Interest in converting mallee eucalypts into fuel for aircraft has given added impetus to the commercial biofuel industry. Source: The Weekly Times Now
The possibility moved a step closer with Airbus joining Virgin Australia and GE in a memorandum of understanding with a Future Farm Industries Co-operative Research Centre project to convert mallee scrub into transport-grade fuel.
A viable biofuel industry is still a long way off, but one of the major hurdles, which is a machine to harvest and chip the Mallee at a commercial rate, has moved a step closer to reality.
This is good news for farmers, especially in the West Australian wheatbelt where there are thousands of hectares of mature trees planted decades ago to address salinity and waterlogging problems.
“We are very encouraged that Airbus has agreed to be involved in this venture,” said CRC chief Peter Zurzolo.
Biosystems Engineering, based in Toowoomba, Queensland has successfully completed the final field test of a prototype mallee harvester. During trials the prototype harvested trees at a rate of 30 tonnes an hour, well in excess of the target of at least 20 tonnes an hour.
The next step is to develop a commercial version capable of cutting and chipping at a rate of at least 50 green tonnes an hour. It takes one green tonne of biomass to make 190 litres of biofuel.
Due to the growth habit of the mallee it has to be harvested and chipped standing up.
It is estimated that it would cost about $1 million to build a commercial harvester and up to $100 million to build a biomass plant.
Economic studies by the CRC show that a commercial biofuels plant required about 10,000ha of mallee belts to provide sufficient biomass for its operation.
In WA alone, more than 12,000ha of mallee belts have been planted and of the 16.6 million ha in the wheat-sheep zone, 1.2 million ha could be used for mallee
tree belts.
