Check out this video:

Village Hub: nature conservation through sugar palms

http://vimeo.com/64562881

and also this link:

A Rain Forest Advocate Taps the Energy of the Sugar Palm

news.nationalgeographic.com/.../110623-tapergie-sugar-palm-biofuel/Cached

Similar

22 Jun 2011 - Scientist Willie Smits believes that the Arenga sugar palm may be the key to protecting tropical forest in Indonesia while providing opportunity ...

The idea to use the sugar from a wild growing tree is good in principle, but the amount of wood burned to concentrate the sugar by evaporation makes the entire process unsustainable in the long run. Even though this project featured in the video attempts to rationalise the amount of wood used for evaporation of water (prior to fermentation and subsequent distillation), it only does so by centralising the effort and avoiding inefficient combustion by individual sugar farmers. It does not take away that water is one of the substances with the highest heat capacity on Earth and one of the highest latent energies required for phase transition from liquid to gas. It costs three time less energy to evaporate ethanol, so I question the approach to concentrate the sugar prior to fermentation.

Regarding oil palm, it is one of the most productive oil-plants on earth, far more productive than rapeseed, sunflower or soybean, but it is still more valuable as food source than fuel.

Dear Jürgen,

Thank you very much for this interesting reference. With sugar palm saps containing up to 81% sucrose the evaporation of water prior to fermentation should not be a major problem compared to sugar cane and sugar beet with about 20% sucrose and about 80% water in the juice. However, if the sugar palm cannot be cultivated in form of a monoculture or co-cultivated with oil palms, for example, I doubt that purely rural cultivation can be commercially viable.  

Best regards

Rainer

Hi Rainer,

I thought the sugar palm sap is only 10% sucrose, which is why it is traditionally evaporated in wok-style pans over a fire to make the brown palm sugar, only to make ethanol you would stop sooner when sucrose-levels reach 25%. The aim of the Village Hub is not to make large scale commercially viable biofuel, but to provide rural communities with a high quality fuel so they can also use motorbikes, and cook food, and perhaps have mini powerstations based on stirling motors combined with hot water tank so they can have 100 watts worth of electricity to power a small fan, a few LED lights and a Radio (or even a mobile Phone/tablet and connect to the internet.). My own research on starch crops is aimed at producing bio-fuel on small scale and turning a potato field into a more productive endeaver than just selling potato at bargain prices. Potato and sweet potato are annual crops that can be rotated, you can eat them, or you can turn the starch into sugar syrup or even ethanol, and they are more productive per surface and time than sugar cane + they are easier planted, and harvested, and they can be stored unlike harvested sugar cane, and there is much more arable land on Earth suitable for potato and sweet potato than for sugar cane or any palm trees. The problem is that less and less land is used to grow potatoes (Germany only uses 10% of the land that used to be cultivated with potato after the second world war) because people buy pasta, pizzas and rice, and have no interest in peeling potatoes and cooking them. But if we want to have more food and more fuel, potatoes could be the answer (at the expense of land currently used for animal farming).

Dear Jürgen,

Thank you very for the warning. You are perfectly right. My source (from food research) was talking palm sugar syrup not sap. The sugar palm sap contains around 10% sucrose [1,2]. Taking into account that sugar palms are a wild crop contributing to biodiversity, are not growing in commercial monocultures and that sap tapping is a highly laborious business, considering them as an industrial feedstock for biofuel does not really make sense; more particularly when knowing that the unfermented sap from of the oil palm (Elaeis guinensis) also contains 10% sucrose, approx. [3].

With regard to potatoes as a biofuel source, you certainly know that "Kartoffelsprit" has already been used in the 1930s in the German "Reichskraftstoff", very roughly speaking a kind of E20 fuel [4]. By the way, those people, who are interested in political, social, nutritional and chemical history and master the German language will eventually read the Speech of a certain Friedrich Engels before the German Reichstag about Kartoffelsprit with interest and pleasure [5].

Best regards

Rainer

-------------------------

[1] Dalibar, C. Overall view on the tradition of tapping palm trees and prospects for animal production. Livestock Research for Rural Development. (1999)11 [1]. Retrieved 01.10.2014 from http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd11/1/dali111.htm

[2] P. Naknean, M. Meenune, G. Roudaut Changes in physical and chemical properties during the production of palm sugar syrup by open pan and vacuum evaporator, As. J. Food Ag-Ind. 2009, 2(04), 448-456

[3] Eze MO, Ogan U., Sugars of the unfermented sap and the wine from the oil palm, Elaeis guinensis, tree, Plant Foods Hum. Nutr., 1988;38(2):121-126.

[4] E. Dinjus, U. Arnold, N. Dahmen, R. Höfer, W. Wach, Green Fuels – Sustainable Solutions for Transportation, In: R. Höfer, ed., Sustainable Solutions for Modern Economies, RSC Green Chem No. 4, RSC Publ., Cambridge (2009) pp.125-163;

[5]  Friedrich Engels, Preußischer Schnaps im deutschen Reichstag; Geschrieben im Februar 1876. ["Der Volksstaat" Nr. 23 vom 25. Februar 1876] In: Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels - Werke. (Karl) Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Band 19, 4. Auflage 1973, unveränderter Nachdruck der 1. Auflage 1962, Berlin/DDR. S. 37-51.; http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me19/me19_037.htm

Dear Rainer Höfer 

Arenga pinnata grows abundantly in Indonesia, especially in North Sulawesi and produces palm juice at 10-25 L/tree/day whose sugar con. is of 14-15 g/100g. The juice is directly fermented to the beer without adding synthesized enzymes and has been distilled traditionally for years by farmers becoming liquor in which alcohol con. is of 25-45 percent. Ethanol and gasohol were successfully prepared from this plant at my Lab. I am glad if we along with Mr. Impol Siboro co-operate to develop arenga pinnata based products.

There is simila palm suagar from india called pannai maram , in tamil , till dated severalproduct have been made