Current Progress of Jatropha Curcas Commoditisation as Biodiesel Feedstock: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

This article looks at the national and global actors, social networks, and narratives that have influenced Jatropha’s worldwide acceptability as a biofuel crop. Jatropha Curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent shrubs and trees in the Euphorbiaceae family (some of which are deciduous, such as Jatropha Curcas L.). It’s a drought-tolerant perennial that thrives in poor or marginal soil and produces a large amount of oil per hectare. It is easy to grow, has a fast growth rate, and can generate seeds for up to 50 years. Jatropha Curcas has been developed as a unique and promising tropical plant for augmenting renewable energy sources due to its various benefits. It is deserving of being recognised as the only competitor in terms of concrete and intangible environmental advantages. Jatropha Curcas is a low-cost biodiesel feedstock with good fuel properties and more oil than other species. It is a non-edible oilseed feedstock. Thus it will have no impact on food prices or the food vs fuel debate. Jatropha Curcas emits fewer pollutants than diesel and may be used in diesel engines with equivalent performance. Jatropha Curcas also makes a substantial contribution to the betterment of rural life. The plant may also provide up to 40% oil yield per seed based on weight. This study looks at the features characteristics of Jatropha Curcas as biodiesel feedstock and performance, and emissions of internal combustion engine that operates on this biodiesel fuel.

Recent Advances in Biodiesel from Plants

“…There are several ways to obtain biodiesel feedstocks from plants. They include extraction of the plant oil by solvent extraction or by hydraulic press, supercritical fluid extraction, ultrasound-assisted extraction, and microwave-assisted extraction [61,74,81]. These methods are suitable for different plant materials, depending on the nature of the plant material and the desired yield [1,71,75,81].…”

“…To assess the quality of oil for biodiesel production, the fatty acid composition and free fatty acid content of the oil must be determined. Oils with high free fatty acids of over 3% must be esterified to reduce their free fatty acids before transesterification to biodiesel [74,76,77].…”

“…The fatty acid composition of the plant oil is an indication of its biodiesel quality and performance in compression ignition engines especially its cold flow properties [8,71,[74][75][76]. Plant oils whose structural fatty acid content has a sufficient number of double carbon bonds show promising biodiesel qualities such as good cetane number, good oxidative stability, lower viscosity with good engine atomization, and higher calorific value [1,71,72,74]. Table 1 shows some common biodiesel feedstocks with their fatty acid content.…”

“…Among the plant oil biodiesel studied, Jatropha curcas biodiesel and algae biodiesel stands out in terms of quality and good fuel properties for use in compression ignition engines [36,47,48,56,71,74,75]. Some studies [5,25,56,[76][77][78] even report that Jatropha seed oil or its blend with conventional diesel fuel can be used as diesel in compression ignition engines without engine modification.…”

Synthesis of Ca–Fe-based heterogeneous catalyst from waste shells and their application for transesterification of Jatropha oil

“…However, these non-edible oils from Jatropha seeds cannot be directly trans-esterified due to the high amount of free fatty acids (FFAs). Recent reports documented that Jatropha curcas nuts or seeds production potential ranges from 0.5 to 12 tons per year per hectare annually, and the oil production is expected to reach 1590 kg/ha [10,11]. For past decades, various homogeneous catalysts, i.e., H 2 SO 4 , HCl, NaOH, KOH, and CH 3 ONa) have been studied for transesterification in presence of alcohols (i.e., ethanol, methanol, propanol etc.).…”