations need to get their collective heads out of their collective asses and see what a Good Thing(TM) hemp is (and I'm not even talking about it's psychoactive properties). Hemp could solve so many environmental/economical/jocular problems it's ridiculous to regulate it so heavily.

"Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!" - The Writings of George Washington (1794)

Re:Just use hemp.

[Smidge204]

A hectare (2.47 acres) of jatropha produces 1,892 liters (500 gallons) of fuel. 202 gallons per acre.

Hemp seed yields 15 gallons per acre.

As much as I think hemp is a valuable crop - which it certainly is - the jatropha seems like a better choice for biofuel production. Over 12 times better, in fact.
=Smidge=

Re:Just use hemp.

[mconeone]

I'm guessing the sun, water, and soil play a part...

Re:Just use hemp.

[h2_plus_O]

Using hemp as a fuel source would only further contribute to the growing problem of deforestation, something its proponents conveniently ignore.

Not necessarily. Hemp farmed for fuel could, once it's been processed for oil, be used as a source of fiber- which is one of the primary reasons we cut down trees today. Why would anybody clear-cut forests if hemp fiber was cheaper?
Hemp makes better paper with fewer chemical processes than wood pulp. It makes an outstanding fabric, and has been demonstrated to produce excellent building material- and it grows much faster than trees. It's a damn shame we've outlawed it.

Re:Just use hemp.

[WalksOnDirt]

You can't take oil from the plant, use the rest of the plant to grow more plants, take oil from them, rinse, repeat. As long as you are just taking hydrocarbons out you can, since those can be produced from carbon dioxide and water. You're bound to get trace amounts of things like phosphorus, sulfur and potassium in the oil, but if the amounts are small then replacing them is easy. Wind blown dust will do some of that with no effort by the grower.

Re:Just use hemp.

[budgenator]

it's from Vegoil and biodiesel.

Re:Just use hemp.

[rossifer]

In the coarsest terms, plants require both bioavailable carbon and bioavailable nitrogen along with a few other nutrients to grow. The atmosphere supplies bioavailable carbon to plants through CO2. But atmospheric nitrogen is not usable by plants. Bioavailable nitrogen must be supplied to plants through their roots, and it doesn't just appear in soil and water. Some nitrogen appears in topsoil, but agriculture will quickly deplete nutrient supplies. If they aren't replaced, you end up with productivity losses, loss of cropland, and in the worst case, desertification.

Means of nutrient replacement:

1. Tilling animal manure into the soil.
2. Tilling composted plant material into the soil.
3. Planting nitrogen fixing plants (peas, beans, etc.) and then tilling them into the soil.
4. Leaving the field fallow (without a crop) for several years (a slower version of (2)).
5. Adding fertilizer

So what this article is claiming is that the seedcake left over from oilpressing contains all of the nitrogen and other nutrients needed to restore the soil using just technique (2). That's an extraordinary claim. This plant is not a legume or one of the other nitrogen fixing plants, so by itself, cannot increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil. Some of the nitrogen will be unusable in the seedcake, some of the nitrogen needed to grow the plant will go into other parts of the plant that will have other economic uses or take too long to compost. A 100% cycle of nitrogen back into the soil would be great, but doesn't make any sense.

As for the sun and water, well, they can only do so much given that neither one is a supply of the nutrients needed to keep the soil healthy.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Just use hemp.

[Sandbags]

Me and several environmentalist friends have been screaming for years: "Kudzu you assholes!!!"

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!!!

Re:Just use hemp.

[Amouth]

Simple answer - I live in the south - and if I ever catch someone planting Kudzu on purpose - i will beat the shit out of them.....

Re:Just use hemp.

[Rei]

When people talk about how hemp is good for everything under the sun, it always reminds me of those snake-oil cure-alls hawked by travelling vendors in the 1800s. ;)

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:Just use hemp.

[radl33t]

Using celulostic conversion processes ... can produce massive ammounts of ethanol easily, efficiently, and most important, cheaply.

What kind of cellulose processing is that? I don't know of any methods that can do any one of those three, let alone all of them. I claim that processing cellulose, hemi cellulose, and lignin is difficult, inefficient, and expensive. To me, this explains why tech has not developed commercially. Since you deny each of my claims, what do you propose have been the commercial constraints?

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)

Um except the science. Please forward me to a description of a process that is "easy, efficient, and cheap." No top secret Company X propaganda either please.

Me and several environmentalist friends have been screaming for years
Screaming nonsensical claims won't advance your agenda.

Re:Just use hemp.

[rthille]

My god, if we let these plants go wild, they'll strip the atmosphere of everything we need to live!

<grin>

Sounds similar

[jtroutman]

This sounds like what they are doing in more arid regions with Jojoba , which is similar in that is grows in places other plants won't, requires little water and produces an oil that can power diesel engines.

This could be a problem...

[eln]

This is a noxious fast-growing weed, apparently kept in check in its native environment due to the fact that the soil and weather conditions there are terrible for growing anything. However, TFA mentions that various companies are looking at planting this thing all over the place, including areas that have good soil and growth-friendly climates.

So what happens when we start planting this thing everywhere? Could this turn into the next kudzu?

Re:This could be a problem...

[SatanicPuppy]

Theoretically it could be used for animal feed...That's part of how it was originally pitched to farmers in the South, that their cows would eat it. Well, they may nibble the leaves, but that's about it.

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.

I am more impressed...

[HerculesMO]

with BP every day. They are the only major oil company to seem to "get" that oil won't last forever. They have invested money into solar technologies (walk into Home Depot), lowered their own emissions requirements to meet standards that don't even exist yet, and now are shown to be investing heavily into alternative "bio" fuels. Exxon and the like seem content to just pulling oil from the ground and putting it into pumps.

Just a simple thought. They are still an "evil oil company" thus far as I can see... but at least they have vision for the future and aren't thinking oil will last forever as the Bush administration thinks it will.

Nut pressing

[mpoulton]

"nutrient-rich seed cake left after oil is pressed from its nuts"

Anybody else cross their legs and cringe when reading this?

It'll never happen in the U.S ...

[ScrewMaster]

Too many billions in subsidies going into the maw of ethanol production.

Re:It'll never happen in the U.S ...

[jollyreaper]

Environmentalists have been shrieking and crying about government funding for alternative fuels, and now that we've rushed to pacify them, we discover it's not such a great investment afterall.

Well that's what tends to happen when energy policy is influenced by knee-jerk alarmists. No, this is what happens when you let big business co-opt a public desire for change and turn it into another money-making scam. People want real alternative fuels, not smoke and mirrors like ethanol. But oh, doing that would actually cost money and eat into profits. Can't have that.

That new car smell

[Quiet_Desperation]

The new weed burning cars will be available is many, many, many different colors.

So many colors...

Wait... what?

Incineration

[Silentknyght]

I'm at a loss as to why incineration isn't being touted as the next wave of energy production. I suppose the common man doesn't understand that the fuel stock doesn't greatly matter or differ when it comes out of the stack, provided the usual pollution control devices.

You're going to have nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and depending on the fuel & control devices used, varying levels of particulates, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). You're going to get this whether you burn the horribly-connoted "coal" or the relatively-benignly-connoted "wood". Plant matter, like that specified in TFA, isn't all that different from "wood", and actually used to be lumped together in the "biomass" definition until the US Supreme Court vacated the appropriate legislation set forth by the EPA.

Point being... all of this is the generation of additional waste stream for fuel, instead of utilizing an existing waste stream for fuel. I applaud the thought and intent, but why not use the garbage we already generate for fuel? RDF (refuse-derived fuel) boilers already exist for electrical generation...

Seeds? What about the whole plant?

[jlcooke]

Allow me to be crack-pot.

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.

Some numbers for comparison.

[AnotherBlackHat]

Lex Worrall, chief executive of Helius Energy, claims Jatropha can produce 2.7 tonnes of oil per hectare. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2155351.ece

For comparison, corn produces about 0.15 tonnes per hectare, hemp about 0.30 tonnes, and canola (rapeseed) only 1.0 tonnes.
So if he's right, it's a very good oil producer, on the order of much harder to grow oil producers like avocado (2.2) or coconut (2.3).

Still 1/5 of algae though.

-- Should you believe authority without question?

NZ

[jbeaupre]

The man missed New Zealand then: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0605/S00030.htm

Hemp isn't that useful

[Animats]

Funny how the hemp promoters are uninterested in other coarse-fiber crops, like jute, sisal, kenaf, and manila. Or in other low-cost sources of cellulose, like straw, bagasse (sugar cane after sugar extraction), and similar agricultural waste. No, somehow they're attracted only to hemp.

Re:Hemp isn't that useful

[Darth Liberus]

Yeah, it's like the "medical" marijuana brigade. Stop trying to convince us that hemp/marijuana is the Miracle of Miracles and start telling the truth: you like to get high and the Gummint is wasting my tax money.

Fun stuff

[evilviper]

"its sap is a skin irritant, and ingesting three untreated seeds can kill a person."

"Western Australia banned the plant as invasive and highly toxic to people and animals."

"Jatropha needs at least 600mm (23in) of rain a year to thrive."

"20 per cent of seedlings planted will not survive"

"farmers in India are already expressing frustration that after being encouraged to plant huge swaths of the bush they have found no buyers for the seeds."

"needs two to three years to develop into a cash crop."

Sentence that really hurt

[RealProgrammer]

This one hurts on so many levels:

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.

1. No plants require pesticides.
2. Very few land-based plants require water other than rain, plants being unable to distinguish the source of their H2O.
3. As someone mentioned, most plants are able to live on soil and their own detritus.
4. I cannot contemplate for long the prospect of all those poor plants having their nuts crushed. Ooh, I hate when that happens!

The 85% SOLUTION

[StCredZero]

Electric cars with a practical range approaching 200 miles would suffice for most of the driving needs of most of the populace. If people could buy the cars, then subscribe to a battery service, this would enable fast battery module swaps. But most of the time, people would just charge overnight at home.

The other 20% would still need some form of internal combustion vehicle for dealing with heavier loads. But this would be much easier to provide with biodiesel than all of the vehicular needs of North America.

i'm reminded of a quote by Raplh Waldo Emerson

[non]

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."

Re:hemp is a gateway fuel

[yerM)M]

I think he is trying to convince you that hemp is a getaway fuel, not a gateway fuel.

Re:Signs point to nuclear fusion.

[Rei]

Well, obviously. What did you think we were doing with all of the flowers that the Iraqis were throwing at us, if not feeding them to ponies?

Jatropha Photo's and my research on it.

[John Sokol]

I spend several weeks in India last summer studying Jatropha.
  My wife's father S.W. Mensinkai founded University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, near Hubli in Karnataka India (8 hrs by train north of Bangalore). He is considers the father of plant genetics in India. They are doing genetic engineering of Jatropha there.

See photo's
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/index.html

One of the programs they are pushing is for farmer to plant Jatropha on the borders of other crops in the fields, turns out the bulls that wonder freely in India will not go near the stuff, so a row of these trees keeps them out of the farmers crops.

Very interesting work.

I brought back a hand full of seeds with me, and planted them, but they didn't take, maybe the Airport X-ray scanners killed them.

Anyhow;
  Jatropha is related to the Castor bean plan that is responsible that the neurotoxin ricin is derived from.
  It also have a toxin called curcin that is similar to ricin.

  I don't know if burning Jatropha oil release this curcin toxin into the air?

  But apparently when it's pressed to get the Oil out, the curcin remains in the "Cake" this is the solids left behind after the seeds have all the oils squeezed out.

From: http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/plant/jatropha/jhast.htm
-------------
      2.5 Poisonous parts
                        All parts are considered toxic but in particular the seeds.
      2.6 Main toxins
                        Contains a purgative oil and a phytotoxin or toxalbumin
                        (curcin) similar to ricin in Ricinis.
------------

  Apparently Canola oil (Short for Canadian Oil)is a genetically modified Rape seed (in the mustard family) with the toxins removed.

  So if Jatropha had it's toxins removed through genetic modification it could also be a valuable food product.

Later in 2006 I moved to Santa Barbara and it turns out the first company in the US to start producing Jatropha Oils and Bio-Diesel was here in Santa Barbara. http://www.biodieselindustries.com/ They were even doing a project with the local High School to grow Jatropha.

Also Jatropha Oil is being use on the Indian Railways for some time too. I guess the plan is to plant Jatropha trees along the tracks, it keep the animals off the tracks and also since labor is very cheap, they would use the same trains to harvest the tree's for oil to power the trains.

One of the projects I was thinking of was to develop an engine optimized to run on Jatropha Oil.
More importantly these three wheeled auto-rickshaws (called Tuck Tucks in Thailand) all use the exact same engines, so the idea is to make a direct drop in engine for rickshaws. The rickshaws there are Two-stroke gas engines and are a major source of pollution there spewing clouds of choking soot behind them. Maybe some day.

More good links:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/20/stories/2005102002021100.htm
http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/tnt_starts_biod.html

Diesel-electric trains work this way...

[Joce640k]

Diesel-electric trains work this way. There's a diesel engine which runs a a constant RPM generating electricity to drive the train.

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.