Production
The aim of the Koulikoro farmers’ union is produce 2000 tonnes of jatropha nuts per year that can be used to yield 500,000 litres of biodiesel. An average jatropha hedge produces 0.8 kilos of nuts on an annual basis; a fully grown hedge produces 2 kilos. As 4 kilos of nuts are required to produce 1 litre of biodiesel a total of 1,000 km hedge is needed. To put this into perspective, a one hectare field is surrounded by 400 metres of hedge.

The region already contains around 4,000 farmers who have or are planning to plant jatropha hedges. Nurseries are being set up to provide the 15,000 kilos of seed that is required.

Nut storage barns have been built in locations decided by the farmers’ union. These are regularly emptied and their contents transported to the biodiesel factory (in biodiesel powered vehicles).

In the first year of growth the shrubs will not produce the necessary 500,000 litres of biodiesel. Therefore a mobile press will be used to reach the more remote villages and extract the nut oil on site. The resulting raw oil can then be collected in barrels to be transported to Koulikoro at a later date.

A byproduct of the pressing process is the “press cake” which happens to be a superb organic fertilizer and so reduces soil exhaustion. The increased soil quality only benefits future jatropha production.

Jatropha seeds and nuts

The Koulikoro factory presses the nuts and processes the oil into biodiesel using Dutch-built machinery.

The factory site

Biodiesel processing machinery

There are two buildings situated on the factory site. The first building contains the diesel ‘cracker’ and the second serves as storage for intermediary products. The courtyard is where incoming nuts are delivered and weighed. The production process requires no water or electricity as the factory is powered by a biodiesel generator. Energy for transport, the pressing and the oil refining processes are all provided by biodiesel or other byproducts.