12 ms·

Start-Up Uses Plant Seeds for a Biofuel

23 points by taylan 13y ago

theboss 13y ago
So....is it still oil? What is the molecular difference between bio-fuel and regular ol' jet fuel? What is the difference after it is burned? Seems ridiculously cool.
- rosser 13y ago
  What's your definition of "oil"? It's still hydrocarbons, and can still be refined into at least some of the same compounds that so-called "mineral oil" (petroleum) is. The big difference is that it's more or less carbon-neutral. The carbon released from burning petrochemicals was underground for tens or hundreds of millions of years, and hence increases atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Like all biofuels, on the other hand, the carbon released from burning jatropha-derived fuels was sucked from the atmosphere as the plant grew.
- krisgee 13y ago
  I don't think there's any real difference between biofuel and regular fuels except that biofuels might (don't quote me here) be a bit less energy dense which is just an engineering problem. The big problem with biofuel is that it takes farmland to grow it on which means said farmland isn't making food crops.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    The big problem with biofuel is that it takes farmland to grow it on Jatropha is interesting, partly for this reason. It grows happily in semi-desert environments that are not suitable for traditional farmland.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    Pardon me for being a bit pedantic here but not all bio fuels require farmland. Bacterial based processes (generally e.coli) work in digestor/reactors), algae based fuels simply need access to sunlight (can be grown in tubes attached to the side of buildings). Further some starter crops can use land that is not deemed arable by farming standards.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      The scale at which algae would have to be produced to provide even a small fraction of existing petroleum consumption would mean you'd be growing it on rather more area than you've got affixed to building facades. For the US alone, sever tens of millions of acres, at 15,625 square miles (40,468 km^2) per 10 million acres. If you were, say, build your 10 million acres of algae grow tanks along the length of US Interstate 80 (2,899 miles), they'd extend 2.6 miles to either side of the highway, for its full length. And that's about 25% of what would be required to replace present oil consumption, so figure on extending your tanks out another 7.8 miles on either side, or string tanks along Interstates 10, 40, and 70 as well (mind the routing around the Great Lakes). Oh, and algae don't freeze well, that's going to cut into your growing season. Plus you've got to provide water, nutrients, stirring, and keep pathogens and scavengers off the crop. It's ... a pretty significant undertaking.
      - ChuckMcM 13y ago
        You could grow algae in clear tubes across 15 square miles of the Mohave desert and not consume a single acre of arable farmland.
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        Where are you going to get the water from? If it's seawater, how are you going to return it to the ocean. You can't dump salt water on land -- it poisons the soil. Even freshwater evaporating in dry climates leads to salinization. What's that going to cost you in energy inputs (pumping costs)? Though the thought occurs to me that the Salton Sea in southern California might make a possibly suitable grow region.
        ChuckMcM 13y ago
        If we've posited a desert based system, I'm going to guess it is closed loop with respect to water (which is to say the water never leaves the system as anything except perhaps evaporation during post processing.) So the initial water budget probably comes from the aquifer or is imported. Once the system is running an interesting question is how much water would it lose over time. And while that is an interesting question, it doesn't change the situation that no farmland was harmed in the process. :-)
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  It's oil. The differentiation is in the length of the hydrocarbons. Most biofuel oil is equivalent to diesel fuel (heavier grade than gasoline), but that's largely tuneable in refinement.
Turbots 13y ago
Why Brazil? Because of the climate? If this becomes financially viable for the farmers there, won't they burn down even more of the rain forest just to grow these?
vishaldpatel 13y ago
So.. paywall.
- mhb 13y ago
  It's worth paying for.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Me, too; try this one: http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/persistent-startup-uses-jatropha-seeds-to-make-profitable-fuel/article5501507.ece?homepage=true http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/persistent-startup...
dnautics 13y ago
not optimistic (know the company personally). Communicated to the founder that he should pivot to specialty lubricants (for example low temperature lubricants that are used in satellites), wasn't interested.
- taylan 13y ago
  Do you mind expanding on it a bit? Is it the volatility of oil prices or lower margins in aviation fuel compared to specialty lubricants?
  - dnautics 13y ago
    lower margins sums it up, the entire premise of the company depends either on subsidies or being bought out by the chinese. throwaway_yyD1 above has a better analysis.
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
"The company has deals to plant 250,000 acres of jatropha in Brazil, India and other countries expected to eventually produce about 70 million gallons of fuel a year." This does not sound promising. Scaled linearly to the current level of oil production, this would cover more land area than Brazil and India put together. (Current production is 90 million oil barrels/day [0] or 1.4 trillion gallons/year. If this biofuel yields 70 million gallons/year out of 250,000 acres, that's 280 gallons/year / acre; dividing out that's about 5 billion acres, or 18 million km^2. Brazil and India put together are 12 million km^2 [1]). Perspective on the 280 gallons/acre figure [2]: "Estimates of Jatropha seed yield vary widely, due to a lack of research data, the genetic diversity of the crop, the range of environments in which it is grown, and Jatropha's perennial life cycle. Seed yields under cultivation can range from 1,500 to 2,000 kilograms per hectare, corresponding to extractable oil yields of 540 to 680 litres per hectare (58 to 73 US gallons per acre).[17] Time magazine recently cited the potential for as much as 1,600 gallons of diesel fuel per acre per year.[18] The plant may yield more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean, and more than ten times that of maize (corn)." Also: [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield
- kiddz 13y ago
  Why are you assuming growth on one plane? Can't these crops be stacked? Also from a hedging perspective, alternative supply from this (assuming fuel is interchangeable) doesn't need to be equal to oil.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Density of plantings affects available sunlight (neighboring plants shield one another). Any sort of structure in agriculture is hugely expensive because of scale. You're not talking about putting up a backyard trellis, you're talking about building a structure that would cover tens of millions of acres, hundreds of thousands to millions of square miles. That's tremendous. Farmers normally consider infrastructure such as irrigation ditches, pipes, and harvesting equipment, which comparably are effectively nil scale, to be significant costs of cultivation. If you think about it, the fact that most farming takes place on little more than scratched earth, and often not even that, speaks to the low level of infrastructure required.
Houshalter 13y ago
The title could be more specific that it is jet-fuel, using plant seeds as biofuel isn't new.
ars 13y ago
Why does everyone obsess over fuel for transportations? It's the most difficult thing of all to make from renewables. Just plant some switch-grass and shovel it - as is - into a coal plant. No ethanol or anything else. Take the resulting ash (mostly potassium, i.e. potash), and use it as fertilizer, then and do it again.
- icegreentea 13y ago
  They obsess over it precisely because it's the most difficult of all. High energy density is required for flight. Apparently people would like to keep relatively cheap flight a thing that stays around.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Because transportation accounts for about 1/3 of all energy use, and oil accounts for 95%+ of all transportation energy. Because good transportation fuels are hard to find. If you're on a fixed track (rail, trolly), you can electrify. If you're not going too far and can keep your vehicle weight low, batteries become an option. If you've got a big enough structure, you can consider solid fuels (ships). For overland untracked transport (trucks), you might be able to use steam power (allowing solid fuels) at considerable losses of convenience and increase in mechanical complexity. For heavier-than air craft you're pretty much SOL. Transportation isn't just moving people around, but everything: food, raw materials, finished goods, and more. And liquid fuels are also convenient for powering other equipment, especially for mobile, temporary, or remote locations. Finding a replacement for liquid fossil-fuel based hydrocarbons is the holy grail. Coal and oil fundamentally changed human existence in ways that are very, very difficult to convey. They've made possible not only all of modern technology, but even the world of 1850, primitive as we would consider it, would be impossible without fossil fuels. Take them away and you're going back before that time, but with 14x the population. Trust me, that's the sort of thing that keeps me up nights. Though he's rather much the cornucopian, Daniel Yergin's The Prize, both a book and TV series, really impress how much the world changed with the discovery of petroleum in 1859. I highly recommend it: http://fixyt.com/watch?v=Qspu35JG59Q http://fixyt.com/watch?v=Qspu35JG59Q http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781439110126-2 http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781439110126-2

23 points by taylan 13y ago

So....is it still oil? What is the molecular difference between bio-fuel and regular ol' jet fuel? What is the difference after it is burned? Seems ridiculously cool.

rosser 13y ago
What's your definition of "oil"? It's still hydrocarbons, and can still be refined into at least some of the same compounds that so-called "mineral oil" (petroleum) is. The big difference is that it's more or less carbon-neutral. The carbon released from burning petrochemicals was underground for tens or hundreds of millions of years, and hence increases atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Like all biofuels, on the other hand, the carbon released from burning jatropha-derived fuels was sucked from the atmosphere as the plant grew.
krisgee 13y ago
I don't think there's any real difference between biofuel and regular fuels except that biofuels might (don't quote me here) be a bit less energy dense which is just an engineering problem. The big problem with biofuel is that it takes farmland to grow it on which means said farmland isn't making food crops.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  The big problem with biofuel is that it takes farmland to grow it on Jatropha is interesting, partly for this reason. It grows happily in semi-desert environments that are not suitable for traditional farmland.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Pardon me for being a bit pedantic here but not all bio fuels require farmland. Bacterial based processes (generally e.coli) work in digestor/reactors), algae based fuels simply need access to sunlight (can be grown in tubes attached to the side of buildings). Further some starter crops can use land that is not deemed arable by farming standards.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    The scale at which algae would have to be produced to provide even a small fraction of existing petroleum consumption would mean you'd be growing it on rather more area than you've got affixed to building facades. For the US alone, sever tens of millions of acres, at 15,625 square miles (40,468 km^2) per 10 million acres. If you were, say, build your 10 million acres of algae grow tanks along the length of US Interstate 80 (2,899 miles), they'd extend 2.6 miles to either side of the highway, for its full length. And that's about 25% of what would be required to replace present oil consumption, so figure on extending your tanks out another 7.8 miles on either side, or string tanks along Interstates 10, 40, and 70 as well (mind the routing around the Great Lakes). Oh, and algae don't freeze well, that's going to cut into your growing season. Plus you've got to provide water, nutrients, stirring, and keep pathogens and scavengers off the crop. It's ... a pretty significant undertaking.
    - ChuckMcM 13y ago
      You could grow algae in clear tubes across 15 square miles of the Mohave desert and not consume a single acre of arable farmland.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        Where are you going to get the water from? If it's seawater, how are you going to return it to the ocean. You can't dump salt water on land -- it poisons the soil. Even freshwater evaporating in dry climates leads to salinization. What's that going to cost you in energy inputs (pumping costs)? Though the thought occurs to me that the Salton Sea in southern California might make a possibly suitable grow region.
        ChuckMcM 13y ago
        If we've posited a desert based system, I'm going to guess it is closed loop with respect to water (which is to say the water never leaves the system as anything except perhaps evaporation during post processing.) So the initial water budget probably comes from the aquifer or is imported. Once the system is running an interesting question is how much water would it lose over time. And while that is an interesting question, it doesn't change the situation that no farmland was harmed in the process. :-)
dredmorbius 13y ago
It's oil. The differentiation is in the length of the hydrocarbons. Most biofuel oil is equivalent to diesel fuel (heavier grade than gasoline), but that's largely tuneable in refinement.

Turbots 13y ago

Why Brazil? Because of the climate? If this becomes financially viable for the farmers there, won't they burn down even more of the rain forest just to grow these?

vishaldpatel 13y ago

So.. paywall.

mhb 13y ago
It's worth paying for.
blisterpeanuts 13y ago
Me, too; try this one: http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/persistent-startup-uses-jatropha-seeds-to-make-profitable-fuel/article5501507.ece?homepage=true http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/persistent-startup...

dnautics 13y ago

not optimistic (know the company personally). Communicated to the founder that he should pivot to specialty lubricants (for example low temperature lubricants that are used in satellites), wasn't interested.

taylan 13y ago
Do you mind expanding on it a bit? Is it the volatility of oil prices or lower margins in aviation fuel compared to specialty lubricants?
- dnautics 13y ago
  lower margins sums it up, the entire premise of the company depends either on subsidies or being bought out by the chinese. throwaway_yyD1 above has a better analysis.

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

"The company has deals to plant 250,000 acres of jatropha in Brazil, India and other countries expected to eventually produce about 70 million gallons of fuel a year." This does not sound promising. Scaled linearly to the current level of oil production, this would cover more land area than Brazil and India put together. (Current production is 90 million oil barrels/day [0] or 1.4 trillion gallons/year. If this biofuel yields 70 million gallons/year out of 250,000 acres, that's 280 gallons/year / acre; dividing out that's about 5 billion acres, or 18 million km^2. Brazil and India put together are 12 million km^2 [1]). Perspective on the 280 gallons/acre figure [2]: "Estimates of Jatropha seed yield vary widely, due to a lack of research data, the genetic diversity of the crop, the range of environments in which it is grown, and Jatropha's perennial life cycle. Seed yields under cultivation can range from 1,500 to 2,000 kilograms per hectare, corresponding to extractable oil yields of 540 to 680 litres per hectare (58 to 73 US gallons per acre).[17] Time magazine recently cited the potential for as much as 1,600 gallons of diesel fuel per acre per year.[18] The plant may yield more than four times as much fuel per hectare as soybean, and more than ten times that of maize (corn)." Also: [3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha_curcas#Biofuel [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Yield

kiddz 13y ago
Why are you assuming growth on one plane? Can't these crops be stacked? Also from a hedging perspective, alternative supply from this (assuming fuel is interchangeable) doesn't need to be equal to oil.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Density of plantings affects available sunlight (neighboring plants shield one another). Any sort of structure in agriculture is hugely expensive because of scale. You're not talking about putting up a backyard trellis, you're talking about building a structure that would cover tens of millions of acres, hundreds of thousands to millions of square miles. That's tremendous. Farmers normally consider infrastructure such as irrigation ditches, pipes, and harvesting equipment, which comparably are effectively nil scale, to be significant costs of cultivation. If you think about it, the fact that most farming takes place on little more than scratched earth, and often not even that, speaks to the low level of infrastructure required.

Houshalter 13y ago

The title could be more specific that it is jet-fuel, using plant seeds as biofuel isn't new.

ars 13y ago

Why does everyone obsess over fuel for transportations? It's the most difficult thing of all to make from renewables. Just plant some switch-grass and shovel it - as is - into a coal plant. No ethanol or anything else. Take the resulting ash (mostly potassium, i.e. potash), and use it as fertilizer, then and do it again.

icegreentea 13y ago
They obsess over it precisely because it's the most difficult of all. High energy density is required for flight. Apparently people would like to keep relatively cheap flight a thing that stays around.
dredmorbius 13y ago
Because transportation accounts for about 1/3 of all energy use, and oil accounts for 95%+ of all transportation energy. Because good transportation fuels are hard to find. If you're on a fixed track (rail, trolly), you can electrify. If you're not going too far and can keep your vehicle weight low, batteries become an option. If you've got a big enough structure, you can consider solid fuels (ships). For overland untracked transport (trucks), you might be able to use steam power (allowing solid fuels) at considerable losses of convenience and increase in mechanical complexity. For heavier-than air craft you're pretty much SOL. Transportation isn't just moving people around, but everything: food, raw materials, finished goods, and more. And liquid fuels are also convenient for powering other equipment, especially for mobile, temporary, or remote locations. Finding a replacement for liquid fossil-fuel based hydrocarbons is the holy grail. Coal and oil fundamentally changed human existence in ways that are very, very difficult to convey. They've made possible not only all of modern technology, but even the world of 1850, primitive as we would consider it, would be impossible without fossil fuels. Take them away and you're going back before that time, but with 14x the population. Trust me, that's the sort of thing that keeps me up nights. Though he's rather much the cornucopian, Daniel Yergin's The Prize, both a book and TV series, really impress how much the world changed with the discovery of petroleum in 1859. I highly recommend it: http://fixyt.com/watch?v=Qspu35JG59Q http://fixyt.com/watch?v=Qspu35JG59Q http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781439110126-2 http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781439110126-2