Hemp & other biomass sources probably will provide fuel in our future, (since they already do today), and hemp in particular is a good candidate since it's an annual crop and pretty much the entire plant can be harvested and used for fermenting fuel, and in the textile industry.
However, in the numbers needed to replace oil as a fuel, we would be looking at a massive infrastructure in production and distribution mechanisms. In the end, when compared to oil, it's probably much more expensive as an alternate fuel.
And that's all POT says; not that oil will run out, but become more expensive.
Dude... _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:15 pm Post subject:
Anonymous wrote:
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.
NOT if you can find or engineer a crop that can grow in marginal land unsuitable for agriculture...like methanol from trees? Which has its own problems...but not that problem. _________________ "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: Apr 03, 2004 Posts: 6571 Location: My Grandkids' Farm
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 4:45 pm Post subject:
The first thing an alternative should be pre-peak is socially acceptable. There are thousands of people living in little cells that can tell you that hemp farms aren’t socially acceptable.
Perhaps we should look for another alternative for the near future. _________________ Make a plan and work it:
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 5:24 pm Post subject: guys
The kind of hemp we are discussing isn't for smoking, and won't get you anything but a headache.
Furthermore, hemp is not illegal. Many stores carry hemp products today. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Palatine, IL
Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 6:09 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Furthermore, hemp is not illegal.
Cultivating hemp is still illegal, but products made from hemp are legal.
I'm fairly confident that continued oil wars will result in a coup d'etat in America. Mid-level military officers are discussing it for the first time in over a hundred years.
For the first time in more than a hundred years, the forbidden words "coup d'etat" are being whispered by a range of officers in that most dangerous rank band of all, from Major to Brigadier General. These officers are young enough to remember the oath they swore to defend America and her constitution, while at the same time being senior enough to command considerable respect among the lower ranks.
Once enough soldiers get tired of fighting oil wars that are impossible to win, they'll overthrow the government militarily. Afterwards, we may find a government that wouldn't oppose hemp cultivation for energy so we won't need to waste any more American lives trying to overthrow oil-rich dictatorships. We would eventually be fighting hemp wars, though, unless we find a way to put a cap on population growth somehow.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1932 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 10:01 am Post subject: MethTox
For Whitecrab: Methanol Human Toxicity Summary from the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine at TOXNET Hazardous Substances DataBase.
Thank you Aaron for your help and the Forum Guidance Note up front. _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 309 Location: Ontario, Canada
Posted: Mon Jun 07, 2004 10:47 am Post subject: Re: MethTox
EnviroEngr wrote:
For Whitecrab: Methanol Human Toxicity Summary from the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine at TOXNET Hazardous Substances DataBase.
Thanks, that's a nice link. *Bookmarks* Too bad about the vapour problem. Would clearly be hard making a MeOH system safe for a person off the street. _________________ "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
Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 3:56 pm Post subject: Hemp fuels
As for the idea that a prerequisite for an alternative energy source is being 'socially acceptable'... balls to that. Peak oil is a bitter pill to swallow for the public but it must be taken, and even the most socially unacceptable methods of alternative energy (see the philadelphia TDP plant - corpses for fuel) will seem like a spoonfull of sugar to blithering suburbanites driving Suburbans once they get the big picture.
As far as the possibility of hemp fuels, I think its a great idea for a variety of reasons - its sad to see the methanol toxicity figures, i had never heard that before and saccharization is a slow and somewhat costly step in fermentation, necessary to adapt hemp resources to ethanol instead of meoh. However, hemp is three things - voracious (it grows quickly, easily *no pesticides and you'll see in a bit no fertilizer, at least after a few years* and heartily, about a 90 day cycle so in warm climates we're talking maybe 4 crops a year), sustainable (its FAST growing root system and plentiful field roughage airates and composts soil enough to use the same land repeatedly, maybe indefinetly), and multipurposed (it produces both extremely high cellulose yields - good for plastics and fuels - and a seed product - which produces incredibly nutritious oil for people and fuel and the pressings leave 6% oil in the seed 'cakes,' which have a complete set of amino acids and will serve as a great feedstock for people or livestock, providing a partial solution for the fuel vs food crop conflict, which i think is a legitimate one, but will be settled once we curb our energy consumption to the point that the two can coexist.
Hemp is not a panacea. We will never be able to continue using and growing at our (ridiculous) current rate by replacing oil with hemp, or any fuel source for that matter. But hemp cannot and will not be ruled out in the future energy discussion for these reasons above. We need to supplement hemp with other oil crops, deep-ocean wind farms, solar (maybe even orbital solar) technology, and tidal energy plants while reducing our dependence on and our consumption of energy. I would hope that the maybe impending coup d'etat would facilitate this massive change and investment, but i fear that they are more interested in power and control for their own benefit - the military in power has almost never been an altruistic force.
Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 635 Location: Salt Spring Island, Cascadia
Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:37 pm Post subject: This & That
People have posted methanol toxicity links, but no one has summarized: Methanol is a potent neurotoxin. Damage is irreversible and cumulative. It starts with blindness, but given a big enough dose, may progress to the central nervous system before being treated. You can be poisoned through the skin or by breathing the fumes. You can't filter it, and the only recommended respiration equipment is an external air source. (In other words, "gas masks" are useless.) I would not want it dispensed from public pumps, nor would I want incomplete combustion products coming out of tailpipes.
However, it can be handled safely as a reagent for making biodiesel, and it is burnt in limited situations, race cars being the only example I know of.
Pops wrote:
The first thing an alternative should be pre-peak is socially acceptable. There are thousands of people living in little cells that can tell you that hemp farms aren't socially acceptable.
First off, hemp is not marijuana any more than a black person is Caucasian. Although the two can interbreed -- a prime requirement for definition as a species -- they are distinct sub-species that can be segregated by THC content just as surely as people can be segregated by skin color.
One need only cross the Canada border to see how hemp can be "socially acceptable." If you use a variety that has less than 0.1% THC, and you have a certain minimum area planted (I believe it's 10 acres), you can legally grow hemp in Canada. If you want to plant less than the minimal plot size, you need to apply for a "research license," which I understand is not unreasonably denied.
That said, I don't see how hemp can be efficiently used to supplant fuel for spark ignition engines. You can't make ethanol from it. You don't really want methanol as a widespread fuel.
But hemp does prove useful as an oil crop. It produces about the same amount of oil as soy. Still, neither hemp nor soy are particularly good in this regard, producing about 1/3rd the amount of oil per area as rapeseed, or 1/5th that of jojoba, for example.
Any good farmer prefers two or more products from a single crop. Just as the byproduct of soy oil is a nutritious feed, hemp can produce oil and industrial fiber at the same time, which is not necessarily true of other oil crops, like rape.
As to growing hemp in the US, just get over it! It's a matter of "kill them all, let God sort them out," a typical American attitude. The US Government hasn't figured out how to test and measure THC, so it punts and says a wonderfully versatile plant can't be grown because some people abuse one particular variety of it. This is like banning all species of morning glory because one or two species have hallucinogenic seeds (which they do!) _________________ :::: Jan Steinman, Communication Steward, EcoReality, a forming sustainable community. Be the change! ::::
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