Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Palatine, IL
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 4:01 pm Post subject: [Alcohol 3] Cannabis Ethanol?
I've been reading this site and lifeaftertheoilcrash.net for a few weeks now, and I agree with the peak oilists that there is currently no alternative to using oil, including ethanol created from corn or potatoes due to the fact that we consume way too much to be able to farm enough of.
I've seen ratios for how many gallons of ethanol you can derive from one acre of corn and it is obviously no where near enough. But is anyone aware of and could share with me:
How much ethanol you can derive from from one acre of cannibis? More or less than with corn?
Would you get more or less ethanol from cannibis than corn, and would there be a greater amount of suitable farmland to grow more cannibis than corn?
I can't confirm or dispute your estimate but given that ethanol is produced from starch, I don't see how cannabis could be close to or better than corn. I know that cannabis is a somewhat decent oil crop and with more concerted efforts such as traditional breeding/hybridization cannabis could become an even better oil crop, just as targeted traditional breeding and hybridization led to highly enhanced THC levels.
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 5:01 pm Post subject: hmmm
Surfed the link.
No links to supporting data
No studies cited
No specifc claims of how or why this could be possible
ummm.... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Joined: Apr 17, 2004 Posts: 984 Location: Tulsa, Ok
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 6:04 pm Post subject: Fuel?
I am not sure about its potential as your describing.
I do know that the fibers of its stems make a good rope. Hemp rope. When natural gas costs get high enough the industry could be revived. Most current ropes are made in some manor or another with petroluem in them. They also make a long wearing clothing from hemp.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject:
Could you go into more detail why methanol's bad for the air? I thought it's ills were comparable to gasoline, the only problems being it might absorb more easily into water, freezes at low temps (solved with 15% gas blend), and is less energy dense then gas. What's the exhaust issues, is it much worse then stnadard gas? _________________ "Our forces are now closer to the center of Baghdad than most American commuters are to their downtown office."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, April 2003
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1929 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 12:06 am Post subject: About Methanol
I can oblige you partially. I do not have the spare time right at the moment to lay out a full toxicological survey of MeOH. I have that data in another location and if it truly serves you well to know the human toxicology of this material, I can post it here for you to look at: EHS-Net Tox when I get the time.
For now, I can offer an MSDS for methanol in its concentrated liquid form (which it'd likely be in in a fermenter or digester) and allow you to draw some inferences by finding the meaning of the ACGIH TLVs and OSHA PELs at their websites: ACGIH & OSHA. Some searching will be required to learn anything more than just the basics. But, with the information below, you ought to get a pretty good idea why EPA and Congress saw fit to list this a potent Air Toxic.
Section 1 - Product and Company Identification
METHANOL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Identification: METHANOL
Date of MSDS: 01/01/1992 Technical Review Date: 06/17/1999
FSC: 6810 NIIN: 00-275-6010
Submitter: D DG
Status Code: C
MFN: 01
Article: N
Kit Part: N
Quote:
Massive Insert - Contact EnviroEng for details
_________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
It may be unwise to grow an acre of hemp today, but from what I've heard about peak oil scenarios, the government will collapse before we all revert back to the stone age. Without abundant cheap energy, we can't afford prisons.
I've done a little more research and have found a site that refers to peak oil while making the point that massive hemp production can solve our energy needs. http://www.hempcar.org/efia.shtml
2003 -- an estimated 25 million gallons
2002 -- 15 million gallons
2001 -- 5 million gallons
2000 -- 2 million gallons
1999 -- 500,000 gallons
http://www.jackherer.com/
Here is a guy offering $100,000 if you can prove that, among other things,
Quote:
CANNABIS/HEMP is the best sustainable source of plant pulp for biomass fuel to make charcoal, gas, methanol, gasoline and electricity in a natural way.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1929 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 1:40 pm Post subject: Confession
OK. I have to confess: I've been a bad boy.
PalatineCreator wrote "One acre of Cannabis Hemp can produce 1000 gallons of methanol in a single growing season"
That had to be a typo or mistranscription. Methanol is biologically not the preferred fermentation bioproduct; Ethanol is. I'm guessing that the bugs and the digesters could be set up to produce methanol preferentially, but it would be a bit of a deviation from the usual course of things as I understand it. _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 3:52 pm Post subject: Ethanol is an energy loser
Type "Pimantel Ethanol" into google and you'll find the links. Dr. Pimantel studied it thoroughly from an energy input-output perspective and concludes that it takes 1.3 units of energy in for every 1 unit out. Those are his revised figures, answering some of the critics of his original paper which put it at 1.7. Even if you whittle away at his figures, for example by distilling it to only 95% purity rather than the 100% currently needed for a fuel additive (95% is good enough to run a suitably-built vehicle on), it still not much above break-even. The problem is that huge amounts of energy are needed to produce the fertilizer, and to run the distillation process.
If you're looking for a better source crop, countries like Brazil and Australia have looked at sugar beets. Even in those countries the input-output story doesn't stand close scrutiny.
Ethanol and methanol should be viewed as possible energy carriers but not sources.
Grown for oilseed, Canadian grower's yields average 1 tonne/hectare, or about 400 lbs. per acre. Cannabis seed contains about 28% oil (112 lbs.), or about 15 gallons per acre. Production costs using these figures would be about $35 per gallon. Some varieties are reported to yield as much as 38% oil, and a record 2,000 lbs. per acre was recorded in 1999. At that rate, 760 lbs.of oil per acre would result in about 100 gallons of oil, with production costs totaling about $5.20 gallon. Sales of the remaining stalk material at $72 per ton will provide another source of income. It is estimated that a crop grown for both seed and fiber will produce about 3 tons of stalk, which is selling for about $72 per ton, resulting in a $216 per acre credit. This will reduce the cost of the oil to about $3 per gallon. Further reductions will accrue as the agronomic knowledge base is enlarged, and economies of scale are realized, lowering production costs while improving yields.
This oil could be used as-is in modified diesel engines, or be converted to biodiesel using a relatively simple, automated process. Several systems are under development worldwide designed to produce biodiesel on a small scale, such as on farms using "homegrown" oil crops.
Production of Bio-Diesel
Basically methyl esters, or biodiesel, as it is commonly called, can be made from any oil or fat, including hemp seed oil. The reaction requires only oil, an alcohol (usually methanol) and a catalyst (usually sodium hydroxide [NaOH, or drain cleaner]). The reaction produces only biodiesel and a smaller amount of glycerol or glycerin.
The costs of materials needed for the reaction are the costs associated with production of hemp seed oil, the cost of methanol and the NaOH. In the instances where waste vegetable oil, or WVO, is used, the cost for oil is of course, free. Typically methanol costs about $2 per gallon and NaOH costs about $5 per 500g or about $0.01 per gram. For a typical 17-gallon batch of biodiesel, you would start with 14 gallons of hemp seed oil; add to that 15% by volume of alcohol (or 2.1 gallons) and about 500g of NaOH. The process takes about 2 hours to complete and requires about 2000 watts of energy. That works out to about 2kw/hr or about $0.10 of energy (assuming $0.05 per kw/hr). So the total cost per gallon of biodiesel is $? (oil) + 2.1 x $2 (methanol) + $5 (NaOH) + $0.10 (energy) / 14 gallons = $0.66 per gallon, plus the cost of the oil.
What would the energy ratio be like without the need for fertilizers and inscecticides?
When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."
Ford recognized the utility of the hemp plant. He constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber, and even ran the car on ethanol made from hemp. Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1929 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 7:33 pm Post subject: Re: About Methanol
EnviroEngr wrote:
I can oblige you partially. I do not have the spare time right at the moment to lay out a full toxicological survey of MeOH. I have that data in another location and if it truly serves you well to know the human toxicology of this material, I can post it here for you to look at: EHS-Net Tox when I get the time.
For now, I can offer an MSDS for methanol in its concentrated liquid form (which it'd likely be in in a fermenter or digester) and .... <snip>
Section 1 - Product and Company Identification
METHANOL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Identification: METHANOL
Date of MSDS: 01/01/1992 Technical Review Date: 06/17/1999
FSC: 6810 NIIN: 00-275-6010
Submitter: D DG
Status Code: C
MFN: 01
Article: N
Kit Part: N
Quote:
Massive Insert - Contact EnviroEng for details
OK. Now I know where the bounds are.
Whoever deleted that was in the right. There's a pointer to the Tox workup and that's more than enough for what was really going on here.
However, I would ask this: In either "Announcements" section, a checklist of guidelines for posting would be really helpful. Length, content, academic level, spelling, grammar, affect and pertinence of viewpoint all have unwritten rules here to one extent or another and it would make sense for this group especially to be explicit about what it expects to see and not see.
Thank you _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
My view on organic fuel alternatives is people forget the most important fact. Any organics used for fuel will immediately be competeing with farmland used for food production. Basically, you have X amount of land and it has to either be used for food or fuel based crops. Farmers will naturally grow that which nets them the largest profit. You'll see food products pushed to the wayside to cash in on the fuel based crops. Supply/demand will drive the cost of food up and the end result is you'll have both more expensive fuel alternatives AND more expensive food. That is, assuming theres enough farmland to support the crops to meet both fuel and food demands...... Which I highly doubt there will be.
Which means you'll see a vicious circle of food/fuel competeing against each other price wise. Farmers will grow fuel crops until the price of food crops exceeds that of fuel. Then they switch to food crops. Fuel prices rise with dwindling supplies, and the circle continues.........
Pretty picture isnt it?
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