"Honge" oil economy - sustainable development for rural India

This is a very interesting article about how oil from the Honge trees can be used to produce diesel to give sustainable and continuous economic development for semi-arid parts of rural India. Dr. Udipi Srinivasa from IISc Bangalore has been running a pilot project in 7 villages around Kagganhalli in Karnataka.

Honge trees grow in large quantities in these regions, and are largely ignored by everybody because the oil from Honge seeds is inedible. But, it can be converted fairly easily into diesel which can be used to power water pumps, generators, vehicles, etc. And a liter of the oil, which is pretty much equivalent in performance to a liter of diesel, can be manufactured at half the cost, or less. The claim is that large tracts of semi-arid rural land in India can be used to plant such trees and generate renewable replacements for fossil fuels.

Read the full article. It is very interesting.

I often read over-hyped articles (especially in Indian newspapers) about amazing new technologies which are ignored by the rest of the rest of the world. These are "too good to be true" stories, which turn out, on closer inspection, to have some fatal flaw. Hence, I am skeptical of such claims. So I asked Makarand what his bullshit-meter says about this story and this is his response:

I am afraid that most of it is true... Not an over hype... There are other such similar things happening around... The problem is that while scientists do 'discover' these things few have the ability to look at it economically... Which is why Newton a great mind, almost a philosopher made some contribution to progress of mankind... but Edison, with a much lesser intellect, contributed a lot too simply because he made things WORK for all... He made as significant a contribution to every day life of humans simply due to his practical approach (my opinion entirely and would not like to argue on that too much)... Our guys are not able to get out of the lab and into the field where ones hands get dirtied in managing business... That is why we have a lot of scientists but few entrepreneurs..

Allow me to help you somewhat in your relentless pursuit of knowledge (I am not joking)...

You may also want to study some more about these types of fuels.. http://www.jatropha.de/ is a good site to visit.. The government of India (and a few state Governments) is gung ho on Jathropa.. They are promoting it on a large scale.. Last year the Government of MP actually issued a dictat for the District administration to bring Land under Jatropha..

I feel however that we need to be careful about these technologies and prevent ourselves from going overboard... These technologies, though low cost are un-tested for large scale.. I personally am of the opinion that these should be used ONLY in small units, preferably for household consumption. The reasons are

1. Taking Jathropa type of crops on a large scale for cash purposes will destroy the agri balance...
2. We do not have any infrastructure to use on large scale.. In any case economies of scale do matter in production... All of us know, or should know, what happened when the Peoples Republic of China tried to make steel making a small kitchen unit...
3. Plants like Jathropa do not allow any thing else to grow in the vicinity.. These are called allelopathic plants.

I would feel that Jathropa must be used to line bunds and fields and to act as hedges.. Waste land can be used for that purpose since they are hardy and drought resistant...

So one may use but on small scale and at household only... Unless technological progress makes safe and large scale usage possible.. After all oil was discovered in the tar sands of Alberta province in Canada a 100 years BEFORE one came up with the technology to extract it !

Hope this was useful...

Makarand