BioDieselNow - Renewable biodiesel fuel

Hi guys i am very new to this site and i am very new in this research (jatropha for bio-diesel) i need to find out how long it takes from the date of seed plantation to harvest your first yield for bioD production and quantities per hacter/ltr

if you're planting seeds. count on 2 years for first fruits to harvest. 3 years for a decent crop.

if you start from saplings, 18 months or less to first harvest, better harvest per year afterwards.

my suggestion, buy saplings instead of seeds, by year 3 you'll be selling both saplings for others who get interested, and seed for biodiesel.

Hi ccheek,  thanks for the info!

Quick question:  what kind of yields are you getting in your area?   (ie..lbs per acre, etc).

I've got about 25-30 acres in central TX (New Braunfels area), that we have used for years to just grow coastal hay for our cattle.  But it mostly lies dormant now, and I'd like to consider a biofuel crop for my own oil consumption.

Many thanks in advance for any info or advice you could provide.

SD

i dont have yields yet. Im still looking for land. i made an offer on 11 acres but havent heard back yet.

you're in New Braunfels? does the temp drop below freezing? if so? for how long? hours? days? weeks? from everything I've read, sub freezing temps for anything over say 4 hours and your plants are dead. so Jatropha Curcas wouldnt be the crop for you. I am conversing with Dr. Travis (TAMU) and they too are wondering just how far north JC can be planted and expected to survive. One of my brothers has acreage just north of Huntsville, I was considering sending him a sapling or two just to see how long they lived. But the more I think of it, the more I doubt anything north of San Antonio would live long. It could go 10-15 years but the first cold snap that breaks 32F and you'll be playing taps.

Perhaps with more cultivation they can be made more hardy to resist the cold? Im not a horticulturist so I really have no clue. Now, if you find someone to trade land here (corpus christi, aransas pass, ingleside, rockport, even mathis, orange grove, or further south into kenedy county), then I think you could make a huge trial at it and TAMU would go bonkers gathering data and all of that.

Im just appalled at the price of land around here. even out in san patricio county, (all sand). im not paying 10 grand per acre. if you know anyone between corpus and brownsville with land. I personally would bulldoze everything on it and plant JC (providing it was all just brush and mesquite or live oak anyhow, not commercial or residential land)

I also spent part of friday talking (email) with a few professors from TAMU (Texas A&M University) who have most of their experience in Central America. Best estimates are currently 180 gallons per harvest per year. sometimes you can get 2 or 3 harvest per year, but this is planting the trees on 3mX3m spacing. recommended is 2mX2m. I wish I could recall the links but I think most are from India so who knows how much is propaganda? that the average there, with good water is 1000 gallons per acre per harvest. i like to keep my estimates on the low side so Im going to figure 500-1000 gallons per acre per year.

I've just put in a bit on an 11 acre tract, man i hope they accept. I dont have much feedstock to start, and the guy i get JC from only has about 100 more to sell. so if i get the land, I'll be starting off with about 120 saplings, making cuttings and hopefully finish a full year with 1 acre. after that. these things grow so fast I'll have the entire 11 acres covered the second year with NO problem.

3 years from now diesel will be at say 7 or 8 bucks per gallon and i'll be processing 11,000 gallons with almost no labour costs (ya i  plan on working my donkey off)

77,000 per year isnt so bad in the US here, so far.... LOL... I'll still be looking to purchse 19 more acres or so. i think i can handle up to 50 alone.

we'll see.

happy farming all.

I'm in Houston, but our land is outside of New Braunfels.     It's not unusual for it to dip into the 20's at night during January and February.  But other than that it's pretty mild.     For non-freezing, the closer to the coast the better.  You'd think that further south would be better, but I've seen hard freezes in south Texas.    The area here around Houston would be ideal.

I'm working with some folks at Texas Farm Bureau to see what other oil-bearing crops are being grown right now in that hill country area around New Braunfels.

I'm not too familiar with the harvesting of jatropha, having only seen it being done by hand in India, South America, etc.  It looks pretty manual labor intensive.

well, i have a couple of recommendations for you, take with a grain of salt, i dont know how expensive it would be to do any of this.

if the temp dips that low, you'll need to be able to have something like a portable green house to cover as many trees as possible. then maybe some tiny type of heat production. just to keep the temps above freezing.

now i've also seen quite the interest in switchgrass. I've read up on it a little and lost interest pretty fast, I think mostly because its just grow and hack and sell. Im wanting to be a  bit more involved somehow, with the harvest, shelling, pressing, filtering, etc. plus i dont recall the figures on whether you get more oil per acre but i think only 1 or 2 other types of foilage (whether tree, shrub, grass or whatever), nets you more oil.

the JC is (reportedly) about 47% oil. (though I've read white papers saying up to 57%). I think with more research, careful selection of the hardiest and healthiest plants, that can get upwards of 72% oil. at least thats what I'll be shooting for, (and yes i know i've a LOT to learn on how to do such things).

I've thought of the algae thing too. it'd probably be great in corpus, (near the gulf, got a couple of HUGE bays too). i'll have to look into that more though. anyhow, if you do get something going in the houston area, you'll have the market from HE!! to sell to, thats for sure! everyone and their brother will be wanting biodiesel while we sit here and watch the prices keep skyrocketing.

oh yea, you can harvest them just like apple trees too, lay out a net, shake the @#$@ out of it and off to the next one. though I'll be a lot more selective the first few years, only picking the ripe and letting the rest develop further.

Yeah, temperature viability of the crop is an issue.   The ROI for these types of crops don't allow for much attentive maintenance like watering, freeze prevention, etc.   They pretty much have to be hardy and "on their own".

I did look at switchgrass because the harvesting of it is pretty much the same for hay (cutting, baling, etc).  But it's the process of converting it to fuels becomes difficult, ie... gasification for biodiesel, etc.   I'd rather go with a crop that processes like soybeans, jatropha, etc.  That type of process I can do on site.

im learning a lot more about biodiesel these days, I had NO CLUE they turn biodiesel into jet fuel. there are about 5 types, (i think) of jet fuel, add that to how many airlines have sold out, gone bankrupt or simply closed their doors in the past few months. (most of this from my very first issue of biodiesel magazine).

add again now that some airlines are charging you for the FIRST bag, carry on or stowed. plus i just read yesterday some major food production company is raising prices by 20% this year (due to transportation costs i would venture to guess).

whether or not exxon gets to drill in ANWAR or off the Gulf of Mexico more or whatever protected natural resource makes no difference, the price of NOTHING i can think of, in the past 30 years (except for that one guy who invested too heavily into silver) has gone down. and most of it is rising faster than normal.

 there is no big break coming in the price of anything, (forgive me for ranting here), its leading up to a point i hope. LOL

you know who the big 5 are. I think its coming soon that there will be a new big 5, whether the older guys, exxon, mobil, bp, are part of it depends on whether they start getting into alternative energies a LOT faster than they are. sure, 2 billion invested in testing is one thing.

i wish you all could see what i see here every day, enough land to plant over the 2.2 million hectares of JC that India just planted. for the metric impared thats 5.28 million acres, from the video i watched yesterday from the university of florida, they are expecting to be able to gather 620-1000 gallons per acre, you can harvest JC 2 times per year, 3 if you're lucky,

thats 10.5 million gallons of bio diesel per year just in this single area, makes me wonder how much land (whats it called, fallow? lying dormant. not being used for ANYTHING) is in south texas and south florida that could be planted.

I bet enough to start offering china and india biodiesel as a discount price from the ME and force the price per barrel of petroleum to plummet back to 1980's levels.

 DEAR LORD we need to elect some people, starting at the city council levels on up, that have a flippin clue.

$450,000 for a STUDY on expanding the current freeway from 4 to 6 lanes to determine whether it would save you 5 minutes in rush hour?

gimmie a fricken break!

i can tell you for $20 bucks whether it would or not.

/endrant

sorry guys, just had to blow off some steam, its friday, i still dont have land to plant my JC in except for my yard and my supplier is now down to 50 plants left, I found 2 in a local nursury i'll be picking up today.

woot!