Another major Jatropha project suffers setback

Europe’s second largest oil company BP has exited from Jatropha biofuel project with D1 Oils, a British biofuel technology company. According to media reports, BP exited the Jatropha project to focus on ethanol production in Brazil and the US.

As a result of BP’s withdrawal, D1 has acquired BP’s 50 per cent stake in D1-BP Fuel Crops Ltd, a joint venture which was set up in June 2007 to develop Jatropha. The deal ended as the two companies failed to get a third investor for the project. BP and D1 had planned to plant one million hectares of Jatropha over four years.

This is the second time D1’s plans to produce bio fuel from  Jatropha have come to naught. An ambitious Jatropha project in India involving 22 agribusiness colleges failed to yield projected targets. D1 Oils planted about 257,000 hectares of Jatropha, mainly in India but it was unsuccessful and the company was compelled to move far too early.

Pakistan salt flats ideal growing land for biofuel algae  

According to experts, Pakistan’s 27 million acres of saline land provide the ideal conditions to cultivate algae for biofuel production. Various organisations are already planning to produce biofuel from the jatropha and castor oil cultivated in Pakistan, but the use of algae as a feedstock would have numerous benefits for the country. In addition to the greater potential yield of oil from algae, its ability to grow in saline soil would mean that there would be no potential competition with food crops. Indeed, since algae draws salt from the soil, the amount of land suitable for food cultivation could even be increased if saline groundwater from elsewhere were used to feed the algae.

An International Conference on Algal Biomass, Resources and Utilisation (ICABRU- 2009) was held  in Chennai recently by the Krishnamurthy Institute of Algology and the Department of Plant Biology and Plant Biotechnology of Stella Maris College. According to a press release, 205 participants shared their expertise and more than 150 research papers and over 40 posters were presented covering a broad spectrum of topics from the cultivation of algae to bio fuel.

Chinese Algae Farming   ---

China is making huge investments in algae bioreactors to help sequestrate the carbon coming out from its coal fired power plants. China’s renewable energy investment company ENN is involved in developing technology to pass carbon dioxide through algae to help reduce China’s greenhouse gas emissions from their coal power plants that currently provide 70 per cent of the electrical energy needs of the country.

ENN already has an algae demonstration facility. ENN scientists are currently testing different types of micro-algae to identify the  one most  effective in cleaning up CO2 wastes from burning coal. ENN’s Carbon Capture process involves extracting carbon dioxide from thermal power plants using solar and wind power and feeding it the algae thus encouraging their exponential growth. The algae can be harvested daily and converted into biofuels, fertilisers or animal feed. This not only helps reduce global greenhouse gases but also provides an alternative to fossil fuel oil.

The efforts are aimed at mitigating greenhouse gases coming from China’s increasing energy demand. China’s greenhouse gas emissions have been growing at around 3.5% a year and it has   become the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. China plans 600GW of extra generating capacity by 2030 which  means an estimated 1200 coal-fired power plants.