http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=59885

PUNE (INDIA), DECEMBER 11: The country’s first biodiesel fuel, extracted from karanja seeds, was commercially launched by Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA) Director-General Anil Diggikar in Pune on Sunday. The fuel has been produced and marketed by Pune-based Mint Biofuels, which is a subsidiary of Minilec and Intec group.

Launching the new age fuel, Diggikar said this was the first commercial production of biodiesel from karanja seeds in India.

Mint Biofuels, which started work on bio-fuels two years ago, had installed a pilot plant, designed by its engineers, at Pirangut, about a year ago. Though the plant initially had a capacity of 100 litres per day, it was scaled up to 400 litres per day.

Y G Ghaisas, CEO of Mint Biofuels, said karanja was chosen over other oil producing plants as it had an edge over other varieties. ‘‘The karanja plant is of Indian origin, remains green during summer and also needs no pesticides,’' he said.

The company will set up a Rs 30 crore plant at Chiplun, which will have a capacity of producing 5,000 tonne of fuel per day. Plans are afoot to increase the capacity of the plant to 1,00,000 tonne within a period of four years. Meanwhile, the company is also undertaking plantation of karanja saplings.

Many transport companies as well as genset renting agencies have already shown interest in the biodiesel produced by the company.

During the last seven months the karanja fuel has been successfully used by Skoda Activa and Tata 407 vehicles and also in Kirloskar gensets, the company said.

Minilec and Intech are into manufacturing of industrial electronic control, protection systems, conveyors as well as storage systems and had a group turnover of Rs 40 crore in 2004-05.

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http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18825265.400.html

Forests paying the price for biofuels

22 November 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

THE drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction

The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rising demand for green energy has led to a surge in the international price of palm oil, with potentially damaging consequences. "The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia. It is one of the most environmentally damaging commodities on the planet," says Simon Counsell, director of the UK-based Rainforest Foundation. "Once again it appears we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them in developing countries, where they have devastating effects on local people."

The main alternative to palm oil is soybean oil. But soya is the largest single cause of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. Supporters of biofuels argue that they can be "carbon neutral" because the CO2 released from burning them is taken up again by the next crop. Interest is greatest for diesel engines, which can run unmodified on vegetable oil, and in Germany bio-diesel production has doubled since 2003. There are also plans for burning palm oil in power stations.

Until recently, Europe's small market in biofuels was dominated by home-grown rapeseed (canola) oil. But surging demand from the food market has raised the price of rapeseed oil too. This has led fuel manufacturers to opt for palm and soya oil instead. Palm oil prices jumped 10 per cent in September alone, and are predicted to rise 20 per cent next year, while global demand for biofuels is now rising at 25 per cent a year.

Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth UK, which backs biofuels, says: "We need to ensure that the crops used to make the fuel have been grown in a sustainable way or we will have rainforests cleared for palm oil plantations to make bio-diesel."

soon enough we are going to be able to suck the fat right out of are asses for fuel, and it will all be done at mcdonalds

Good post, b_i. It sure seems like biofuel will never be feasible on a large scale.

I suspect it's possible using GM crops and ocean-hydroponic farming. That's a way off from economic feasability though... if it can be done.

I am a big advocate of solar energy. It would allow for a distributed enegry grid, where all buildings can be producers. Manufacturing economies of scale work well with panel-type-things.

A smart energy policy wouldn't count out anything (mix solar/wind/nuclear/geothermal). Whatever we can do to become energy independant, and bankrupt OPEC, asap.