[Stoves] Jatropha fruit as fuel? - and possible action
Anand Karve
adkarve at gmail.com
Thu Jan 24 20:05:01 CST 2013
Dear Paul,
I quote you below: "Start with the fuel. And Jon points out the
abundant Jatropha seeds. I add that "abundance" in nature is not the
same as abundant in supply, meaning that it fuel needs to be
collected. So we have the chicken and egg problem of which comes
first."
In this connection I would say that collecting Jatropha seeds from
wild Jatropha plants would certainly be possible if a remunerative
price is offered for the seeds.
I quote here the use of agricultural waste as industrial fuel. India
generates annually 800 million tons of agricultural waste, which has
about 3 times as much energy as the petroleum that we import. For a
long time, the policy makers rejected the idea of using agricultural
waste as fuel, because they said that it would be very difficult to
collect the waste from a large number of small farms scattered all
over the countryside. But now there exist more than 150 enterprises in
our state, which convert agricultural waste into fuel briquettes and
sell them as boiler fuel to our industries. Fuel oil costs US$1.2 per
litre. One can get the same heat from about 3 kg fuel briquettes
costing just half as much. Many restaurants too have started using
these briquettes as cooking fuel. With stoves provided with fans for
the supply of secondary air, you get a blue flame without soot or
smoke. In this case, the fuel briquettes substitute LPG, which costs
US$1.7 per kg. The industry that makes the fuel briquettes offers a
price of US$40 per ton for the dry agricultural waste. Farmers
transport the waste at their own cost, just as they transport their
agricultural produce to the market.
Yours
A.D.Karve
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