When this Biodiesel project was first proposed - it seemed both obvious and relatively simple to implement. An assumption still seen in many similar projects being discussed and attempted and publicised on this medium.
Our proposed 500,000 Hectares is but a small percentage of the otherwise wasteland available and a small percentage of that likely to be utilised in the "Oil Rush" that has already started on the African continent.
It is though 5000 sq Km - the size of a small country!
It involves the planting and harvesting of more than 1 billion trees and the processing of 3 million tonnes of oil nuts every year. It will utilise a labour force of around 200,000 direct and about the same again indirect.
Broken down into 100 individual plantations and refineries it does become a little less difficult to conceptualise and to implement. Then we can imagine how to handle the movement of 2000 people around the plantation and the movement of around 80 tonnes of produce to the refinery - every day. All this over a now more manageable 50 square kilometres.
20 tractors running back and forth can move this amount of produce, another 20 can move this number of people, and maybe another 10 can move the utilities needed to feed and support the people and the plantation maintenance crews etc. Just 50 tractors per plantation burning a couple of tonnes of fuel a day between them, and 5000 tractors over the whole project.
All part of an "Oil Rush" that will ultimately demand maybe 100 times that many.
All part of a project that demands everything be "green" - that the fuel used should be Biomass co-product - not the refineries own Biodiesel or shipped in Petrodiesel.
So the Tractor needs to meet the following specifications.
- Able to burn Biomass - preferably in the form of pellets or glycerine.
- Four wheel drive and relatively low wheel loading to deal with the soil type.
- Easy to drive and easy to maintain with local labour.
- Able to function as a trailer puller, plough, fork lift, front loader and digger.
- To avoid the economic distortion promised by the import and maintenance of "western" tractors, it should be able to be manufactured using available raw materials and labour.
- And of course - it must look and be "modern"
After a stunned silence listening to this, the design team leaders first comment was "Have you considered a steam powered Volvo T22"?
Some of us are old enough to remember "traction engines" in fairgrounds or as road rollers - and those were the last steam tractors built. Big old boilers on steel wheels with smokestacks and coal boxes. Terrifying things that could explode if neglected or not tended correctly.
This is not about that though - it is about a whole "new" steam age. It is about development done in the last days of the age of the steam automobile, and again in the 1970's when the first "oil shock" forced people to consider alternatives. It turned out there was no demand then - oil supplies stabilised and prices were adjusted to. Now - a generation later we do have to consider alternatives.
