The assessment of "Jatropha" as raw material for BDF

Prevention of global warming is becoming urgent issue and "biofuel" gathering worldwide attention has been put into practical use not only in US, EU, Brazil or other countries but in Japan. As for its impact on environment, however, evaluation still varies including aninfluence on global economy, for example food price crisis that might have been caused by competition with food. In the previous study [1], one of the authors pointed out that "bio-ethanol" from crops is never "carbon neutra", that means the production and use of the fuel does not lead to a net increase in atmospheric CO concentration, nor useful as a countermeasure against global warming. The "second-generatio" of bio-fuel made from nonfood biomass has attracted much attention especially after the Hokkaido Toyako G8 summit held in November 2008. Among various plants or biomass materials, "Jatropha" has come to the front as one of the most promising candidates for future bio-diesel production. In fact, there are many plans or projects aiming at large scale cultivating Jatropha for bio-diesel oil production in several African or Southeast-Asian countries. However, it should be pointed out that there are too many unknown factors still remaining that are important in practical use of Jatropha oil, for example, productivity as well as sustainability, long-term impact of its large-scale use on soil quality, practical costs of the oil and so on. In this study, an assessment on the validity of Jatropha production was tried as quantitatively as possible using the data obtained from a field survey in Indonesia conducted by the authors in January and March of 2009. Although LCI data for LCA calculations obtained was very limited, the true reality of the situation about Jatropha could substantially be demonstrated to some extent. The main point was that the oil cost was dominated mainly by labor costs, because many work operations could not be mechanized and inevitably be manual handling tasks. In many cases, the labor costs could not be covered by the income from the Jatropha oil (or seed) due to the low productivity of the biomass, whereas the prime cost of the biodiesel oil was rather high expensive compared with fossil fuel.