A Weed-Powered Passenger Jet

Good day,

I don't normally post but I feel compelled to do so now. I'm from Africa and Jatropha is being punted as the 'next big thing'. Fortunately, the cultivation of this crop is banned in South Africa. My observation is that the plant, while it can grow on marginal land, requires water and fertilizer like any other crop. Plans are in motion to use a fair amount of 'good' arable land for Jatropha cultivation. Land that can be used for other more profitable crops. Jatropha is a toxic plant and the toxic press cake left behind can only be used for boiler fuel. The oil is also toxic. What happens if the US or the EU retracts biodiesel subsidies? Germany is already scaling down their support. The poor farmer is left with the costly exercise of having to remove this plantation as there's no other intrinsic value to the plant except for biodiesel production.

My preference is for the Moringa Oleifera tree that has similar yields of oil to Jatropha per hectare, but the oil has similar properties to olive oil and is already being used in the cosmetic industry (Body Shop) for creams and the like. It can also be made into biodiesel although the cold flow plugging point (CFPP) is too high to conform to ASTM or EN specs with first generation biodiesel technology, much like palm oil. Like palm oil, it can also be blended to make on spec biodiesel. However, the UOP 2nd generation technology described above can process 100% of this oil into on-spec fuel. The press cake left below has coagulation properties and can be used for water purification, fertilizer or animal feed. The leaves on a dried basis have +20g per 100g high biological availability protein and can be used for human food or animal fodder.

Bottom line is that moringa is a crop that has greater economic potential to the farmer due to more saleable products (and hence less economic risk) per hectare compared to Jatropha. If the biodiesel industry goes belly up, at least moringa is a tree that can feed his family.

The biodiesel industry's infatuation with Jatropha is likely to cause serious damage to the African continent. I wish that the industry experts would look at other plants that are less likely to leave a poisonous legacy, as a worst case business scenario. Furthermore, I must question the economic merit of Jatropha with respect to the yields and value of oil versus the seed harvesting cost.

What about enclosed algae farms? Jatropha requires fresh water, something that, unless you live in Oregon like I do, is reportedly in short supply in the areas jatropha likes to grow. Algae is happy in salt water, something we have in abundance. Besides, it seems like algae or solar cells would make more efficient use of land that gets a lot of sun exposure. Just a thought.

When I went to South America recently, I heard a member of some Agrarian Association selling the same idea, surely with the intention of convincing public opinion or government officials, to deviate resources toward that cultivation.

Before Latin America buys another ‘Eco-Tale' I want to give my point of view with the hope that those with the power to decide, reconsider.

Common sense and experience tell me that this solution is not as brilliant as it seems.

We already see that prices of agricultural groceries involved with bio-fuels are rising, punishing people all over the World,  America included.

Increasing  prices is good news for farm producers, already SUBSIDIZED in the first world, and with great political power.

Jatropha, or any other vegetable for that matter, supposedly uses marginal lands. Well, start buying jatropha at good prices and you will see what happens.

Yes, you already know, It will displace edibles! It will siphon resources toward the fuel market. IE: arable lands, fertilizers, water, etc.

This is the same OLD MOVIE with actors coca, marijuana and poppy.

And in this particular case, Jatropha is toxic. You might not want to smoke it, but who does assure it won't end in a mixture of ‘affordable’ cooking oil, as happened in Spain with colza oil? It could happen in Latin America, I know.

This whole question also hurts my evolutionary sense (yes, I have developed one).
I like to believe that nature advances, in the sense of life: That organic and inorganic products of Earth seem to improve if they become a higher product in the biological scale: a more complex plant, a tree, and by feeding into the animal scale. From the human point of view (the only one that interests me) that is a progress.

To burn petroleum oil (contamination aside) is not an involution;  to burn organic YES it is.

I am hard core capitalist, but the worst ENEMY to capitalism are large corporations massive enough to distort market rules, and to impose ideas by mass media  that are favorable to their interests, but negative to human species. Tobacco is an abused example.

Obviously fuels is an ENORMOUS topic, we have to be realistic, oil corporations are coherent with their interests, that is all right, but hiding reality at that level of influence, is questionable.

Oil companies need we stay captive of gas stations, they will try all possible means that we keep there, in the line. They will favor all technologies that allows them to continue with that business. Awkward bio-fuels are on the same road.

Freedom lovers probably feel just the opposite. In my case, I would prefer several sources of inexpensive, independent, simple energy, if evolutionary positive much better. This great country has resources and inventiveness to make it happen, political decision is apparently missing.

And we need to try again to defuse out-of-human-proportions distorting economic black holes. Thank you for reading.

At 600 gallons of oil per acre, replacing 60 billion gallons of jet fuel would require 100 million acres. 400,000 square kilometers.

That's an area bigger than Germany. Perhaps we want to fly less airplanes. Or cut down a whole lot of rainforest.

It gets even more absurd when you calculate that, to replace all current oil consumption, you'd need an area roughly equal in size to the United States, full of high yielding Jatropha.

It is clear that biofuels should play a small part in weaning us of oil, but it's also clear that we shouldn't exaggerate with biofuel production.

I thought this was going to a story about hemp oil being used to get people really high, miles high. Dude...