Slashdot Mirror
Burn Grass, Get Green Biofuel
Roland Piquepaille writes "Do you want to use an economical and environmentally friendly biofuel? Just grow grass. Burning grass pellets will produce an energy-efficient biofuel, according to Jerry Cherney, a professor of agriculture at Cornell University. In this news release, 'Grass as Fuel,' he says "Burning grass pellets makes sense; after all, it takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass for pellets, but it takes 70 million years to make fossil fuels." Unfortunately, there is nothing like a grass political lobby in Washington, so he might not be heard. But with current oil prices, more and more people will be tempted to use cheaper -- and cleaner -- sources of energy. This overview contains many more details and references about this environmentally friendly biofuel made from grass."
Another Roland Piquepaille story
Here is what he wrote if your interested:
samedi 2 avril 2005
Burn Grass, Get Green Biofuel
Do you want to use an economical and environmentally friendly biofuel? Just grow grass. Burning grass pellets will produce an energy-efficient biofuel, according to Jerry Cherney, a professor of agriculture at Cornell University. In this news release, "Grass as Fuel," he says "Burning grass pellets makes sense; after all, it takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass for pellets, but it takes 70 million years to make fossil fuels." Unfortunately, there is anything like a grass political lobby in Washington, so he might not be heard. But with current oil prices, more and more people will be tempted to use cheaper -- and cleaner -- sources of energy. Read more...
Here is the introduction of the Cornell University news release.
Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States.
Yet burning grass pellets as a biofuel is economical, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable, says a Cornell University forage crop expert.
This alternative fuel easily could be produced and pelleted by farmers and burned in modified stoves built to burn wood pellets or corn, says Jerry Cherney, the E.V. Baker Professor of Agriculture. Burning grass pellets hasn't caught on in the United States, however, Cherney says, primarily because Washington has made no effort to support the technology with subsidies or research dollars.
Why is it important for environment?
Burning grass pellets makes sense; after all, it takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass for pellets, but it takes 70 million years to make fossil fuels," says Cherney, who notes that a grass-for-fuel crop could help supplement farmers' incomes.
Cherney points out that grass biofuel pellets are much better for the environment because they emit up to 90 percent less greenhouse gases than oil, coal and natural gas do. Furthermore, he says, grass is perennial, does not require fertilization and can be grown on marginal farmland.
Cherney recently presented his conclusions about grass biofuel at the Greenhouse Gases & Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture and Forestry conference, held March 21-24 in Baltimore.
You can find the abstract of his talk, "Grass Bioenergy in the Northeastern USA," on this page. Just scroll a little bit or search for Cherney on the page.
If you're interested in this subject, here is a link to the July 2004 issue of the "Dairy & Field Crops digest" (PDF format, 12 pages, 728KB). The article "Grass Management for Forage or Biofuel?" appears on pages 7 and 8.
In this article, Cherney argues that "grass is converted to useable heat at over 80% efficiency, with an energy output:input ratio exceeding 10:1, compared to other bioenergy sources with typicalsystem energy output:input ratios around 1:1."
The cost-effectiveness of pelletized grass as a fuel results from:
* efficient use of low cost marginal farmland for solar energy collection
* minimal fossil fuel input use in field production and energy conversion
* minimal biomass quality upgrading which limits energy loss from the feedstock
* efficient combustion in advanced yet modestly priced and simple to use devices
* replacement of expensive high-grade energyforms in space and water heating
Cherney is convincing, but it's hard to help him while living in Paris.
Sources: Cornell University News Service, March 31, 2005; and various websites
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
"So what does your car run?"
"Grass."
"Smokin."
Nobody rides for free!
Unfortunately, there is anything like a grass political lobby in Washington, so he might not be heard.
I beg to differ.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
One thing I don't get is how burning grass is not seen as having the same emissions problems as burning other organic material.
I'm no expert on American environmental regulations, but wouldn't a low-emission or zero-emission fuel source be considered more highly for North American use?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
So is this burning of grass somehow different from the smoking of grass?
I guess our running out of fuel in the future won't be the end of the world.. there are always sources of energy, perhaps not as easily attainable but nonetheless viable.
However, what about certain plastics, etc. that we need, that are made from oil? Perhaps we should start moving towards alternative energy now, and save the fuel for what we need it for?
I am by no means an expert, so please let me know if I'm way off base here.
Tommy Chong? Is that what you call yourself now? Trippy, dude...
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You'd know this if you weren't smoking it.
I joined NORML for a while a decade or two ago, but whichever years it was, they tended to be a bit too stoned to actually keep track of a mailing list :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... my own personal Grass Pellet Refinery from ThinkGeek, then I'll be excited.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
A huge market barrier is that consumers won't take the chance because they're not confident they will find gas stations that supply this stuff (not to mention all the other alternatives that have been around for a while). And what's in it for the gas stations to get started in investing in whatever equipment is necessary to store and pump this stuff?
Sorry to be Johnny Raincloud, but big changes, even if for the better with no apparent logical downside, tend not to happen. Regarding high gas prices, enough people are satisfied simply with bitching about the prices and won't bother making any dramatic changes. They're enough of them for the market to get away with blocking out newcomers like grass.
At 20 bucks per gram for fuel, I'd be better off taking the bus.
Ok this sounds like an awesome idea. And let's be honest it goes back as far as peat burning stoves to my knowledge, possibly before. But, can you truly see the US government going for such a cheap reaalistic idea? For that matter can you see the American public going back to something such as this? You will have people in arms about the smell, the smoke, and let's not forget that cheaper means less to tax. I just can't see this happening anytime in the near future.
Also, would you be able to use "field trash" from corn and soybean fields to manufacture the pellets, or does it require green plant matter?
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
What about all the land it takes to grow the grass? What about all the fresh water it takes to grow the grass? What about all the energy and logistics it takes to put the water on the grass? What about the energy it takes to harvest the grass and turn it into a form that's useful? How much grass would one have to grow to actually put a minor dent in the fossil fuel consumption of the world? After the dust settles, what would it cost relative to gasoline or oil?
Why does it seem like they always fail to mention this stuff?
What does the mower run on?
I, for one, look forward to the new Ford Taurus, which travels down the interstate grazing the median line. At least with this new model, the bovine name DOES make sense!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
a grass roots campaign to get this one going.
I've read quite a few articles about this sort of alternative fuel in the farm publications I recieve, and I think it would be more difficult to get alternative heating going in urban areas due to the size of heating units (the ones I've seen pictures of are the size of a small shed or larger) and the infrastructure needed to deliver grass/wood/grain as a fuel source. But for those in rural areas where one often needs to get fuel hauled in anyway, why not? I have to get oil delivered to my farm for home heating anyway, so it's not a stretch to consider setting up a heater than can burn straw bales, or grain that these days seems almost worthless anyway.
Carbon Dioxide emissions are really different, because the problem is greenhouse heating caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Burning oil and coal takes carbon that's been in the ground for a long time and pumps it into the atmosphere, which is a problem. But growing grass or trees for fuel takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, using solar energy and chlorophyll to split it up into various plant compounds, so any carbon dioxide emissions you get from burning the grass are just moving around carbon dioxide you took out of the atmosphere last growing season, so it's no problem.
ObDoperReference: Hemp is a really good grass for applications like this. It grows fast, doesn't need pesticides, you can do useful things with the seeds, the fiber can be used for cloth if you don't feel like burning it, and as a bonus you get a bunch of flowers that you can divert to other applications.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Unfortunately, when you do the numbers, we do not have enough land to replace more that a few percent of our fossil fuel consuption with biomass.
An article in Physics Today discusses this. They only talk about fertile agricultural land, but even if you were to use marginal land, the argument stays the same.
My great grandfather had a mode of transportation that ran on grass.
I had been thinking about how much it sucks to go the landfill with my garbage, and how much it sucks to mow my lawn. I recycle a lot of stuff, but I still produce a lot of non-recyclable food and paper waste. I would compost, but I don't have anything I could do with the compost.
Cellulose, one of the primary components of grass and other plants, is a polymer of glucose, and can be converted back into glucose by the action of several natural enzymes (like the ones found in the bacteria in the guts of termites) and by concentrated sulfuric acid. Glucose, under the action of additonal enzymes, like those found in yeast, can be turned into ethanol. I did some research, and it turns out a company called Arkenol Fuels already has a factory that implements this process with sulfuric acid.
My thought was that it would be excellent to develope smaller, at-home version of this process. If it also used sulfuric acid (as opposed to the termite enzymes), you could probably put just about any cellulose-containing or food waste into the process, and get out fuel for an automobile.
All of us in the US are going to have to get on the alternative fuel bandwagon soon whether we like it or not. If the current oil futures boom is any indication, we're at or very close to the Peak Oil point, and it's only going to get worse from here on out.
Most people fear higher prices at the pump, I welcome them. Anything that gets people out of SUVs and in hybrids/bicycles/walking modes of transportation will at least help give us more time to use oil while it's still plentiful to build solar panels, wind turbines, and the things we'll need to avoid going back to a 100% lo-tech farming nation.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
Seems like a compelling argument. It has lots of advantages, and little drawbacks.
However, I could not find this info in the article:
Let us say I have a growing season of May to September (South end of Ontario).
What is the amount of land needed to run a car for a year, or heat a house for the winter?
When this is answered, one can know the amount of grass-mass needed, and whether it would be a commercially viable mass market thing, or a private grow-your-own thing.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
E85 fuel will be the perfect for the migration. Current cars that are "fuel flex" will take any mixure of gasoline and E-85 and wont be a bother to the driver or cause for worry. In fact, E-85 is nothing but 15% gas and 85% ethanol hence it's name.
Though only a select few cars are certified to use E-85, basically any car can run the stuff provider you have higher flow fuel injectors, fuel lines and tank that wont corrode, different O2 sensors, and a modified fuel map in the ECU. Not that hard of a conversion, but it can be done for around 2 to 3 grand I would imagine. And you can be sure there will be a huge aftermarket for these conversions once gas gets very expensive.
Life is not for the lazy.
Let's start a grass-roots movement!
*duck!*
A pretty good post over at Peak Oil Optimist makes the obvious point about this nonsense: if it were really an economically feasible alternative source of energy, it wouldn't require subsidies. Saying that it beats other biomass crops in terms of energy input to output ratio isn't saying much-- ethanol production, for example, is typically a net energy loser (but it exists due to heavy subsidies). Maybe we need to stop spending so much money on farm subsidies, and focus on more realistic avenues for alternative energy?
Hemp (yes, cannabis) is absolutely the best plant for this application, and without peer in the overall output of biomass gasses. Jack Herer wrote the book on hemp as a source of biomass fuel and offers a $100,000 chllenge to prove him wrong!
Grass for fuel! yeah, but not that kind, man!
Pure biodiesel will corrode rubber fuel lines and gaskets.
:/
Older diesels (like mine) would need inorganic fuel lines and gaskets to go B100. Of course, I can't even find B20 in my neck of the woods yet
Just sayin'.
If you're going to burn something to get energy out of it, then burn it REALLY HOT in a VERY LARGE furnace so you can reduce it to CO2 and water, and take advantage of thermodynamics. I'm not advocating big power plants, but they are the best bang for the buck as far as extracting energy from carbon fuel and creating the least amount of pollution from it.
Well, have you ever seen Roland Piquepaille and Jon Katz in the same room at the same time?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I seem to remember a problem with soil nutrients going up in smoke. There are all types of studies pointing to the reduction of top soil. That is why farmers have to rotate crops, add fertilizer, etc.
The grass pellets may sound good now, but may have some serious down side.
A friend of mine had a wood pellet heater for his house. It looked like a wood stove with a hopper on the side. Not all that big. Of course they had bags and bags of wood pellets in thier garage...right next to the dog food.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Actually, burning fossil fuels releases CO2 from carbon that's been sequestered for 70 million years or so, while burning renewable or sustainable plant matter simply recycles carbon that was sequestered within the past few months. In other words, burning fossil fuels increases the net CO2 in the atmosphere, which burning plant matter doesn't.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I think the point is that the act of producing plant-based fuels removes CO2 from the atmosphere.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Grass uses a LOT of water. (Not surprising, since it's got a lot of surface area.) Acre for acre it takes more water than trees or pretty much any food crop. It evaporates something like six times as much water as a lake.
So you're not going to want to convert land to growing grass if it doesn't have a lot of water available allready. So much for the southwest - and a lot of areas where you have the other main ingredient: sunlight.
But if you're already growing and mowing it, what a deal.
I'd love to get a lawnmower that delivered fuel pellets rather than mulch that needs to be hauled away or worked back into the ground. Given the price of natural and the small amount of heating I need to do in the climate where I live, a pellet stove burning lawn trimmings would be a godsend.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So, burning grass pellets produces less greenhouse gasses? So, if the carbon in the pellets isn't burning, what exactly is, and why are those byproducts not harmful?
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
You can't ignore this grass lobby!
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Nuclear power produces highly toxic waste and byproducts.
Nuclear power produces highly toxic waste and byproducts.
Duh. These are produced in relatively small quantities, unlike coal-burning power stations.
Wind power, meanwhile, is localised and unreliable. You can't use it as your main energy source because you can't predict how much you'll get.
As for the atmosphere, wind power is neutral, at best. The energy extracted from the wind is promptly returned to the atmosphere as heat. Really, it's just indirect solar energy (like hydro).
If you want to actually cool the Earth down, your best bet is to dump megatons of dust in the upper atmosphere (cf. Krakatoa).
Burning grass would close the CO2-cycle, but asides from the fact that growing grass uses lots of water, as mentioned in the thread, the process of burning releases nitrogenoxides and sulfuroxides which also contribute to the greenhouse-effect. Therefore one would have to convert the pellets into a gas or, better yet, a carbon which gets into a gasoues state at about 150C. Then you can feed this to a fuell-cell. Why use hydrogen when you can use ie ethanol and methanol. Big advantage: everyone gets happier:=)
Exactly the point -- Burning a large volume of something that didn't grow recently adds to atmospheric CO2, but if you grow all your fuel you are just cycling through the same carbon over and over.
As an aside, the idea that oil comes from 70 million year old organic matter is pretty much dead. Oil and natural gas have been found far below the organic layer, indicating a different origin, some process that happens deeper within the planet. The process is not known, but there is no reason to think it isn't still happening. As long as we keep developing deeper drilling techniques we may never run out of oil.
The best reason to search for an alternative to oil is the problems created by overloading the atmosphere with CO2. Switching to something totally replaceable can't be a bad thing. The article mentions that grass pellets produce 96% as much BTUs as wood pellets and can be grown on marginal farmland. Sounds like a great avenue to research.
I agree that biomass is worth investigating, but there have been dozens of projects in the area over the years, and nothing usable so far.
I have successfully run a 1988 Citroen CX 25DTR on normal diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, waste veg oil, waste hydraulic oil, and odd mixtures of these things. With the waste veg oil there was no smoke at all from the exhaust even under very heavy load at full power - and only a slight smell from the exhaust. It does *not* smell like greasy chips!
Sorry for the rant, but some statements are just stupid. More information can be found at Woods Hole Organic Geochemistry group ( http://dynatog.whoi.edu/ ), at the Newcastle U site ( http://nrg.ncl.ac.uk ) or on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_geochemistry )
Sorry, but DU isn't nuclear waste.. And neither it's really radioactive. But it's about as healthy as asbestos to breathe.
For those interested here's an excellent but long dry 1993 paper from the USGS that gives arguments on both sides of the biogenic/abiogenic debate.
More recently I read that the abiogenic theory is quietly but not publicly accepted by most scientists involved, because the leading biogenesis adherents are highly influential. The phrase that stuck in my mind was that abiogenesis is just "waiting for a few more obituaries," or words to that effect. I tried to find that article but no luck.
Anyway here are the key arguments according to the USGS: (sorry for the long quote). Whichever side you believe, the issue has been debated for many years by many experts, so dismissing either argument as "just stupid" is just arrogantly ignorant.
In favor of the biogenic origin of petroleum, the following four observations have been advanced:
(1) Petroleum contains groups of molecules which are clearly identified as the breakdown products of complex, but common, organic molecules that occur in plants, and that could not have been built up in a non-biological process.
(2) Petroleum frequently shows the phenomenon of optical activity, i.e. a rotation of the plane of polarization when polarized light is passed through it. This implies that molecules which can have either a right-handed or a left-handed symmetry are not equally represented, but that one symmetry is preferred. This is normally a characteristic of biological materials and absent in fluids of non-biological origin.
(3) Some petroleums show a clear preference for molecules with an odd number of carbon atoms over those with an even number. Such an odd-even effect can be understood as arising from the breakdown of a class of molecules that are common in biological substances, and may be difficult to account for in other ways.
(4) Petroleum is mostly found in sedimentary deposits and only rarely in the primary rocks of the crust below; even among the sediment, it favors those that are geologically young. In many cases such sediment appears to be rich in carbonaceous materials that were interpreted as of biological origin, and as source material for the petroleum deposit.
On the other side of the argument, in favor of an origin from deeply buried materials incorporated in the Earth when it formed, the following observations have been cited:
(1) Petroleum and methane are found frequently in geographic patterns of long lines or arcs, which are related more to deep-seated large-scale structural features of the crust, than to the smaller scale patchwork of the sedimentary deposits.
(2) Hydrocarbon-rich areas tend to be hydrocarbon-rich at many different levels, corresponding to quite different geological epochs, and extending down to the crystalline basement that underlies the sediment. An invasion of an area by hydrocarbon fluids from below could better account for this than the chance of successive deposition.
(3) Some petroleums from deeper and hotter levels lack almost completely the biological evidence . Optical activity and the odd-even carbon number effect are sometimes totally absent, and it would be difficult to suppose that such a thorough destruction of the biological molecules had occurred as would be required to account for this, yet leaving the bulk substance quite similar to other crude oils.
(4) Methane is found in many locations where a biogenic origin is improbable or where biological deposits seem inadequate: in great ocean rifts in the absence of any substantial sediments; in fissures in igneous and metamorphic rocks, even at great depth; in active volcanic regions, even where there is a minimum of sediments; and there are massive amounts of methane hydrates (methane-water ice combinations) in permafrost and ocean deposits, where it is doubtful that an adequate quantity and distribution of biological source material is present.
(5) The hydrocarbon deposits of a large area often show common chemical o