plant a couple of diesel trees?

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by ppp, Mar 25, 2008.

  1. ppp

    ppp Junior Member

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    Has anyone picked up on this in the news today?

    https://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Far ... 95812.html
    Some farmer is cultivating a tree which supposedly can supply 25L of "diesel" per mature tree.. they only grow north of Rockhampton though :-(
    He is claiming that 12 000L can be produced on 1 hectare per year. This seem too good to be true, but even a quarter of that production would seem worth-while...?

    Does this have the potential to make farmers / permaculturalists more self-sustainable, cutting big oil out of the equation?

    I have included the text below incase the link goes down:

    Farmer planning diesel tree biofuel

    They say that money doesn't grow on trees, but a Queensland farmer believes fuel does.
    Mike Jubow, a nursery wholesaler from Mackay, has begun importing seed from Brazil to plant diesel trees.
    The tropical trees, which have the botanic name copaifera langsdorfii, produce a biofuel that can be tapped, filtered and used to power machinery such as tractors.
    It is estimated a one hectare plantation could produce 12,000 litres of fuel a year - enough to make a small farm fuel self-sufficient.
    Mr Jubow, who operates the Nunyara Wholesale Forestry Nursery and has been in the industry for 14 years, said he had heard about the trees from a colleague attending a forestry conference.
    "I pricked my ears and thought 'This guy is having a go at me' but when I came home I got onto the net and typed in diesel tree and there it was," Mr Jubow said.
    "I thought 'I've got to get seeds for this thing' and it's taken me three years to track them down."
    He sourced the seed from Brazil and says the first seedlings would be available in late January.
    The recommended method of growing them is to plant 1,000 trees on a hectare of land, preferably in a tropical area, then test them for their vigour, growth and yield about three years later, which ordinarily would lead to culling about half of them.
    About four to six years later they would be measured again before culling them down to between 250 and 350 of the best trees, which would be inter-bred and harvested for seed.
    Mr Jubow said a large mature tree would yield about 40 litres of diesel a year, which equated to about 12,000 litres per hectare of trees.
    "It becomes astonishingly viable for a farmer to have a piece of his most productive land to get the tree up and running and then he can be independent from the fuel companies for the rest of his life," he said.
    They are known to produce fuel for 70 years.
    While the fuel cannot be stored for more than a few months it can be tapped.
    But even if it is left too long, it thickens into copaiba oil, which is used in alternative medicines and fetches around $100 a litre in the United States.
    And at the end of the tree's life, it can be milled to produce a light brown timber favoured by cabinet makers.
    "There's nothing wasted on the tree," Mr Jubow said.
     
  2. stevieray

    stevieray Junior Member

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