What plants are best

[mcrover]

Just a quick question, what is the best plant/s to make the fuel oil from?

I know there are heaps of plants you can use but what is the most productive and how much stock does it take to make a ltr of fuel?

[waynep]

There was a very interesting segment on the New Inventors ( ABC) last Wednesday.

This guy has invented a portable bio diesel plant that converts many types of plant matter to bio diesel. Designed mainly for third world countries where a village can set up a mini-plant and produce a couple of thousand litres a day for their own use. ( tractors, generators etc )

Anyway he did mention some non-food crops that are very high yielding and especially suitable for bio diesel use - I can't remember what they were but last weeks program can be watched online until this Wednesday ( www.abc.net.au ) - go to IView

[kaa45]

Try this Vegetable oil yields, characteristics: Journey to Forever

Cheers
Danny

[VladTepes]

The best ones are the rainforest-like vegetation that inhabited the earth many millions of years ago.
Even better - nature has done all the work for you now.

They just pump it out of the ground these days !

[waynep]

"Jatropha" or something was the one mentioned on New Inventors.

[mcrover]

The best ones are the rainforest-like vegetation that inhabited the earth many millions of years ago.
Even better - nature has done all the work for you now.

They just pump it out of the ground these days !

I had a pamphlet on the smoko room table today from the local Bio diesel supplier and the question was asked where they get the bio oil from.

From that the question turned to what plants puts out the most oil etc etc, the next thing that I personally want to know is if Palm seed oil is the highest producing per hectare, how much water and other consumables would be needed to grow it and what enviroment is best for the palm trees?

I know they grow down here but are there certain species that are prefered for this?

[EchiDna]

Jatropha is great for crappy arid/semi-arid/marginal land...with low or no nutrients - hence it is recommended for communities where the land/water aint that great.

canola (rape seed) is probably still the best per unit area in temperate areas though

palm oil is very very commonly grown in the tropics (huge areas of indonesia and malaysia are now palm oil plantations... whereas 20 years ago they were still rubber trees. A good example of this is the feestock going into Darwin to make biodiesel there - it's all Malaysian palm oil.

this could be a great crop for areas like arnhem land etc where the rainfall is heavy and the dry is not extreme, it's also a pretty low maintenance crop so needs only simple input by the grower... but fires might make it difficult I guess...

[Poida4x4]

When I researched this a while ago, Palm oil was the most productive per hectare, not considering ease of growing/conditions required. But algae by far produced the most per tonne grown...

From memory

[Poida4x4]

When I researched this a while ago, Palm oil was the most productive per hectare, not considering ease of growing/conditions required. But algae by far produced the most per tonne grown...

From memory

[isuzurover]

"Jatropha" or something was the one mentioned on New Inventors.

AFAIK it is still declared a noxious weed in OZ.


Mcrover - as others have mentioned, algae has a very high yield. How large (total volume) are your water hazards, are they interconnected, and do you have any tests of water quality/nutrient loads?