[tsk1979]

Note from mod: threads merged

[srishiva]

For India, right now we have the air powered car which could be a cheaper and better option. This will improve our air quality as well.

Solar energy might have a disadvantage on price compared with current electricity charges. How would it compare if used to compress air versus using oil for automobiles ?

[hvkumar]

Jaropha farming is in the hands of farmers, not Govt. Govt has done quite a lot of work to encourage J farming, but farmers are still unconvinced. It will ttake some years for J farming to take off, if at all it does.

India does not enough used veg oil, we over-use it so much! Besides, there is poor collection machinery from large institutional users like hotels. I recall the a GM of Indian Railways telling me a couple of years ago that all he could collect from 5 star hotels in Madras city was a measly 250 kgs! In any case, there is a lot of global trade in used oils which is used in EU/US markets itself for BioD manufacture.

Very little effort to tap existing oilseeds for BioD manufacture, Algae is one more stunt which keep the technologists and conference circuits abuzz. Typical in the renewable energy industry to always keep talking new technologies when you have hardly made commercial sense of existing ones. But, yes, Algae is definitely one of the promising options.

Convering plastics into Biodiesel is already beyond the lab, one of my friends is acually establishing a plant to produce Biodiesel out of recycled plastics. Issue is to produce at viable cost, when regular diesel sells at 55 pl, you can't produce plastic-based diesel at 100 pl!

[manziee_crusier]

Originally Posted by adya33

I also don't know about windmill being 500 meters tall, perhaps commercial grade maybe.
but the fact remains that energy is being utilized to rotate windmill. so part of energy from wind is converted. now imagine having thousands of windmills. it will surely affect movement of rain clouds.


Not necessarily. It may be bad for agriculture.

That must be a joke right ?
Even if all wind at the height of 30 Metres(which is normal height) were converted into electricity,
it would be an infinitesimal proportion of the energy carried by the same
wind current. The speed of wind leaving the propeller
is practically of the same and is
negligible per cent of the total wind energy being tapped by any windmill.

It is like saying lighting a Beedi will increase atmospheric temp

[tsk1979]

hvkumar, being from a Farming family myself, I disagree on Jathropa. Atleast in Punjab there is no encouragement, and even if we grow this crop there are no buyers or interest from the govt.
Unless govt guarantees they will pick up the crop and it will give as much revenue as other cash/food crops, farmers are not going to jump into the fray.
Moreover in UP I see vast tracts of uncultivated land due to poor land quality. Much of this land is property of state govt and not owned by private parties.
Govt has to lead the way. Start a refinery. Guarantee procurement.
but I guess if they do so, we will shift from Wheat farming to "diesel" farming, and this will worsen the food crisis.
So its better that govt starts cultivating Jathropa in a big way on barren land, and starts mixing biodiesel with regular diesel.
Manufacturers can be given 2 years to comply with Biodiesel compliant engines(its just a couple of rubber parts that need fixing).

Your plastic idea is really good, we do produce a lot of waste plastic which can do good here. But as you mentioned, its not cost effective. But what if we had cheap electric energy, that would bring down the costs.

[alpha1]

Mark my words (check this post after 50+ years, if it still exists):

Nuclear and thermo-nuclear power will make electricity dead cheap. And all vehicles would become electric powered.

[hvkumar]

The bane of this country is Government - Government everywhere. Govt making a mess of subsidised kerosene. Mess of subsidised feriliser. Mess of subsidised petro fuels. Subsidised Paddy. Cotton. and so on.

I don't look to Govt for my livelihood. The rich farmers in Punjab are pampered with minimum support prices of paddy/ wheat which are sometimes way above prevailing market prices. Should Govt be the market or marke-maker - or do we want efficient free marke mechanisms. Will you be happy if Govt says - tsk is getting too much of salary, cut it. Or regulate your booming real estate prices. Or tell you which mobile phone you should buy.

Not getting into a larger debate here, but all I wish to say as far as J farming is concerned is - there has been a lot of effort from agricultural universities/ research insitutions to develop good germplasms of J, nurseries have been set up, NOVOD disburses some subsidies, seedlings/saplings are given away free or at low price. Land is being given away free to landless to grow J. To again revert to a MSP system is to kill the product itself - prescribe minimum support prices for buying J and you will see what is happening in the case of Ethanol - no willing buyers. Suffice to say that with growing prices of petro fuels, the farmer will be adequately compensated by markett growh and good earnings. I have talked to the top most brass in our oil companies, they are perplexed, how can you guarantee buy when the crop itself is not in the ground. Business does not happen on guarantees, it is the dynamics of the free market that stokes entrepreneurs.

Working on targets does not work - we have already missed targets for BioD. What will oil comapnies and manufacturers do if BioD is not available? Obviously, they are keen on BioD, since it helps them brunt the impact of expensive crude oil - but where is BioD, where is Jatropha?

Getting farmers to get onto J is not an easy task and it was obvious from the very start that such farm revolutions will not, and cannot happen. Why should a farmer who has less than 5 acres of land grow a crop which he does not see any present market. The only real solution is to encourage and promote contract farming in barren lands and create a visible market so that others can follow.

[hvkumar]

Originally Posted by alpha1

Mark my words (check this post after 50+ years, if it still exists):

Nuclear and thermo-nuclear power will make electricity dead cheap. And all vehicles would become electric powered.

N-Power capex is 4 times normal thermal power plants.

[sridhga]

Originally Posted by man23ish

Call me a super-optimist, But i think of that as a positive thing.. A tank-Full of hydrogen might actually improve the power-to-weight ratio of your vehicle since hydrogen is lighter than air..

Imagine you over-fill your hydrogen tank and the car starts floating in the air!

[simplyself]

The link for the plastic derived fuel, is here :
Fuel From Plastic

Already mentioned links were not working.

[simplyself]

There are various technologies, some of which are promising.

Does any one remember the Ramar Pillai fiasco?

Biodiesel from oil seeds, though promising, can be prohibitively expensive.
Jatropha requires a long gestation period and the returns are not exactly on higher side.

Algae may be good...it atleast sounds good. And it grows quickly. I dont know whether diesel from algae oil concept is just a gimmick or the one which is worth pursuing.

[hvkumar]

Ramar Pillai episode - believe he was using Jatropha.

Jatropha costs - considering the cost of saplings, farming, projected land productivity and oil ields of at least 25%, cost of producing J-based BioD is less han Rs 25 a litre. Same if you use Pongamia which is available in the wild, and only cost is to pay labour to pick up the seeds from the trees, which amounts to roughly Rs 2 per kg.

[tsk1979]

Ramar Pillai was arrested by CBI after it was found that he was buying Petro-checmicals from the market and mixing them and marketing them as Herbal fuel.
CBI also found bills and also books dealing with petro-chemicals
Coming back to biodiesel, if we sow Jathropa on 20 acres of farmland
1. How many years before first harvest
2. Where do we sell the seeds
3. IF we want to set up a press to generate oil from the seeds, whats the estimated cost?
4. If we produce oil, who will buy from us?

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Ramar Pillai was arrested by CBI after it was found that he was buying Petro-checmicals from the market and mixing them and marketing them as Herbal fuel.
CBI also found bills and also books dealing with petro-chemicals
Coming back to biodiesel, if we sow Jathropa on 20 acres of farmland
1. How many years before first harvest
2. Where do we sell the seeds
3. IF we want to set up a press to generate oil from the seeds, whats the estimated cost?
4. If we produce oil, who will buy from us?

Might take 3 or 4 years for the yield. Right now most of it is contract farming unless you want to do everything on our own.

Look at the this for one company in Mysore. They have it grown on more than 1 lakh acres now.
Labland Biodiesel (India) Private Limited

[maddy42]

Well am from a farming background and have seen times where suddenly there is a spurt in activity over a particluar crop and then it dies down.
To start of there was Vanilla. Sky high prices were promised per kilo and the amount of investment was high. People jumped to the bandawagon but well the prices crashed.
Ginger: Well this is not a failure though but entirely depended on the type of climate in an area. Basically excess of rainfall can cause harm.
Palm oil: Started off well and lots of farmers have converted their fertile land used for rice into Palm fields. There is a company procuring the product.
Well now for the problem here is a gestation period of 4 years and the amount of yield cannot be guarenteed. I have seen a very beautiful palm plantation where the yield on trees has not started.

Jatropa is good if cultivated on barren lands but if they are cultivated on landa where foodcrops are grown then you may end up paying more for rice in the search of cheap fuel. The Govt gives a support price because the amount of effort going into the making of rice or for the matter any crop does not really yield much profits unless cultivated on a really large scale of more than 20 acres.
Believe me or not there are many who make more profits selling the Hay as fodder rather than selling rice. This is the irony.

Why cant we concentrate on tidal energy with such a coastline. Even if it can provide about 2-3% of energy need it would suffice