Grow your own diesel? What the..

[ponyboy]

At first I thought this was an April fools joke. But it's not.
You can grow a tree that produces about 40 liters of diesel a year.
(if you live in a rain forest I think)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/the_diesel_tree_grow_your_own_oil.php

[hemlock77]

Now if can just find that elusive budwieser tree, I'll be all set;)

[greenthumb]

They sent a sample to Mobil for testing???

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Copaifera_langsdorfii.html

[rreidnauer]

It's not a whole lot of fuel, but by the simple fact it requires no refining or processing, makes it an extremely efficient energy source.

[ponyboy]

I don't think it would work on an industrial scale. But if you had a few acres of
these on your own property you wouldn't have to spend $4.00 a gallon at the pump
or have to find a supply of used veggie oil to make your own biodiesel.

Hummm... How many gallons of oil does it take to heat a house?

If you found a beer tree would you have to water it from an Artesian well... or
is that just in Olympia. :-)

[adubar]

I've read that a few companies in North America and Europe have been refining this type of product. Several US and European Universities are devoting research to it as well (even Boeing and the Big 3 Auto Manufactureers have time and money going towards research).

I would assume it is the very thing the "home brewer" should be looking into before the big energy corparations dominate the market and science. Most of us do not have acres to devote to terrestrial crop--but, a few big vats in the basement, that's another matter.... The science behind it seems approachable for the common man.

-A

[ponyboy]

Alot of people are studying biodiesel from algae but I don't think anyone is
making anything on an industrial scale yet.

Here's a nice biodiesel forum. It has a section on algae.
http://www.biodieselnow.com/forums/default.aspx

[Klapton]

I saw a cool experiment on TV recently. They took some of the CO2 from a natural gas power plant in the Southwest somewhere, and bubbled it up through some glass tubes full of water and algae. The algae sequestered (sp?) the CO2, and they can use the gloop for biofuels, etc. It looked pretty neat.

Then they explained that to capture all the CO2 from that plant, they'd have to have like 20 square miles of these algae thingies, lol.

I tried to find something with pictures, to no avail. But here's an article about it:

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/10/vertigro_algae_.html

Here's a company doing it: http://www.greenfuelonline.com/index.html

Found a video: http://www.valcent.net/i/misc/Vertigro/index.html

Here it is! This looks like the thingy I saw on TV: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15287313/