All Washed Up for Jatropha?

I'm pasting my comment from the article on Jatropha 'Weed powered flight'.
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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.

sir
As a Jatropha researcher in Tamilnadu since 2003 i came to the conclusion that Jatropha requires constant care and water and all nutrients to grow without pestsand yield dream fuel. TERI in India is not yet claim as 100% success in Jatropha since i worked for 200 acre plantation project promoted by them .The Investor from Newdelhi was in much trouble since seeds and technology support from TERI was not as expected. TNAU and many firms were after Jatropha and met failures .
and still Tamilnadu govt is on it..
let us wait and see the results
S.a.Alagarsamy
www.mgrbiodiesel.com
India.

Surely the type of vegetation which can produce the most biomass , and requires the least inputs of water , fertilizer and energy are natural ecosystems which have evolved over millions of years to be ideally suited to any location . If we produce biofuel like this , it would give a financial value to biodiversity . All sorts of ecosystems can be sustainably managed without causing the loss of any species .

We have to accept that the health and productivity of agriculture , and indeed the world as a whole , is dependent on biodiversity . Biofuel production does not need to be based on the expensive cultivation of a small group of specialized biofuel crops .

As far as Jatropha goes , when you see people harvesting the fruits by hand and picking the oil seeds out by hand you realize that this is not the best way to produce biofuel . Ask yourself , do you really want some poor guy living in poverty to be producing biofuel by hand just so that you can fly by jet around the world on a happy holiday ? No thanks.

Finding the right energy-rich feedstock is hard. Petroleum is CO2-rich but energy-rich; sugar and corn-based ethanol is in theory carbon poor but really requires lots of energy to make and now hardy jatropha turns out is always thirsty. As for algae despite the hipe we're still decades away from an industrial application. Will we ever find the perfect biofuel?