Jun 27, 2008

Jatropha Nursery Designed to Produce Fuel

You probably don’t want to eat the fruit of the jatropha plant, also known as the physic nut, because the real fruit of the plant might be a biodiesel fuel that can reduce our reliance on petroleum. Pure Biofuels Corporation, a Peruvian-based biodiesel producer, has established a jatropha nursery that will produce an initial 360,000 plants in approximately two months, scaling up to one million plants per month. These plants’ first yield of oil, which the company is going to use as feedstock for biodiesel production, is expected in less than a year.

“The establishment of a jatropha nursery is another significant milestone in our growth strategy,” said Pure Biofuels’ Chairman Chris Tewell. “We believe that becoming a self-supplier of feedstock is one of our competitive differentiators that protects us from commodity price fluctuations. Importantly, our jatropha plantation will provide development to adjacent rural communities, creating more than 10,000 jobs.”

Jatropha is one of the lowest-cost feedstock sources for production of biodiesel. It is a nonfood plant that is easy to grow, even on wastelands. It yields more than 2.5 metric tons of nonedible oil per hectare per year. Pure Biofuels plans to plant its crops on marginal land that is unsuitable for cultivating food crops. The company intends to ramp up to planting at a rate of 1,000 hectares per month and expects that 80 percent of its feedstock will be derived from its local jatropha plantation by 2015.