[Sustainable-biodiesel] Tallow Tree

[Alex Brendel]

Yes, I have heard about Chinese Tallow as a potential fuel crop.  
However, I don't know of any large-scale plans to farm tallow for fuel.
I happen to have two of them in my front yard - as ornamentals!  The 
leaves turn a pretty red , yellow and orange in the fall.

Frankly, I have my doubts about the practicality of this tree for 
viable fuel source.  I don't believe the production claims I've seen.  
Being a biodiesel guy for quite a while now, I collected a jarful of 
the seeds.  I was able to collect only about a half-gallon of seeds 
produced by the two mature  (8-year old, 20 foot tall, 6" dia trunk) 
trees in my yard.  They seeds are about the size of a small, dried pea. 
  They did taste good though!  Very crunchy.    Likely the climate is 
not ideal for the tree here in the SF Bay Area of California.   And 
perhaps the particular trees I have are not good seed producers.

Eric, the Chinese Tallow doesn't normally grow in your area - take a 
look at Wikipedia's entry on Chinese Tallow for a map - mostly southern 
US and California.

Is there anybody interested in growing Chinese tallow trees? (and have 
a good place to raise them?)    I have started a number of seedlings, 
but don't have any land to raise more trees.    I would like to see the 
"fuel from tallow experiment" continue.

Lastly, I'll tell you that I'm betting much more of my time and effort 
on algae as a fuel source.

--Alex
AlgaeFuel.org



On Jan 25, 2008, at 2:03 PM, Erik Hoffner wrote:

> Anyone heard of plans to grow chinese tallow tree in
> the US for sustainable biodiesel production? I hadn't,
> but details are attached.
>
> It's very invasive, so the idea in the attached pdf is
> to genetically modify it with the terminator gene,
> which is, well, disappointing. Guess I'd rather do
> without such a beast if that's the deal.
>
> Erik Hoffner
> Northeast Biodiesel
> Greenfield, MA
>
> --
>