OIL DOESN'T GROW ON TREES - BUT IT MIGHT ONE DAY

Author: By Robert Cooke Globe Staff

Date: Tuesday, September 21, 1982
Page: ?????
Section: ECONOMY

And the dream, says chemist Melvin Calvin, is to force a mating of the two to yield a new plant that grows well in the arid West while making oil by the barrelful.

Thus Calvin, and some of his colleagues, speak of "energy plantations" where up to 20 percent of this nation's liquid fuel might be grown. And, with oil at $30-plus per barrel, that's big money.

For the moment oil is plentiful, and the need for exotic new sources seems less immediate. With oil company earnings being pinched, and with the oil cartel's members starting to compete with one another for customers, the energy crunch seems to have evaporated. For now.

But, as the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) has demonstrated, America's oil supply picture can turn around overnight. And in the long run, even without OPEC, at present rates of use oil must eventually become scarce and expensive.

That's why Calvin, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist from the University of California at Berkeley, is so enthusiastic about growing his own oil. He sees a way around the oil squeeze, but without cutting down on food production.

In the past few years Calvin has been pushing the idea that a good percentage of US energy needs can probably be met by cultivating and harvesting the right kinds of oil-producing plants. His own research has shown that one species, the Western weed called Euphorbia lathyris, can already yield up to six barrels of oil and six barrels of alcohol per acre per year, with enough burnable residue left over to run the oil-extraction plant.

Calvin is so enthusiastic about these prospects, in fact, that he comes across like a short, bald preacher vigorously making an important point about sin: repent, repent, repent.

With near-evangelistic vigor, for instance, Calvin runs through the organic chemistry of the oily molecules produced by the plants, pointing out where changes might be made to improve the natural products.

Industrial interest in Calvin's idea hasn't been quite so enthusiastic, but he did win some research funding from the Mobil Oil Co., with the help of Mobil's Dr. Paul Weiss. As part of that research, some latex collected from euphorbia plants was tested for refinability.

"We took some of his plant saps and passed them over a Mobil catalyst to make some good quality gasoline," said a Mobil spokesman, Roger Mahey. "It worked. It did indeed make gasoline out of it."

Translation: Oilmen are interested, but they're not trading in their Texas wells for a Brazilian plantation.

Calvin, who won the 1961 Nobel Prize for his work explaining how plants use solar energy in photosynthesis, isn't the only scientist searching for plants that can be squeezed for oil. A US Department of Agriculture researcher, L.H. Princen, at the Northern Regional Research Center in Peoria, Ill., has also studied many other plants that may fill that role. And some of these grow in even drier areas.

In addition, similar studies aimed at finding a new, domestic source of rubber are under way with a desert shrub called guayule. And a new source for a special lubricating oil - heretofore only available from whales - has been found in the jojoba bean, which also grows in the Western deserts.

Calvin's work with the milky-sapped euphorbia, however, seems to be moving ahead rapidly, especially since he's already experimenting with genetic engineering techniques to make dramatic changes. And, if the oil in the euphorbia plant can be improved by adding the right gene from the Brazilian copaifera tree, then Calvin's system will be that much better.

At present, Calvin said, his research team is trying to get new plants to grow from their fused euphorbia/copaifera cells. So far, the cells have been grown to what is called the callus stage - producing a jumbled lump of cells - "but we have no leaves yet."

The appearance of leaves is important, he explained, because then he can begin testing to see if the right gene has been transferred from the copaifera tree into the euphorbia weed, forming a new type of plant. The goal is to get a gene from the diesel tree that makes a special enzyme that cuts a long-chain hydrocarbon molecule in half to yield the lighter type of oil.

"I have no idea whether it's going to succeed or not," Calvin says. "So far it's something that hasn't happened. But it is the simplest and cheapest approach" to improvement of the oil-producing weed.

Odds are, however, that nothing very useful will come from such cell fusion experiments for a very long time. Joining such widely different cells to get a new plant is a complex and difficult process, something that has not yet been achieved. The widest cross achieved so far is between the tomato and potato to yield a plant called the pomato.

Because success with cell fusion may not come soon, Calvin, like workers with the other crops, is also working to improve euphorbia through the slower but better-understood technique of crossbreeding.

Calvin estimates that 20 percent of US oil needs might be met by growing such oil-producing plants on 60 million acres of Western land - an area about the size of Arizona.

"My feeling is that if farmers would get off the dime and grow it, then the oil companies would buy it," he said.

Asked about the quality of the oil that comes from euphorbia plants, Calvin answered that it has already been carefully studied, that "it has already been run through the Mobil (Oil Co.) cracker, and all that sweet stuff comes right out."

Mahey, at Mobil Oil added, nonetheless, that Calvin's proposal isn't considered even close to being commercially practical yet, even though "there's no question that it would work" to use the oils from plants.

As for the Brazilian tree, Calvin first came across it several years ago while visiting Brazil. He added:

"The Brazilian natives have used this material (oil from the copaifera trees* for many years as a lubricant and as a component of cosmetics. The trunk of the tree was drilled, and a pipe was inserted through which the oil would drip, approximately 20 liters per tap. The tapping was performed twice a year and a diesel-like material from these trees can be used directly in automobile engines without further refining.

"At the present time, experiments are under way in Brazil to determine the feasibility of using this type of oil directly in automobiles."

To use copaifera trees for diesel oil production, large plantations - similar to rubber plantations - would have to be set up. Like rubber trees, or like maple trees in wintery Vermont, the trees would be tapped periodically to drain sap from their trunks.

Euphorbia plants, on the other hand, would be grown like row crops to be harvested by machine. The plants would be dried and ground up so the latex can be extracted with solvents. Sugars in the plants would be fermented into alcohol, and the remaining dry fibers would be burned to run the oil extraction factory.

Says Calvin:

"There is no question that energy agriculture is critical for the development of alternate energy supplies of liquid fuel. The concept is economically feasible, the plant species are available and the technology has been developed."

Nevertheless, it will be a long time yet before you pull up to a copaifera tree for a fill up.

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