00:00.
00:05Despite being in the heart of North Queensland's dry tropics,
00:09water has never been a worry for Stephen Lorry on Polyfanger Station.
00:14There's a natural lake on this property. It's about 13 kilometres around the water's edge.
00:19His parents bought the 27,000 hectare property just west of Charters Towers in North Queensland back in 2004.
00:31He and his wife Emily and their daughter Caitlin breed cattle.
00:36That's a natural lagoon. Yes.
00:40But now the lake will water a new venture for the family as they take part in a trial growing
00:47Pongamia.
00:49Always looking at different options. If something else interesting comes up that can work in conjunction with the cattle, definitely
00:55interested in it.
00:59Pongamia is a legume tree that produces seed pods containing oil.
01:05It's that oil that's caught the attention of renewable fuel companies.
01:10So we are in our 10 hectare Pongamia trial paddock.
01:15So these are Pongamia trees that were planted about seven months ago.
01:21Keti Ketmontri is overseeing a trial on how to grow Pongamia on grazing land.
01:27She's the project lead for Silvo Plus, a company integrating livestock with renewable fuel production.
01:35So how long will they take before they start producing the seeds?
01:38So it takes about five years for them to get to their first harvestable yield and then eight to maturity.
01:46The seeds have a hard husk.
01:49So it's an interesting shape.
01:51It's like a bit flat.
01:52And so it's not like the conventional say canola seed, which is round.
01:57It needs a bit of something to remove the shell or the husk, the pod or the outside so we
02:04can access the seed inside.
02:06And then the seed gets crushed for the oil and that gets sort of treated through conventional pressing and solvent
02:14extraction.
02:15There are Pongamia trials like this one breaking ground across Australia with some trees already at maturity ready to have
02:22their oil extracted.
02:23But there's currently no biorefineries to actually process that oil into biofuel.
02:30We store that ethanol for a few weeks before coming in into these reactors here.
02:34Ed Mason is the founder of Jet Zero Australia, a company developing clean aviation fuel.
02:41He has plans to build a biorefinery in Townsville.
02:47We're looking to take bioethanol and produce about 100 million litres of sustainable aviation fuel,
02:54or synthetic aviation fuel defence call it, as well as renewable diesel.
02:58And that's a material volume for Townsville, enough to supply most of the airports in this region.
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