diesel and Aus politics dont mix... apparently

[posscakes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture#Oil_Extraction

check this link out. heres a raw source of oil no ones mentioned in this thread yet.

but yeah i dunno really if its possible to just to replace dino fuel with bio especially if the demand for it just keeps increasing. maybe part of a solution is better fuel efficient technology...

[peter_j_g]

Brackie - Interesting to hear your numbers re various crops/animals. What throws the balance here is the winter, the ground is snow covered for 5-6 months of the year so any livestock has to be housed indoors and hand fed. Hence there are very few livestock farms around due to the winter costs. The most common (=profitable) crops here are wheat, barley, canola, sugarbeet, sunflower and linen.

That an oil company is investing so heavily could be an indication of the future...

Rgds, Peter

[smithy010]

If you have a bit of a read in Joshua Tickell's book "From the fryer to fuel tank", he actually says that the highest yielding crop per ha is algae (a very similar strain to the horrible blue/green algae).
The only problem here, is water. This is ok, because some algae grows well in even brackish/salty water.

It's certainly interesting.

[brackie]

Yeah... During the Mesozoic much of the contribution to oil formation was from unicellular plants and animals. It took time, heat and accumulation in traps to concentrate it though. Dunno how you'd go farming algae. Certainly feasible but whether it could be done on a large enough scale is another thing.

[smithy010]

Need a good source of CO2 for the algae to really go off. Too bad all those stinky CO2 filled road tunnels are in places where there is no space to farm algae.

[posscakes]

heres another high yeilding oil crop. follow the link
http://www.jatrophabiodiesel.org/jat...p?_divid=menu2
cheers.

[gldgti]

i think a good source of co2 is a coal fired power station........ dont you?

[gldgti]

or any fuel burning power station for that matter

[brackie]

heres another high yeilding oil crop. follow the link
http://www.jatrophabiodiesel.org/jat...p?_divid=menu2
cheers.

Climatic and soil required look ideal for south and central west coastal WA. Farmers are doing it tough over there and should be loooking at it seriously. However, getting the processing plant together may be a big obstacle.

[Moonan]

There is one significant problem with the prospect of growing this wonder-plant in oz - it's a declared noxious weed ("belly-ache bush"). There are many varieties, and not all are actually declared, but importing seeds may not be permitted. According to this thread http://www.biofuelsforum.com/brisban...ew_crop-3.html in the biofuels website, macadamia would actually do better! Check it out (also interesting on biodiesel in general!