[Stoves] Jatropha and its future

Anand Karve adkarve at gmail.com
Thu Aug 11 22:44:23 CDT 2011


Dear Ron and stovers,
there is a good market for Jatropha seeds in India. Itinerant
merchants go from village to village and buy Jatropha seed from
anybody who wants to sell it. Since this commodity has a value, the
seed of Jatropha planted as hedges along the boundary of one's
property usually gets harvested by somebody else, The property owner
may harvest only the seed on the internal side of the hedge. Jatropha
was planted as a hedge plant long before there was any talk of
biodiesel. If one plucks a leaf of Jatropha, latex oozes out of the
wound. This latex foams like soap. In some rural households there are
a few Jatropha plants right next to the latrine. After defacation, the
user of the latrine plucks a couple of leaves, crushes them in his
hands and uses them to wash his hands. Nobody really bothered to find
out what was done with Jatropha oil. Most of the non-edible oils in
India, like Pongamia, Callophyllum, neem, etc. are bitter and brown in
colour. Jatropha oil is colourless and it does not have any strong
taste or smell. Even the fatty acid composition is similar to most of
our edible oils. Therefore I am quite sure that it is used, even
today, as an adulterant in edible oil. At its present price, nobody
would use whole Jatropha seed as stove fuel in India.
Yours
A.D.Karve
On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 7:33 AM,  <rongretlarson at comcast.net> wrote:
> Jan and list:
>
>   Thanks for the detailed responses.  I hope you can continue to supply good
> photos like those we have seen.   Very helpful in figuring out how to make
> pyrolysis stoves move faster.   I think the central secondary air post has a
> lot of promise.  I believe a combination pot and stove combination could
> give high efficiency with where you are heading, since you already have a
> convective shield geometry.  As said earlier,  I think a control over
> primary air is important and will prove valuable in more than the shutdown
> operation
>    The use of the full jatropha seed seems to be a good solution where rural
> folk need propety boundaries.  In reading about jatropha, I see there are
> big gains to be made in seed production through proper pruning  (same as for
> almonds) - so your stove system could have a bigger supply than now being
> planned for and can maybe get to more urban folk as well.
>
> Ron




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