Watching the World: Elephant grass and saboo dam

Sept. 26, 2005
In the oil and gas industry, times are surely changing. Once, energy leaders looked for elephant fields, but now it seems more of them are checking out the possibilities of elephant grass, to say nothing of saboo dam.

In the oil and gas industry, times are surely changing. Once, energy leaders looked for elephant fields, but now it seems more of them are checking out the possibilities of elephant grass, to say nothing of saboo dam.

When the British Association for the Advancement of Science convened in Dublin recently, a joint Irish-American scientific team advanced elephant grass as a potential miracle crop for generating biomass energy.

Native to Japan, the tall plant-which resembles pampas grass-already has been field-tested in Cashel, County Tipperary, and it is said to be ideally suited to Irish conditions.

Backers of elephant grass say it is resilient, that it will grow on Irish bogland with no fertilizer, and that it’s a perennial, producing fresh crops each year with little or no farming needed.

Grass-to-diesel

At the BAAS conference, Professor Mike Jones of Dublin’s Trinity College told the audience that elephant grass can yield up to 60 tonnes/acre of dry biomass fuel, adding that Ireland could generate 30% of the electricity it needs by planting 10% of the country’s arable land with elephant grass.

People are taking the idea seriously. Irish transport company CIE recently announced it would switch as soon as possible to biodiesel, which can power its trains and buses without requiring engine modification.

Even Irish politicians are jumping onto the bandwagon. Amid rising energy costs, the Progressive Democrats announced they will call for a radical extension in tax breaks for industries that produce fuel from rapeseed oils or animal fats.

PD member Fiona O’Malley said the current government cap of 10,000 l. on biofuels qualifying for excise relief must be removed to create incentives for the new industry.

“Biofuel companies could double their operations if they didn’t have a cap,” O’Malley said, explaining that Dublin’s excise relief currently applies to just eight biodiesel projects over the next 2 years.

Saboo dam oil

Similar ideas are taking shape all around the world, even as far away as Thailand, where 300 farmers recently attended a government-sponsored conference on the “use of saboo dam oil technology for solving the energy crisis.”

There, the farmers were urged not to rush in to grow physic nuts, or saboo dam, a raw material for making biodiesel. They were advised instead to wait for a new and commercially viable strain of the plant.

The type of physic nut now available is not considered commercially viable since it yields just 300-400 kg/rai, or 1,600 sq miles. To be commercially viable, officials said, the yield should be 1,200 kg/rai.

Thailand’s Science and Technology Minister Pravich Rattanapien said farmers would be advised when the new strain is ready. Then, the government would urge private sector investment to extract and refine biodiesel from the nuts.

Meanwhile, I suppose, we’ll just have to keep searching for those elephant fields.