From Shri Udit Chaudhuri at unika@...


Thanks for this information, particularly the interesting link to the
Jatropha
discussion
group. As you saw, I forwarded an article from this to ToI and
Economic Times,
which has woken up to biofuel developments and is trying to build a
lot of hype
and
hoopla about it.

My suggestion in this light is: (perhaps I can put it to the
Yahoogroup?)

Attempts at hybrid fuels are very old. IOCL carried out a long and
elaborate
experiment with Gasohol in the 70s and had to drop iot on seeing that
it would
take
up a mean of SEVEN ACRES per car. I don't know what crop for the
alcohol was
used at that time. I understand, from a report of research at IISs,
B'lore, that

Pongamia pinnata can function as a stand-alone fuel too.

Even if today's technologies assure lower consumption per HP, higher
yield of
usable
kilocalories per Kg of raw material and lower emissions, we will
still need
large and
disseminated cultivation, as you also observe. This would also bring
in the
usual
problems of mono-culture, groundwater and irrigation resources,
infrastructure,
etc.
Considerable energy would be spent in harvesting the fruit either
Jatropha or
Pongamia pinnata, from the disseminated number of trees, to collect
an economic
quantity of fuel - or a fuel supplement in most cases.

Instead of such a top-down approach would it not make more sense to
assure that
each village has enough of bio-fuel yield as well as other biomass
fuel
resources sa
as to minimise if not eliminate use of fossil fuels for cooking,
presently
cross-
subsidised by higher distillates? This itself could free up the costs
of petrol
and diesel
and improve the economy greatly.

As a next step, we can assure that stationary diesel engines, used
for seasonal
irrigation, threshing, cane-crushing, captive power etc all run on
bio-fuels or
hybrids.

What say you?

On 1 Sep 2005 at 15:41, Pankaj Oudhia wrote:

> Thank you for your message. The scientific name of Karanj is
Pongamia
> pinnata. Pongum and Honge are its names in Karnataka. You can get
more
> information from
>
> http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/jatropha/
>
> regards
> Pankaj Oudhia
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:29:25 PM IST
> From: "Udit" <uditc@...>
> To: pankajoudhia@...: sudhirm51@...,
> akvarshney@...
> Subject: Yr article on Karanj Vs Jatropha in Humanscape
>
> Dear Mr Oudhia,
> I refer to the very interesting observations in your article at
> http://www.humanscape.org/Contribute/karanj.php i.e. "Why Karanj is
> better than Jatropha?"
>
> As a RE enthusiast (see http://micropower.blogspot.com and
> http://unika.freehomepage.com) I found it interesting and surprising
> that most people seem to insist that Karanj is the local name for
> Jatropha. This needs to be dispelled. have you brought this to the
> notice of anyone at IREDA or MNES?
>
> BTW, what about Pongum or Honge as it is called in Karnataka? Is it
a
> variant of this species or differrent?
>
> regards
> Udit Chaudhuri
> uditc@..., uditc@...
>
> 6 "Roop Kala", 128 West Avenue
> Santacruz West, Mumbai - 400054
> India
>
> Tel: (+91-22) 26045595 / 26495735
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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