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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
"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.
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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?
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
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).
I think it is more of a matter of how burning grass or any bio-fuel for that matter fits in with the carbon cycle. Burning of oil, coal and natural gas releases carbon that has been locked up underground for millions of years as opposed to grass which collects it from the air and thus isn't adding any more to current amounts.
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 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 )