Re: vegetable oil for running diesel engines

[Keith Addison <keith@journeytoforever.org>]

>Dear Peter,
>Everybody is talking about substituting diesel with vegetable oils but the
>quantities available would not suffice to satisfy the demand. I confirm your
>statement about the availability of tree oils in the tropics, but the ones
>listed by you, e.g. coconut and oil palm, are grown on plantations, and
>therefore costly.  There are atleast 50 oilseed bearing trees in India, that
>grow wild. Their seed is available free of cost to anybody, who has the time
>and patience to collect them in the forest. They produce non-edible oil,
>which costs only half as much as the edible one, because the tree seeds are
>available free of cost. The non-edible oils are used mainly for soap making.
>For increasing the supply of these oils, these trees would have to be grown
>on a plantation scale, and then they too would become as costly as the
>edible oils because of the agronomic inputs that the farmer has to use. I
>feel that producer gas or biogas would be better options than vegetable oil
>for running diesel engines. Both of these fuels can be produced from
>agricultural waste, which is readily available at a negligible cost.
>Dr.A.D.Karve
>President,
>Appropriate Rural Technology Institute
>Pune, India

Hello Dr Karve

We often encounter this argument at the Biofuel list, not only about 
India, but about just about any country you care to name, or the 
world at large.

There are several points to be made. One, especially for the Western 
countries, is that mere substitution of fossil fuels with biofuels is 
not the answer, or perhaps not even the right question: maximum 
reductions in energy use are also required, along with maximumum 
increases in energy-use efficiency, which tends to change the picture 
more than somewhat. Something else we all feel is essential is 
decentralization of supply. Not only does it not make sense to use 
energy to transport energy long distances to localities where many 
types of local resources lie unused, but in many instances local 
supply can be much more efficient, exploiting many niches and local 
opportunities that simply don't begin to figure in a centralised 
supply scenario.

Food supply provides a good comparison, though different to the one 
you make, of having to "industrialize" biofuel crop production to 
make the fuel available. Consider instead the situation with city 
farms - city farms produce at least 15% of the world's food supply 
(food that is, the stuff people eat, not just agricultural 
commodities to be traded), and do it without using any farmland at 
all, nor agronomic inputs. The other spin-off benefits for the local 
people involved, both producers and consumers, are considerable, and 
it also accomplishes a great deal of waste recycling that many of 
these cities would not otherwise be able to accomplish, probably 
preventing great increases in disease and loss of water quality.

This scenario could quite easily be adapted to produce large amounts 
of biofuels locally for local use. It should not be limited to just 
one fuel - vegetable oil for diesels in this case. Ethanol can quite 
easily be produced locally from food wastes and garbage, leaving a 
residue which can be used to feed livestock (lots of pigs, ducks and 
chickens in city backyards), or as fertilizer for crops when 
composted, and once again optimizing waste recycling. Biogas is of 
course a further option. These fuels should be complementary, not 
competitors. So should all the various crops and plants with fuel 
capabilities, rather than just focusing on one or two, the way a 
centralized industry - or government! - will do. And of course waste 
recycling is only ever really optimized at the local level anyway.

The organic farms now so popular in the western countries, and in 
India, mostly use technology developed in India by Sir Albert Howard 
in the 1920s and 30s, much of which he learnt from the Indian 
peasants (his professors, as he called them). These are mixed, 
integrated farms with very low or zero agronomic inputs from outside 
the farm. Yields are the same or higher, costs lower, externalized 
costs zero. Much home-grown and home-produced fuel can be produced on 
such a farm via an ever-changing series of by-products and waste 
products, enough to power the farm and its vehicles, and more 
besides. A local cooperative of such farms can provide enough for a 
small local market, partly, largely, or completely from by-products, 
without exclusive use of much or any farmland. I've just been 
discussing these possibilities with two farmers, one in the US and 
one in Botswana. Farmers often ask these questions, many are doing it.

There are so many opportunities for this kind of approach. If a small 
town planted jatropha or other oilseed-brearing trees along its 
sidewalks, in its open areas, along its sidings and so on, instead of 
decorative trees or whatever, they'd be able to provide a lot of 
good, clean fuel for local public transport and utility vehicles, as 
well as local employment and other spin-off benefits for the local 
economy.

I think India is particularly well suited to such approaches.

Again, producing gas or biogas from agricultural waste as you suggest 
is one option, but I don't see this as an either-or choice. There's 
room for everything, depending on the local situation, and the "best" 
answer will very often be a combination of approaches. I do rather 
argue against the whole concept of agricultural "waste" however. Is 
there really such a thing? - or of there is, should there continue to 
be? It speaks too loudly of soil deprivation, of neglectful and 
unsustainable production methods. At least with biogas there is a 
resultant sludge which, though troublesome, can be returned to the 
soil with benefit. The on-farm schemes I've suggested above of course 
include such measures. In cities, wastes are diverted to use, 
therefore are not wastes but raw materials, by-products are utilized 
as stockfeed or fertilizer, and livestock wastes as fertilizer - 
that's sustainable.

Best wishes

Keith Addison
Journey to Forever
Handmade Projects
Osaka, Japan
http://journeytoforever.org/

 


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