Dear Paul, I quote you below: "Start with the fuel. And Jon points out the abundant Jatropha seeds. I add that "abundance" in nature is not the same as abundant in supply, meaning that it fuel needs to be collected. So we have the chicken and egg problem of which comes first." In this connection I would say that collecting Jatropha seeds from wild Jatropha plants would certainly be possible if a remunerative price is offered for the seeds. I quote here the use of agricultural waste as industrial fuel. India generates annually 800 million tons of agricultural waste, which has about 3 times as much energy as the petroleum that we import. For a long time, the policy makers rejected the idea of using agricultural waste as fuel, because they said that it would be very difficult to collect the waste from a large number of small farms scattered all over the countryside. But now there exist more than 150 enterprises in our state, which convert agricultural waste into fuel briquettes and sell them as boiler fuel to our industries. Fuel oil costs US$1.2 per litre. One can get the same heat from about 3 kg fuel briquettes costing just half as much. Many restaurants too have started using these briquettes as cooking fuel. With stoves provided with fans for the supply of secondary air, you get a blue flame without soot or smoke. In this case, the fuel briquettes substitute LPG, which costs US$1.7 per kg. The industry that makes the fuel briquettes offers a price of US$40 per ton for the dry agricultural waste. Farmers transport the waste at their own cost, just as they transport their agricultural produce to the market. Yours A.D.Karve
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