Finlaysonia obovata—A renewable resource of plant hydrocarbons

Abstract

Because of the increased demand and depletion of fossil hydrocarbons, the researchers have now started to pay attention toward exploitation of new energy plants and biomass of plants as alternate source of fuels and petrochemicals. Mangroves which possess enormous economic potential and utilitarian value in the ecosystem are very promising as energy plants, because they are fast growing and most of them contain abundant fatty acids, hydrocarbons, and so forth. In this article, the isolation of a white waxy amorphous solid from the hexane extract of leaves of Finlaysonia obovata is described, a mangrove plant which was found to be a mixture of saturated straight-chain, branched-chain, and long-chain linear aliphatic hydrocarbons by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. The waxy solid showed the existence of hydrocarbons ranging from 8 to 30 carbon atoms. The waxy solid contains more than 70% of linear saturated long-chain hydrocarbons. Among the saturated hydrocarbons, the content of docosane and pentacosane were found to be the major ones. The other major saturated hydrocarbons are tetradecane, hexadecane, and triacontane. Its high carbon content (85-90%) and absence of nitrogen and oxygen indicates its good fuel quality. The similarity of physical/ spectral characteristics of the waxy component with other renewable sources of hydrocarbons from the literature is discussed, and the results obtained are very promising.