Re: Renewable Energy Stuff (was citizenship silliness) (fwd)

[Jim Burnes <jvb@ssds.com>]

On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, Jim Choate wrote:

(risking /dev/nullification "is that like jury nullification?")

> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 11:26:47 -0600 (MDT)
> > From: Jim Burnes <jvb@ssds.com>
> > Subject: Renewable Energy Stuff (was citizenship silliness)
> 
> > Apparently hemp hurd gassification yields a fairly sizeable, renewable
> > amount of energy per acre.  Lemme see if I have the reference....
> 
> > Historically Hemp (Cannabis Sativa L.) has been a very high yielding plant
> > (Haney 1975).  Assuming that hemp produces up to 4 tons/acre seed plus 10
> > tons/acre stalks, Table 1 shows how many gallons of liquid fuel import could be
> > saved by each of the following proven biomass fuel conversion routes.
> > 
> >        Table 1. Conversion technologies for hemp stalks and hemp oil
> > 
> > CONVERSION                                           CONVERSION GASOLINE EQUIV
> > TECHNOLOGY                                             EFF - %    GAL/ACRE
> > 
> > 1  Ethanol from fermentation of hydrolyzed cellulose    20      200
> > 2  Digestion of whole stalks to methane                 50      500
> > 3  Producer gas from thermal gasification of stalks     85      1000
> > 4  Methanol from syngas from gasification of stalks     65      750
> > 5  Methanol from pyrolysis of stalks                    3       30
> > 
> > OIL SEEDS - 4 tons/acre
> > 
> > 6  Hemp Seed oil from Seeds, no conversion              100     300
> > 7  Biobioesel premium diesel fuel from hemp seed        90      270
> >     oil combined chemically with methanol
> 
> You're going to seriously claim that 1 gallon of hemp oil is equivalent to 3
> gallons of gasoline? I don't think so. I've seen hemp burn and it don't burn
> anywhere near that efficiently.

I think you misunderstood.  They are claiming "gasoline equivalent
gallons/acre" -- not that 1 gallon of hemp oil = 3 gallons of gasoline.
And were not talking about "burning" hemp in that sense.  In this
particular case were talking about hemp-based biodiesel.

> 
> I also notice it doesn't mention what it costs to raise that 4 tons/acre...
> 

Raising a full acre of hemp in that matter is something I don't have the
data on.  However, hemp is widely known as a low-maintenance crop -- that
translates little to no fertilizer.  After that we have the price of the
land/month, servicing loans on the farm equipment, labor costs, taxes,
energy, water etc.  Typical business overhead.   And for that 1000 galgas
eq/acre.

Certainly nothing out of the ordinary compared to the overhead in
the oil industry.  Although on a cost/gallon overhead I don't know.
Obviously this would take a least one growth season.

ObCrypto: In the case of TEOTWAWKI from Y2K, we are going to need
energy to run our computers and crypto on.  This might also be 
important to the people wanting to run a packet radio relay net.
(even though the then non-existant FCC might not like them
using crypto on a packet link)

I copied Tom Reed and Agua Das on this since they can address
the tech matters more thoroughly than I can.

Other than that we should probably take this off list.

Jim