Bio-Fuels
Research is on the cusp of developing technologies that can convert common cellulose efficiently and directly into sugars, or even biodiesel. This breakthrough would revolutionize the alternative fuel industry, because it would make production yields surpass anything we've been able to accomplish previously, from almost any bio-fuel or plant material available. If and when this happens, it will change the rules of the game dramatically- there will no longer be the quest for high sugars, high carbohydrates, or high terpenes, but simply plants that produce huge volumes of cellulose- the basic building block of all plant tissues. Basically it would open the door for an efficient conversion to fuel of anything that grows! Bio-fuel candidates must be looked at by their fuel target and method of conversion. The basic conversion processes and some of the crops that have the potential to supply their respective streams as feedstocks are:
Combustion:
The process where bio-fuel is burned, resulting in the production of heat. This consumes a wide variety of bio-fuel feedstocks ranging from municipal green-waste and wood and lumber by-products, to fruit tree prunings and other similar, dry and easily combustible materials used to fire co-generation electrical plants or drying operations. Combustible feedstocks can even be compressed and formed into pellets for a very hungry pellet-fuel market, both domestically and for export. In areas of the country where there are no burn restrictions, pellet-fuel stoves heat average homes at about one-fifth to one-third the cost of burning fossil fuels. The demand for pellet-fuel products was so great that the domestic supply was completely sold-out during the last two heating seasons. Extensive research has been done in Canada on the use of switchgrass as a feedstock for pellet production. Additional experimentation is currently underway in various U.S. locations. These switchgrass studies are reporting excellent results.Bio-Ethanol Production:
Sugars, and carbohydrates within plant tissue are converted into sugars and fermented producing ethanol, a process of timeless roots - in the form of Grandpa's "corn-mash and still" of days gone by. Little did he know that "burning feeling as it goes down..." also burned pretty well in the engine of a car! Corn is being replaced as a feed-stock by new generations of grasses, such as sugar-cane, switchgrass, Miscanthus and sorghum which have higher yields per acre, and often thrive in marginal farmlands and conditions.Methane and Synthetic Gas Production:
Organic material is processed in anaerobic digesters, or "cracked" under extreme heat, producing a usable gas very similar in properties and uses to natural gas, or propane. Feedstock candidates for this process must simply be "bio-mass," especially well suited if high in cellulose, sugars, ligninŐs, or terpenes. Best candidates are high density, low-water-volume grasses, bio-engineered harvestable tree/wood-stock crops, forest by-products, food by-products and processing wastes.Biodiesel Production:
A direct conversion from seed or plant oils, or sap from plant tissues, into a usable, liquid-fuel, diesel product. Some plant oils are useable in this form with only the simplest applications of cleaning and purification of the oil. The production of biodiesel from plant saps or latexes often requires a chemical conversion that is more complex, but progress is being made in this technology. Feedstock candidates for this use are seed-oil crops, some of the species of the genus Euphorbia, and even a common weed of the San Joaquin Valley is being investigated. There has been a good deal of research in the scientific community of additional plants from the tropics with potential in this area, but we don't include them in the discussion here because of the limited growing climate- not applicable to California and U.S. farming, and/or because of the extreme amount of hand-picking, planting, and harvesting involved, rendering them uneconomical.
There probably is not a farmer out there who hasn't played out in his head the grand fantasy of planting seeds in the ground, watching the crop grow, and pouring the fruit of the harvest right into that money-grubbing fuel tank of his tractors, trucks, pumps, and generators! And after the tanks are all full, to be able to "fire-up" the left-overs in producing electricity to sell to the grid, or derive fuel products- not from the black-oil depths of the earth, but from the golden harvest of energy sequestered from the sun by living crops in their fields. In its purest essence, that's what the new vision of bio-fuels is all about. Certainly, bio-fuel may be waste or residual materials from other agricultural enterprises needing to be disposed of or put to good use, but in its most exciting form it is fields of plants selected for their ability to convert the energy of sunlight into plant tissues (biomass), sugars and carbohydrates for direct conversion into ethanol, or oils and terpenes for the production of bio-diesel. To make the energy transfer complete requires modern technologies and equipment capable of converting bio-fuel materials into reliable energy products compatible with machinery and equipment that were previously dependant on petroleum. A lesson that was recently and sorely learned was the experiment with corn production for ethanol conversion. It was immediately discovered that it's probably not a good idea to tie up the best, most productive farmland, and a substantial portion of the world's food supply, growing corn to distill it into something to pour into your gas tank. So the effort must be to select and utilize bio-fuel crop candidates that will grow in marginal soils and conditions, thereby turning unused farmland into productive fuel generation. Imagine this conversation on a farm, "Son, here is your five acres. Work the land, plant it, take good care of your crop and harvest it, and it will supply you with all the gas you'll need to stay working, date your gal, and go to college. Get your degree, come back, and do the same on hundreds, or thousands of acres of lousy land, and provide for your family... and everybody else!" A dream come true? I think so!
Contributed by: Tom Jesch, Bio-Gem Ag. Enterprises. Escondido, CA