The Wild 'Green' Yonder

In July of last year, I wrote about an exciting new source of biofuel, the Jatropha plant (See Full Story). The jatropha is an especially hardy, drought-tolerant plant that produces large quantities of oil that can be refined into a good quality diesel-like biofuel. Further refining can even produce lighter fuels like jet fuel.

Similarly, I reported in December on a form of algae that produces enough oil in its cells to have it extracted as a biofuel (See Full Story). The algae is so efficient that it uses as much or more carbon dioxide in its growth than it does when used as fuel --- making it a net zero carbon footprint product. (That should really make the likes of Al Gore exceptionally happy!)

Now, I can report that these two forms of biofuel are being tested on anairliner. In the good ole' U.S. of A, in the State of Texas, they are testing both jatropha and the green algae on a Boeing 737 (See Full Story). Previously, in New Zealand, jatropha was tested with a 50 percent blend of regular jet fuel on a Boeing 747. In both cases, the tests are being conducted with Boeing as a joint venture.

Jatropha can be an important crop in this country without infringing on our food production as in the case of ethanol and corn. Jatropha can be grown in what was previously unusable or barely usable scrub lands throughout this country. Further, massive water supplies aren't needed. On the other hand, the algae production can be co-located with coal power plants so that the carbon dioxide output of the coal (of natural gas plants) can be used to pump through tubs of algae in order to generate growth. Eventually, algae power plants could be somewhat self-sustaining with the algae based power production facilities working in concert with co-located algae growth and harvesting facilities.

I just thought you'd like to know.

Image by Simon Lieschke's photostream on Flickr with Creative Commons Licensing of remix/adapt/modify permission (Click to View Other Works). Specifically modified by Cranky George for this blog entry