The long term dream of the industrial engineers is to discover an affordable and cleaner burning alternative energy source. More info at http://www.aumkiipure.com

1. Jatropha A Viable Alternative Renewable Energy
The long term dream of the industrial engineers is to discover an affordable and cleaner
burning alternative energy source.
Constantly the biodiesel industry is looking for some alternative to produce renewable
energy. Biodiesel prepared from canola, sunflower and jatropha can replace or be
combined with traditional diesel. During first half of 2000’s jatropha biofuel made the
headlines as a very popular and promising alternative. It is prepared from jatropha curcas,
a plant species native to Central America that can be grown on wasteland.
Jatropha Curcas is a non edible plant that grows in the arid regions. The plant grows very
quickly and it can yield seeds for about 50 years. The oil got from its seeds can be used as
a biofuel. This can be mixed with petroleum diesel. Previously it has been used twice
with algae combination to fuel test flight of commercial airlines.
Another positive approach of jatorpha seeds is that they have 37% oil content and they
can be burned as a fuel without refining them. It is also used for medical purpose.
Supporters of jatropha biodiesel say that the flames of jatropha oil are smoke free and
they are successfully tested for simple diesel engines.
Jatropha biodiesel as Renewable Energy Investment has attracted the interest of many
companies, which have tested it for automotive use. Jatropha biodiesel has been road
tested by Mercedes and three of the cars have covered 18,600 miles by using the jatropha
plant biodiesel.

2. Since it is because of some drawbacks, the jatropha biodiesel have not considered as a
wonderful renewable energy. The biggest problem is that no one knows that what exactly
the productivity rate of the plant is. Secondly they don’t know how large scale cultivation
may affect the soil quality and the environment as a whole. The jatropha plant needs five
times more water per energy than corn and sugarcane. This raises another issue. On the
other hand it is to be noted that jatropha can grow on tropical climates with annual
rainfall of about 1000 to 1500 mm. A thing to be noted is that jatropha needs proper
irrigation in the first year of its plantation which lasts for decades.
Recent survey says that it is true that jatropha can grow on degraded land with little water
and poor nutrition. But there is no evidence for the yield to be high. This may be
proportional to the quality of the soil. In such a case it may require high quality of land
and may require the same quagmire that is faced by most biofuel types.
Jatropha has one main downside. The seeds and leaves of jatropha are toxic to humans
and livestock. This made the Australian government to ban the plant in 2006. The
government declared the plant as invasive species, and too risky for western Australian
agriculture and the environment here (DAFWQ 2006).
While jatropha has stimulating budding, there are number of research challenges remain.
The importance of detoxification has to be studied because of the toxicity of the plant.
Along side a systematic study of the oil yield have to be undertaken, this is very
important because of high yield of jatropha would probably needed before jatropha can
be contributed significantly to the world. Lastly it is also very important to study about
the jatropha species that can survive in more temperature climate, as jatropha is very
much limited in the tropical climates.