NYT: U.S. Is Creating 3 Centers for Research on Biofuels
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Jatropha is looking increasingly interesting as a source of biodiesel. It is inedible to man and beast and so does not compete with food and can be grown on marginal land with very low rainfall. It is a weed plant/bush that once planted can be harvested after year 2 and then keeps going. It has 30% more oil production (in cold pressing) than soya beans (using solvent) and is high in cellulose. It does not like frost but that is not a particular drawback. The only current but fixeable problem is that they have not yet produced a mechanical harvester so it is very labour intensive at harvest time. Again, labour is not a problem in NE Brasil, India, Egypt etc.
Going further down the line we should not be combusting fuels, whether bio or fossil at all. H2 fuel cells are getting better all the time and the process of extracting the H2 molecule from a hydrocarbon (bio or fossil) with a reformer only leaves 32% of the carbon footprint of combusting it. Once the fuel cell is powering your car, house, boat, office etc all it produces is water vapour. A completely non- CO2 way of producing H2 is of course using windpower and water by electrolysis. Similarly it is a by-product of the latest pebble bed reactors (I think…).
Eventually we have to get away from the internal combustion engine but there is so much invested in that technology that it will take some time for it to happen.
Posted on 27-Jun-07 at 2:20 pm | PermalinkAl B.