Banana fuel

Queensland farmers are looking at using banana fuel to run their tractors.

The state's peak horticultural body is setting up a pilot facility at a banana plantation in far north Queensland to trial a clean methane gas made from banana waste.

Graeme Bush, who farms 400 acres of bananas in Tully in far north Queensland, is one of the directors of the Bush Holdings plantation, which is hosting the pilot plant.

He says the main reason for getting involved in the project is high petrol prices, after University of Queensland researchers last year discovered bananas could be broken down to form methane gas.

"All banana farmers, I'd say, have been looking at trying to do something with their by-product because in a normal year, we'd probably have 30 per cent waste," he said.

"So if on average every farmer has 30 per cent waste, that's a lot of waste out there you've got to try and do something with.

"We spend a lot of time and energy getting it to the shed, then all of a sudden it goes into a chopper and you're putting it back into a paddock for nothing.

"So at least this way, we will be getting hopefully something out of our waste."

Mr Bush says it is not surprising gas can be produced from fruit.

"You tip the waste into a pile and it smells like something shocking, so you would think it would be able to be turned into a gas or a liquid of some sort to be turned into fuel," he said.

Growcom, Queensland's peak horticultural body, is building the plant that Bush Holdings will operate for 12 months.

Commercial viability

Chief executive Jan Davis says they want to test the commercial viability before offering the technology to other banana growers.

"There were two reasons for doing this," she said.

"The first one is to get better efficiencies in our businesses but the second one was quite clearly to add to the value that we bring as natural greenhouse managers, to continue to develop our role as good environmental citizens."

But she says they don't have as much waste material this year after cyclone Larry devastated many banana crops.

"Interestingly enough, at the time we were putting this proposal together, the research that we had had done was on bananas and we were actually in a situation where we had an oversupply of banana plant material and this looked like a good way to find alternate uses for it that would give us an environmental benefit, as well as a market benefit," she said.

"Since earlier this year, we don't have lots of bananas around and we're going to have to work really hard over the next few months to make sure that we've got enough feed stock to run this plant."

The Queensland Environment Protection Agency is supporting the transition from the lab to the farm with a $200,000 grant to help kick-start the project.

Growcom and Bush Holdings expect the pilot plant to begin producing methane gas in five months' time.