The Diesel Tree: Grow Your Own Oil
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 04. 2.08
You’d have thought that with 20,000 stories in our archives we might’ve at least mentioned this in passing. But it seems not. Australian farmers in the wet tropical region of North Queensland have bought over 20,000 of these so-called diesel trees. The intention is that in 15 or so years they’ll have their very own oil mine growing on their farmland.
Because, the Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, to use its botanical name, can be tapped not unlike a rubber tree, but instead of yielding rubbery latex it gives up a natural diesel. According to the nurseryman selling the trees, one hectare will yield about 12,000 litres annually. *
Once filtered—no complex refining required, apparently—it can be placed straight into a diesel tractor or truck. We read that a single Copaifera langsdorfii will continue to produce fuel oil for an impressive 70 years, with the only negative being that its particular form of diesel needs to be used within three months of extraction.
Oddly this is not news. The Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University reports that it was first reported to the western world as far back as 1625. They observe reports from 1979 saying "Natives ... drill a 5 centimeter hole into the 1-meter thick trunk and put a bung into it. Every 6 months or so, they remove the bung and collect 15 to 20 liters of the hydrocarbon.” The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation noted in a paper at the Eleventh world forestry congress back in 1997 on the topic of tree oil for cars that “... the potential of other alternatives such as the Amazon Copaifera langsdorfii need to be investigated.”
Copaifera langsdorfii can grow trunks 30 metres tall and store the oil in their unusual capilliary structure. The above image is a transverse section of the tree’s cells.
* I used to convert metric measurements in American imperial but when I discovered that the only countries that have failed to embrace metric are the USA, Liberia and Burma I stopped. However Purdue University record that “An acre of 100 mature trees might thus be able to produce 25 barrels of fuel per year.”
Via ABC and Sydney Morning Herald
Image found at: ‘Richter, H.G., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2000 onwards. Commercial timbers: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. In English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Version: 16th April 2006. http://delta-intkey.com’
wow, at first I thought this was another april fool's joke one day late, but apparently not. Still seems like it wouldn't generate as much energy per acre as an algae biodiesel farm might. The fact that it produces this diesel for 70s is awesome though.
ps- imperial units are important because they relate to the proportions of the human body. architecture, furniture, etc. should all use imperial for this reason. As far as the use of acres and miles go, i couldn't care less.
Here's some interesting info from the "Handbook of Energy Crops"
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Copaifera_langsdorfii.html
[disclaimer: I am in no way associated with this webpage...]
Okay, I'll be the one to say it...
"So money really does grow on trees!"
Think of the saving if you buy a diesel car and have a couple of these in your backyard!
Even though it's April 2nd, I still find this hard to believe. Not just for the fuel production, but for the fact that we don't need to harvest the plant, i.e. kill it, to get what we want from it, but simply to encourage it's long term growth. The tapping of the fuel will also be vastly more eco-friendly than traditional oil drilling.
Further, this will not only provide fuel, but, being plants, they will soak up CO2, so helping the environment on two fronts.
I've never heard of anything like this before. Excellent.
Steve N Lee
author of eco-blog http://www.steve-n-lee.com
Well, at least it helps to close the loop. The hydrocarbons you'd be extracting from the tree would be released as carbon into the air, and the growth of the tree would provide a net reabsorption of a similar amount of carbon. Once the tree dies (i.e. stops growing and absorbing carbon), it also stops producing the hydrocarbons.
However, one would still have to be wary of greedy profiteers overdoing this with millions of acres of non-native monoculture.
So if you had your own tree, you'd get 40 litres a year.
At 50 mpg that's around 200 miles a year.
Sounds pretty sustainable to me :)
Actually, 500 miles per year, per tree.
Unfortunately I drive about 15000 miles per year; I could use 30 trees.
Assuming dia. of canopy is equal to height of 95 ft, I could fit my trees on a 1/4 acre.
@MY how do you get 200 miles? 40 liters = 10.5 gallons. x 50mpg = 525 miles per year.
Just goes to show how often metric conversion gets screwed up. Imperial system is a dinosaur based on archaeic and arbitrary measurements. Metric is SO much simpler, but Umerkans are simply to proud, ignorant, and intellectually lazy to adopt it (I say this as an American scientist).
Though I do find this intriguing, it has limited real-world applications (wet & tropical growing region). The cynic in me thinks of the massive deforestation of tropical rainforests for palm oil plantations (seen Borneo/Kalimantan first hand). Maybe just one of hundreds applicable solutions, but ONLY IF resource conservation is drastically improved on a global scale.
25 barrels per acre may seem a lot but the US alone consumers more than 10 million barrels a day. So if we've got 146 million acres to spare, we could power the US. About 349 million acres in the U.S. are currently planted for crops
You also have to take into consideration the extraction. It's not just 1 oil well gushing out at a rate of knots. Any cost saving made at refining would be dwarfed by uneconomical use of applicators slowly collecting the drips.
I just don't see its relevance personally when solar and wind are making such strides in technology.
Is any group working on selectively breeding or genetically engineering this plant to increase its growth range or yield?
Err..yes! Good question! I don't know how I got that either.
I'm a UK mech engineer too so double shame :(
Anyway, that's even better! Sounds like an equitable amount for everyone for truly sustainable energy use.
This proud, lazy American jumps to defend the Imperial system! After all, it's base 12 or 16 (I believe from the Sumerian?), and doing base 12 and 16 arithmetic in your head is pretty intellectually athletic. What's LAZY is reconfiguring everything to divide by 10!
Test your mathematic sklls against an English bookie sometime. They still think in fractions. An ARCHAIC system can build mental rigor!
Why does everyone forget the UK doesn't use metric?
________
Writer's note: A look at packaging measurements in any British retail outlet will indicate that the UK does indeed use metric (mostly in weights and volumes). Certainly hasn't embraced it wholeheartely, this is true.
However, in general, the only US products labelled in metric tend to be those also exported.
@greennovator - The metric system isn't adopted in the us not because americans are lazy or stupid... it's because of the Government not having a plan to do it - and dating back when it was started the resources involved to just switch are astronomical
NO, the solution can't be in finding resources but to use less of them, and pretend that we find the magical tree that will provide us with fuel for an ever growing economy of consumption, is well, almost as blind and silly as to not to care about the problem at all.
We all know the solution is in using less, much less energy. So much less that our current economic system wouldn't survive the change. But it's the system or our future as a species. But that's too big for this species, I know.
So what? Are we going to grow these trees replacing the rainforests so we can fill up the tank, and then drive to go shopping plastic wrapped superfluous items we'll forget we even got the next day?
And I suppose you believe you'll feel you did nature a favor by finding a way to produce and consume always more and more... that's very green!
wow... imagine having a backyard full of these and a diesel hybrid... XD lol...
Re metric/imperial, in the UK, we're used to both systems! Service stations sell petrol (gas!) in litres / pubs sell beer in pints. Building sites measure distances in metres / step onto the road and it's miles!
'25 barrels a year' sounds impressive' but what does that mean in either system - litres or gallons?
Actually, I'm looking forward to the day where we will actually be using ethane gas or any other natural (meaning: non-harmful to the environment) for power.
It's 2008. Why are we still looking at diesel?
From 1978-2004, 203,882 square miles was deforested in Brazil. The US needs about 20 million barrels /day of petroleum (all types, ~10 mil is gas) that would take 471,922 square miles of trees to provide that. And the world would need 1,907,280 square miles.
This plan would be very impractical at current consumption rates. However collection is not a difficult as other have suggested, plantations of trees (several thousand maples) can be taped and collected together with system of pipes easily.
Also a problem is the time it would take a plantation of this scale to grow ~20 year to mature.
If genetic manipulation were use effectively, then it may have promise. If coupled with drastic efficiency improvements is transportation
immagine car-trunk full of soil and car made from living wood, genetically altered plant what can produce fuel.
thats green :)
immagine car-trunk full of soil and car made from living wood, genetically altered plant what can produce fuel.
thats green :)
12,000 litres/year/hectare is not too bad, especially considering that it only needs to be filtered.
Algae, however, can be produced at almost 1,000,000 Litres/hectare/year
Algae
which also contrasts nicely against the 370 litres/hectare/year for ethanol from corn and soybeans!
I also did the conversion for the rest of the world- as an American chemist, it is a sad thing to watch America flounder with a dated measuring system. I like that it was "too expensive" to convert back in the 1970s- it's only getting "more expensive"with each passing year.
Here are a couple of the finer examples of "American Units at Work":
one of my favorites (cost over $125,000,000)-
American Units and a Mars Orbiter
and it complicates things:-
American and International Space Station
My 2003 Toyota Prius can measure speed in km/h, but for distance we are stuck with American units- "Next Exit 20 km......
Let's make America Renewable and metric, like the rest of the world.
Imagine...
To "American Scientist" : This American is insulted! "UmerKans" are not "too lazy" or "too stupid" we just are NOT required to SUBMIT to the mass transition to the metric system. The metric system is used in this country, America, where the international community intersects and that is science. I am neither too stupid nor too lazy to learn metrics. What I choose to do is NOT be indoctrinated because "everyone else is doing it"! It is okay for us to have our own system for use by the average citizen. Metrics is taught in the schools enough so that we can calculate the basics and those who go into study of the sciences learn how to efficiently calculate metrics. Complete dissolution of our system into metrics is entirely unnecessary. The same erroneous thinking is what overtook sanity and grinds us into the time change each Spring and Fall.
Get a life, Anne.
I'd rather have a tree in my backyard than an algae pool, unless it comes with a jacuzzi.
great ! a n ew and even greener way to produce biodiesel in tropical countries that could sustitute oil imports .Hope the new Australian administration works more toward the development and expanxion of biofuels in their country ,through better use of agricultural areas in their vast tropical North.Best wishes!
I am really upset with this American bashing. It is really immature.
How we measure distance and temperature is our business. Oh, and ALL product labels show both US CUSTOMARY and metric measurements. Imperial measurements are what was used in Britain, Canada, etc. e.g. an Imperial Gallon was 5/4 of a US Gallon.
Hats off to these Australian farmers. Hope their crops do well.
Who's the Anonymous idiot who says we need to stop investigating new energy sources and simply consume less?
Do you realize how stupid that is? If everyone parked their car 29 days/month they'd still produce enough CO2 on the driving days to increase CO2 in the environment.
Most people simply do not understand how little CO2 needs to be emitted to worsen the current situation.
So what we need is lots of really cheap and totally clean energy ... and we need it now. The "using less" paradigm is like trying to plug a fire hydrant with a stick of bubble gum. It makes tree huggers look like complete idiots. Sure, it's important, but it is at best a very small piece of the puzzle.
Actually, Dave Austin, we cannot prevent ourselves from putting carbon into the air because we breath it out. The question is do our policies and habits put more into the atmosphere than the existing vegetation can remove (also consider the destruction of the rain forests occuring to feed the over populated masses - those who have more kids do more damage). Parking your car 29 days a month would help a lot since autos are the main reason we're in this mess in the first place. Over population is also a big reason. I recommend that before you blow hard again to take your own advice and do the math.
A 1 gigawatt coal fired power plant burns more than 150 tons of coal per hour..........that's a lot of CO2 !! But, I really like my TV and electric heat and toaster and electric stove....... so I'm not really complaining. Rather, I'll just be a hypocrit and hug a tree to death. LOL