Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Bharat Renewables $438 milion, 10-refinery jatropha biodiesel project in India

In India, Bharat Renewable Energy announced that it will invest $438 million in a biodiesel project in Uttar Pradesh. Bharat Petroleum said it has set up a joint venture with Nandan Biomatrix and Shapoorji Pallonji that would construct 10 refineries and 200 jatropha oil extraction units in Kanpur, Jhansi, Laltpur, Chitrakoot and Sultanpur. The project would create a 270 Mgy of biodiesel capacity. The company also said it was investigating comparable projects in other states.

Source: Biofuels Digest


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Sunday, February 1, 2009

Jatropha The Next Big Biofuel

President Barack Obama's green-energy rhetoric is on the level, this should be the year the U.S. gets clued in to what much of the rest of the world is already betting: that jatropha, like other nonfood sources such as algae, will revive a biofuels movement battered of late by charges that it diverts too many crops from too many mouths. India has set aside 100 million acres for jatropha and expects the oil to account for 20% of its diesel consumption by 2011. Australia, China, Brazil and Kenya have also embraced it. In December, a Boeing 747 was successfully test-flown by Air New Zealand using a 50-50 blend of jatropha and aviation fuel.

"This is a superior biodiesel," says Roy Beckford, a University of Florida researcher and expert on sustainable farm development. He has been studying different varieties of jatropha and in February plans to publish his findings that trees like those the Daltons are growing (since 2006 they've planted 900,000 near Fort Myers) thrive so well in Florida that they may yield up to eight times as much oil as they do in places like India and Africa. That translates into as much as 1,600 gal. of diesel fuel per acre per year, vs. 200 gal. for stocks that grow in the wild.

Full Article from Source


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