[Sustainable-biodiesel] Hawaii: Pacific Biodiesel to Help Project that Finds Crops for Local Fuel

[Rachel Burton]

Mar 15, 2007 - MauiNews.com
http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=28548

Maui-based Pacific Biodiesel will take part in a $100,000  
demonstration project to test the potential of biodiesel from crops  
that can be grown in Hawaii.

For the test, the feedstock will mostly be nuts and beans gathered  
from fields and roadsides, including kukui or castor bean. Kelly  
King, director of marketing at Pacific will take part in a  
demonstration this morning at the Oceanic Institute to show how the  
raw oil is expressed.

Pacific Biodiesel’s laboratory will refine and test the output to see  
how well it matches to industry standards.

Deborah Jordan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Division  
director, will award the grant money to Honolulu Clean Cities.

King says the consortium made a bid for enough money to do some  
farming, but it got only enough for the test project. She is hopeful  
a last-minute move in the state Legislature may get some money to  
grow experimental crops.

Some farmers are experimenting with other crops, such as oil palm and  
jatropha, so unlike the castor beans, those will not have to be  
collected in the wild. Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and Jatropha  
curcas are two of the highest yielding oil crops grown, primarily in  
tropical and subtropical areas.