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The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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Posted by georgeiii (My Page) on Sat, Oct 31, 09 at 2:01
How would you like to grow your own fuel. Fuel that's competely smokeless. Fuel that can run your car with little modification. Cook your food and heat your home. The root picture is an Avocado. The lower plant is Barbados nut. Using common bonsai methods along with a Nanny pod you could be harvesting fuel in three years.
GSD
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| Huh? This is all the information? Interesting I guess..... |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| georgeiii, I'll bite what are you talking about. PLease explain. Jack |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| My closest guess is that this is a nut plant that has very few cultural requirements and produces high fat nuts? You can then harvest those nuts for oil. But that is not 'smokeless'. As a matter of fact I'm not aware of any bio-fuel that is 'smokeless'. I guess if you don't want to count the other gasses that are by products of burning bio-fuel sources you could call them smokeless if they don't look like burning tires. Seems a little disingenuous to me though. Nuclear and electrical are smokeless energy sources, but I doubt you'll be directly harvesting those from plant sources. ;) Please do tell more. I am interested...seriously. |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| Haahhaa ahh people. disingenuous? If you don't smell it, can't see it and it doesn't leave a residue that's smokeless to me. And to bring up nuclear...how much interest does that show? Not to mention what questions have you asked. This plant is already in major production all over the world. The US growers have missed the starting gun on this one and this is a method by which we can catch up. There's no need to guess anything. The information on the plants is right on the web for anyone to read. Even how to make the Nanny Pods are on the web. So what's the questions |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| Ok, perhaps I can translate for you then since your reply sums up as 'go search the web'. You could have done the same to inform others what you are talking about. You are talking about the cultivation of Jatropha curcas using self-watering containers for a bio-fuels crop. Some characteristics that makes this a good bio-fuels crop choice: - This plant is a non-food crop. So, it does not have the negative economic side effects of using a food crop for fuel. - Easy to grow with little cultural requirements. Using my favorite bio-fuels site: Journey To Forever I can see it has oil yields of approximately 202gal/acre, which is good. You have to shell the nuts and extract the oil for any fuel oil use. If you want to use the oil in an unmodified diesel vehicle, the oil has to be processed into bio-diesel (glycerin is a by product) with some methanol and sodium hydroxide. Overall this looks like a good bio-fuels crop, but it by no means would be able to satisfy the average energy needs of most of North America. Certainly not with a few plants in containers. Growing the plant is the easy part extracting the energy into any usable form is a good deal of effort. This sort of thing is probably best handled on a massive scale of a large commercial farm. For a small operation, it is probably better to use switch grass as an energy source. Thanks for bringing up this plant. |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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| Forgive me if I feel your being a little short sighted here. Let's first take the employment Congress by the skin of their teeth passed an extention of unemployment insurance. Enough to get the MILLIONS of unemployed thru winter. But then what? Anybody got an idea what jobs they can train for? I mean if you pay some one to train doesn't do any good if they can find a job in that field. More and more people are training in fields that they need less and less people to work in. Worse yet what happens when millions of people hit the roads looking for work? Didn't you watch the Grapes of Wraith. Well here's something that can employ millions of people in their local area using the same failed infrasture building, plants and those millions of concrete, ashalt parking lots just growing weeds now. The rain run off from those same structures can be caught and stored. And you don't need a tractor or shovel for any of it. You don't need pipes or electric. It'd be nice but you don't need it. Not to mention a near flat learning curve. And I haven't even talked about the plant or the recycling advanages. By next year, NEXT YEAR I say every school could be growing their own vegetable in the school parking lots. We have schools here that have acrages of grass that's the only thing growing there year round. Schools could be growing food for their lunches and for the cities at large. I live in a town that has a large railroad yard. This system could easily be adapted to grow on trains that move across the country to grow, store and deliver their goods. How that going to look on a young or old persons resume. But where can they find that kind of information....o, wait it's right here. |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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Thanks for providing some information, Gurgler!
Much appreciated. Josh |
RE: The Dark Garden: Bio-fuel
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The oil is very easy to get from the seed.
Grows very well in small spaces, rock crevices and such even sets seed and grows in it's own leaf litter
The crushed cakes of seeds are high in nutrients
Needs very little moisture to grow, will shed leaves and survive during drought
Will grow in many types of soil and cultural conditions.
Including low light and low times of light
Seeds are in bunches like large grapes and easy to pick
When cut produces 4 new branch points, new branches can be cut every 2 months to produce another 4 branch points each.
First seed can be harvest between 2nd and third year. Then harvested every 6 months.
Out of all the seed bearing trees this has the most potenal.
Did I mention that it will live for years and most likely you can pass them down to your children |
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