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07
Tobacco Fuel
Dr Sergio Tommasini has a dream: fields of tobacco as far as the eye can see, thousands of hectares of green stretching across South Africa, Brazil and Europe. But he is not some latter-day peddler of a cancer-causing weed. In fact, if you smoke one of his leaves you’ ll likely spit it out in disgust, says Dr Tommasini, managing director of Sunchem Holding, an Italian research and development company. For this tobacco has no nicotine. It is grown for its seeds, which are rich in oil that can be used to
Dr. Sergio Tommasini make bio jet fuel. And a tobacco-powered Boeing plane will be roaring along the Cape Town-Johannesburg corridor showing tests within months, if things go to plan.‘ It’ s going to be the greenest flight ever,’ said Dr Tommasini. Launched in December 2014, Project Solaris is collaboration between his company, the sustainable jet fuel supplier SkyNRG, and some private investors, supported by South African Airways and the aerospace company Boeing. The EU has part-funded their practicability study to test the practicality of the process before it is scaled up. The hybrid tobacco, Solaris, for which Sunchem holds the international patent, currently cultivates on 50 hectares of land in Limpopo province, in the northeast of South Africa. Some two to three tones of crude oil can be compelled from its seeds per hectare per year, says Dr Tommasini. Solaris has been bred to have leaves much smaller than the flappy ones of a normal tobacco plant, and to have oily seeds. The scientists believe it can overcome the disreputable troubles that ascended around first-generation biofuels such as sugar cane and maize,