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By Boo Chanco
The Los Baños scientists, Professors Ted Mendoza, Oscar Zamora and
Joven Lales faculty members of Crop Science, College of Agriculture,
UP Los Baños, on the other hand, point out that jatropha becomes a
viable source of biodiesel if diesel is retailed at P40 per liter; if the
crop has a high fruit yield of 36,000 kilogram per hectare (ha); if it
has a high rate of oil extraction (34 percent and 38 percent); and if
byproducts are included and provide 50-percent additional income
from the oil revenue.
Those are tough assumptions which, the scientists point out, may be
difficult to meet from what we know now. "Can we achieve a high
yield of 36,000 kg/ha and high oil content (34 percent and 38
percent) under Philippine conditions? No jatropha variety is grown in
the Philippines that yields 34 percent oil," the scientists say. "The
current laboratory oil extraction is in the range of 28 percent to 32
percent."
The scientists think "three or five years after planting jatropha is too
short a time to expect commercialization. Are the processing plants
ready by that time?" Furthermore, they say there is a need to quickly
acquire the know-how "to accelerate the optimization of processing
raw oil into trans-esterified oil before it can be used as bio-diesel oil,
and processing of byproducts (press cake and/or glycerol) into high-
priced products be acquired soon."
Anyway, the message of the scientists to those who may have been
enticed by government press releases to get in the jatropha
bandwagon is for them to review the numbers. In fact, even
government should perhaps review their numbers too and not get
carried away by the fad-like enthusiasm for the plant. According to
the New York Times, "farmers in India are already expressing
frustration that after being encouraged to plant huge swaths of the
bush they have found no buyers for the seeds."
While it is right to invest some money in finding out more about the
plant, it is another thing altogether to throw money into it as if it is a
proven thing. As it is, government is ready to invest billions of pesos
in setting up plantations and processing plants probably without
realizing that the promise of jatropha is still to be proven anywhere
in the world. The folks at PNOC Alternative Fuels Corp. should crunch
their numbers well and proceed only with their eyes fully open to the
possibility that jatropha may not live up to the hype.