You’d have thought that with 20,000 stories in our archives we might’ve at least mentioned this in passing. But it seems not. Australian farmers in the wet tropical region of North Queensland have bought over 20,000 of these so-called diesel trees. The intention is that in 15 or so years they’ll have their very own oil mine growing on their farmland.
Because, the Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, to use its botanical name, can be tapped not unlike a rubber tree, but instead of yielding rubbery latex it gives up a natural diesel. According to the nurseryman selling the trees, one hectare will yield about 12,000 litres annually. *
Once filtered—no complex refining required, apparently—it can be placed straight into a diesel tractor or truck. We read that a single Copaifera langsdorfii will continue to produce fuel oil for an impressive 70 years, with the only negative being that its particular form of diesel needs to be used within three months of extraction.
Oddly this is not news. The Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University reports that it was first reported to the western world as far back as 1625. They observe reports from 1979 saying "Natives ... drill a 5 centimeter hole into the 1-meter thick trunk and put a bung into it. Every 6 months or so, they remove the bung and collect 15 to 20 liters of the hydrocarbon.” The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation noted in a paper at the Eleventh world forestry congress back in 1997 on the topic of tree oil for cars that “... the potential of other alternatives such as the Amazon Copaifera langsdorfii need to be investigated.”
Copaifera langsdorfii can grow trunks 30 metres tall and store the oil in their unusual capilliary structure. The above image is a transverse section of the tree’s cells.
* I used to convert metric measurements in American imperial but when I discovered that the only countries that have failed to embrace metric are the USA, Liberia and Burma I stopped. However Purdue University record that “An acre of 100 mature trees might thus be able to produce 25 barrels of fuel per year.”
Via ABC and Sydney Morning Herald
Image found at: ‘Richter, H.G., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2000 onwards. Commercial timbers: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. In English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Version: 16th April 2006. http://delta-intkey.com’

 

Will the arbor day foundation give away 10 of those trees next year for diesels for nature?

 

we should start planting those

 

Good luck, they won't grow just anywhere. Its a lot like palm oil tree's, when planted correctly you can extract about 650 gallons per acre of SVO from them, compared to about 50 for soybeans. But they only grow in semi-tropical to tropical climates, and you need to process the oil after it comes out to put it into a fuel tank (unless you've converted to SVO).

The real deal will be algae, if we can find a good way to grow it. You can produce thousands of gallons per acre of oil for bio-fuel production, and it gives you incredible amounts of pure O2, unlike a tree which gives off a relatively small amount in comparison.

 

semi tropical eh?

hmm

 

25 barrel per yr , it would seem that there are a lot of other crops that would do more .