The jatropha fruit contains a seed that yields oil that can be used to produce biofuel.
If the vision of father and son farmers Christian and James Twigg-Smith becomes reality, acres of now-fallow sugar cane land will be growing crops again.
But rather than producing food, the land would be used to grow fuel oil.
About two years ago they planted jatropha, an oil-rich nut native to South America, on 250 acres in Keaau on Hawaii island. They have leased another 750 acres that could be put into production if the crop is successful.
The plants take two to four years to mature, but last summer they were able to harvest their first, small crop -- enough to make a few gallons of biodiesel and run some tests on the oil they produced.
"At this point it's looking promising, but we don't know for certain if it will work yet," Christian Twigg-Smith said.
Their venture, called HIPPO for Hawaii Pure Plant Oil, is the first commercial biofuel plantation in the state.
Here is yet another example of a family business in the biodiesel industry, did you know Hawaii is a great place to grow jatropha? Obviously, it is, and we’ll be hearing more about this venture.
Major Japanese oil wholesaler Nippon Oil and Hitachi subsidiary Hitachi Plant Technologies are developing a technology that’s supposed to make it possible to mass-produce eco-friendly jet fuel from Euglena, single-celled organisms that live in ponds and lakes.
To be more exact, both companies are cooperating with and acquired shares in a Tokyo-based venture called Euglena, Inc., which is trying to find a way to extract oil from these organisms to produce fuel.
The venture says they already have a culturing system in place that can be used to grow Euglena efficiently, adding their production yield is superior to crops usually used to produce biofuel, i. e. corn or sugarcane. The current goal is to push down production costs per liter in a test plant to $0.80 per liter in order to be able to compete with regular jet fuel as far as prices are concerned. Another option, according to Euglena, is to use the biofuel for buses.
The company says mass-producing Euglena-derived biofuel should be possible by 2015.
The Wall Street Journal has an interview with J. Craig Venter, the biologist who mapped the human genome and whose company Synthetic Genomics last year received a sizeable commitment from ExxonMobil to develop biofuels from algae.
Venter strikes an interesting balance between optimism and the reality of the many unknowns in getting algal biofuel towards being both cost-effective and scalable.
[We were interested to read the Synthetic Genomics is also working on a project with BP, although the financial details of that arrangement have not been disclosed.]
He talks about using natural or modified organisms that consume CO2 as their feedstock to create transport fuels.
The big question, of course, is when?
UK / DENMARK / NETHERLANDS – Two of the most renowned names in the shipping industry, Maersk and Lloyd’s Register, are cooperating with the Dutch government and a number of specialist contractors to run a trial on the use of biodiesel fuel in marine engines.
The trials aim to explore the problems that could be encountered by vessels using the FAME (fatty acid methyl esters) fuel, which has experienced variable results in studies conducted by the automotive industry. The potential benefits are significant however, as this fuel is based on sustainable crops that can be grown in temperate climates or reused oils.
Speaking of the test program, Kim Tanneberger, a specialist on biodiesel at Lloyd’s Register’s Strategic Research Group (SRG), said that: “One of the aims of the tests is to establish the degree to which issues experienced by the automotive industry in the use of FAME will be duplicated on board ship, in particular the impact on storage stability, handling and its subsequent use in the engine. Where adverse effects arise it is hoped to find solutions to overcome them.”
Marine engines would be a wonderful test of biodiesel, I think they will find it cleaner-burning with less sludge, and I hope we will hear about the results of this testing of biodiesel at sea.