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Japanese Firm to Build Sago Palm Bioethanol Plant in Malaysia
24 January 2008
Japan-based Necfer Corp. (New Century Fermentation Research Ltd.) plans to build a demonstration plant in Malaysia to manufacture bioethanol from sago palm trees—possibly the first such endeavor in the world.
Sago palms are not true palm trees (Arecaceae), but are Cycads—evergreen, gymnospermous, dioecious plants that were extremely common during the Jurassic period and are sometimes popularly known as “dinosaur food”.
Necfer was founded by Ayaaki Ishizaki, professor emeritus of Kyushu University, and uses the “Ishizaki process”—a fermentation process based on the bacteria Zymomonas. Sago palm, according to Necfer, has a very high photosynthetic ability and can accumulate up to 15-20 tons of starch per hectare per year in its trunk. Necfer says it can deliver 8-10 kiloliters of ethanol per hectare.
January 24, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted by: sjc | January 24, 2008 at 08:27 AM
sjc, you're right, to harvest sago, you chop down the tree, crack it open and find it's full of starch.
Sago takes up to 15 years to mature. But there's a 50,000 hectare plantation in Malaysia (in Sarawak) that has been created a few years ago. I suspect the Japanese company will tap into this plantation.
Some more extended info here:
Japanese firm to produce ethanol from tropical sago palm.
Like palm oil, the crop requires very particular agro-ecological circumstances, only found in a special type of low-land humid forest. This means any expansion of sago would probably involve deforestation.
Posted by: Jonas | January 24, 2008 at 08:38 AM
Heavens! It's just like a demonic board game! Renewable fuel ruins the environment. But petroleum fuel ruins the environment. Um, well err... (hand wringing and fretting ensue.) What to do? Life cannot be simulated. Quit playing games.
Posted by: sulleny | January 24, 2008 at 10:14 AM
Lots of things in life are trade offs. We make decisions in conflicting situations. This is part of living in the real world. It does not mean that we do not have to consider things that are important. A good balanced approach that takes into account all relevant factors need not be neurotic,
unless the people doing it are prone to that.
Posted by: sjc | January 24, 2008 at 01:10 PM
Sago pudding, was already in the hard basket as harvest on a fifteen year rotation sounds quite extravagent.
A delicacy foodstuff to liquid fuel, sounds a poor trade.
Posted by: arnold | January 24, 2008 at 09:43 PM
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It sounds like you may have to kill the tree to harvest the starch and these trees grow pretty slowly as I recall.