Power plants: Technicians at UOP examine equipment used to convert jatropha oil into jet fuel.
UOP / Honeywell
Jet fuel made from an inedible plant will power an aircraft.
On December 3, a Boeing 747 belonging to Air New Zealand is scheduled to take off from Auckland, New Zealand, powered in part by a new type of jet fuel made from a weed. A mixture of equal parts biofuel and conventional fuel will run one of the plane's engines. The biofuel, which could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, was developed by UOP, a Honeywell company that is a major supplier of technology for petroleum refining.
It's not the first time that an airliner has been powered by biofuel. What's new is the source of the biofuel: jatropha, a plant that, unlike current sources of biofuels, is not a food crop and can be grown in marginal agricultural land. In the past year, biofuels production has come under fire for contributing to a sharp rise in food prices by diverting grain and other foods for use in fuel. Jatropha provides a potential alternative to soybean oil and palm oil, which are now used as sources of biofuels.
UOP's new process is part of a larger effort by the company to find alternatives to petroleum, in light of increasing efforts by countries to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The company plans to license the technology to refiners, who could easily incorporate it into existing plants, since it's adapted from UOP's conventional petroleum refining process. The company developed new catalysts and added a couple of extra steps. For example, jatropha oil, unlike petroleum, contains oxygen. To make the oil into a hydrocarbon compatible with existing refining strategies, UOP included a step to add hydrogen gas, which removes the oxygen. (Other biofuels, such as biodiesel, don't take this step, which affects the performance of the fuel and can require changes to engines.) The resulting hydrocarbon molecules are then broken into shorter molecules through a common refining process called hydrocracking. During this process, the linear molecules are modified so that they have "kinks in the chain," says Jennifer Holmgren, the general manager of UOP's renewable-energy unit. That makes the resulting fuel less susceptible to freezing. The process produces a mixture of primarily jet fuel and diesel fuel.
Unlike many other biofuels, UOP's jatropha jet fuel can replace conventional fuel without requiring changes to existing engines. Indeed, by several measures, the fuel is better than conventional jet fuel. It has a lower freezing point and can be exposed to higher temperatures onboard a plane without degrading. It also contains slightly more energy than conventional jet fuel, so a plane powered by jatropha could travel farther.
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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.
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asogan
10 Comments
Jatrapha
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.
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phoenix
172 Comments
Re: Jatrapha
If no one else whats to weigh in with their two cents worth, I'd venture to say that asoga will have the last word on this subject. Thanks for your input and setting the record straight for the rest of us.
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AirCarGUy
2 Comments
Re: Jatrapha
Exactly. Why jump on this weird weed, when the Russians have great sucess with the Jersualem Artichoke, and the Brazilans with sugar cane? Why follow sucess and experence with some 'marketing' campain. ( Your response is so poinent that I am going to post it wholesale onto wikipedia. THANKS!
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