Energy and Environmental Technology: topic
This is a public forum
Fruits and Biofuel ?
Rachel Paiva
Monday, 28 January 2008 11:16 UTC
Hello!!
I´m doing a research about Biofuels made of fruit or vegetables or any product related to these plants.
I would like to know if there are any articles or any other research going on in this subject ? Does anyone know how to find this kind of information??
thanks a lot!!
Rachel (Brazil)
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
Hi Rachel -
We had a feature on biofuels in Nature Reports Climate Change a few weeks ago. It didn’t focus on fruits and vegetables per se – food crops in general were mentioned – but some of the cited references might have the info you’re looking for.http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0801/full/climate.2007.71.html
Hope this helps,
Anna -
oh, I should add that ‘we’ in this case is largely Kurt Kleiner, who wrote the piece and compiled the spiffy bibliography. :)
-
I don’t know about fruits and biofuels but have read a few research articles examining specific crops and biofuels.
I know there has been research published on the Pongamia pinnata plant. I don’t know if the crude oil is extracted from the plant itself or from its fruit. I think the article was in Bioresource Technology a few years back. But I think a few articles have been published on this plant.
Also there was an article about genetic engineering of maize to improve bioethanol production.
If I remember or come across anything else, I’ll post again.
-
H guys…Thanks a lot for your attention
-
Hello Rachel, thank you for posting.
This may not lead you to specific articles yet, but have you looked into the plant Jatropha curcas, which grows well in equitorial regions? The seeds are inedible, and so are not necessarily competitive for food production. They also can be used to produce jatropha oil, which can make a high-quality biodiesel fuel (better than soya).
-
Wouter Achten is in the EE&T Group and knows about Jatropha.
Can you comment please Wouter?
-
Hi, (sorry for the late response)
There is a lot of research going on on Biofuels (Bioethanol, Biodiesel and pure plant oil) and many plants/crops are used… (Suger cane, maize (corn), soya, rape seed, oil palm, Pongamia, Jatropha curcas, ...).
Research is ongoing on possible feedstocks (crops), production, use, yield improvement, genetic selection, environmental impacts, global warming reduction potential, energy balance, engine performance, economy, competition with food production, socio-economic impact assessment…
In journals like Biomass & Bioenergy, Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining, Journal of Cleaner Production, Bioresource Technology, Renewable Energy you surely can find interesting papers…
Furthermore you can find interesting and reliable research reports on the internet… I think reports of institutes like IFEU and ICRAF are publicly accessible.
Hopefully this helps you a bit further. If you have other questions… I’ll try to keep a better track on this topic.
Cheers,
Wouter
-
Sepasal may be a useful resource. It is an online database holding information of economic plants for arid and semi-arid lands, which are often said to be potential growing areas for biofuel crops.
If you run a query in Sepasal using the search terms USE - FUELS – Petroleum Substitutes, Alcohols etc., eight taxa are returned: Rhus glabra, Rhus ovata, Tessaria absinthioides, Cucurbita foetidissima, Jatropha curcas, Pongamia pinnata, Ximenia caffra and Echinochloa stagnina. If you feed these into Web of Science, you will certainly find interesting information. -
Jatropha curcas, common name, Physic nut, also known or related to castor oil is used extensively in India and is one of the highest yielding high quality oils for biodiesel production. I believe it was banned from growth in the US in the Early 70’s and is also one of the roots of ricin gas production ( maybe thats why they banned its growth). Plants globally fall into relation to this plant, and I too am wondering about it. As research goes the core of it can often lie in the root of the naming, ie is it Latin, Greek , or other languages of antiquity capable of demonstrating and evaluating a historical interpretation and recognition based on perceived traits. I have a local tree in the arboretum related to the Castor plant I think, but its a tree under a different root name?. I wish I had the time or resources to identify it, but there seems to be a need for a translator to bridge the avenues established by previous research done under different languages. I’d like to share more on the physic nut, I’ll try to find you some related research.
-
“The genus name Jatropha derives from the Greek iatrós (doctor) and trophé (food)which implies medicinal uses. … Numerous vernacular names exist for the physic nut: physic nut, purging nut(English); pourghère, pignon d’Inde (French); purgeernoot (Dutch); Purgiernuß, Brechnuß
(German); purgueira (Portuguese)...” (quote from Heller, 1996, p. 9). More information on the medicinal use can be found on page 18 of Heller (1996)I guess the best public available overview of information on J. curcas currently is a WUR-PRI report – Claims and facts on Jatropha curcas L.
Results
-