Is It the End or Just the Beginning for Jatropha?

July 25, 2017

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... In Botswana, jatropha’s adventures are just beginning according to the Ministry of Minerals Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security’s advisor, Freddie Motlhatlhedi. He was referring to a joint research project done by Botswana and Japan that shows quite a bit of promise for commercial production of jatropha for biodiesel. The joint project was initially created in 2011 to scope out which types of indigenous plants had the highest levels of natural oils and performed the best for biofuel production.

The report estimates Botswana alone can produce 450 liters per hectare (almost 2.5 acres) and can get a decent price of around $1,000 per ton. The government plans on using the research to help increase small and medium scale jatropha plantations to increase biofuel production for the country and work on breeding of high yield, stress tolerant varieties. Their hope is that the jatropha will help the country’s farming sector economically either by selling the jatropha they grow to processors, or by using the oil on their own farms and homes as fuel. The government also plans to blend it and conduct on-road vehicles testing and evaluate its socio-economic and environmental impacts.

Considering jatropha seeds can have up to 40% oil, grow year round, are drought tolerant, can live in poor soil, and some high yielding varieties produce over 700 seeds, jatropha caught the attention of many investors, biofuel producers and countries, not just Botswana.

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Good news comes from Nigeria where oil trading company Taleveras Group teamed up with the Global Green Development Group to establish jatropha production throughout West Africa with an eye on processing the oil at a biorefinery in Mississippi, as reported in June in Biofuels Digest. The company is scoping out 15,000 ha in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa and Ethiopia for the 70 million gallon per year project that is expected to cost up to $600 million. It plans for the project to be online in the next three years.

As reported in Biofuels Digest in March, Zimbabwe is looking to implement a 2% biodiesel blend by year’s end using fuel produced from jatropha.

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Some more good news for jatropha comes from Egypt. As reported in Biofuels Digest in May, following three years of R&D, researchers from the National Research Center’s Department of Chemical Engineering developed aviation fuel using a combination of used cooking oil and jatropha oil, though algal oils and palm oil have also been trialed in the mix. Using sewer water to irrigate the jatropha trees helps to keep the production costs down, which researchers said aren’t very high. The country set a mandate that 3% to 5% of aviation fuel should be biofuels by 2020.

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As reported in Biofuels Digest this February, in Rwanda, after four years of unsuccessful attempts to get it off the ground, the government is abandoning its $35 million biodiesel project. Poor science behind the feasibility studies that expected jatropha to be a key feedstock but later was determined to not be viable in the country’s climate is blamed for the project’s failure.

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Another one bites the dust in India. As reported in the Biofuels Digest in March, the Indian cabinet approved the closure of the two joint ventures set up in 2008 and 2009 with HPCL and Indian Oil with the Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency to develop and commercialize jatropha-based biodiesel.

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Mozambique gave up on jatropha too. As reported in the Biofuels Digest in April, the Mozambique government said forget about jatropha as a potential biodiesel feedstock as the economic viability of the program dwindled in line with falling fossil fuel prices. READ MORE