A couple of years ago I read a small article in a newspaper announcing then president Clinton's Executive Order 13134 related to increasing the use of bio-based products in specific measurable ways. This spurred a vision of the role hemp might play in such an economy, and my attendance at the 1999 Hemp Industries Association Conference in Canada. Following the conference, and inspired by what I had learned, I sequestered myself away for several months to research the issue in depth. (My kids are still mad at me over this). A good part of my results, and resulting plans, can be found at www.fuelandfiber.com - including a rather ragged paper I wrote that specifically addresses 'Hemp as biomass for energy'.
In short there are a few issues that came to light: * Hempseed oil fetchs up to $30 gallon in the marketplace - as a food supplement. * Hempseed production is very low compared to MANY other oil crops. * Hemp itself is a Nitrogen USER, not fixer as so many claim. * Hemp as straight biomass only offers about 3-5 tons per acre. * Hemp bast fiber is far more valuable in textiles, composites or even paper than as a source of cellulose for ethanol. And of course, the granddaddy of them all, it is illegal to grow in the US. So the argument that hemp would be more economically sound than petroleum has been is hard to swallow. Petroleum has been free to suck out of the earth for a few decades now, which is much less bother than cultivating, planting, harvesting and processing a crop. Besides that, considering the volume of liquid fuels we use today, just imagine how much water would have been used to grow enough hemp to make this much! The Gulf of New Mexico 'Dead Zone' would probably encircle the earth by now! So, this argument, while sexy and all that, is rather hard to back up with facts. Nevertheless, I saw the POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS involved with the legal status as a sort of 'back door' into the 'system' that had the potential to affect the greatest measure of change needed to dislodge the existing power base, installing instead leadership favorable to bio-resource development. Of course this led to the Hemp US Flag project (www.hempusflag.com) as well as a number of other initiatives I have undertaken. One of these was to make biodiesel out of hempseed oil on the steps of the California State Capitol, assisted by a fine fellow named Ian Watson from the bay area and Todd Swearingen of Appal Energy. VoteHemp paid for the 15 gallons of hempseed oil, and we pulled it off on a sweltering August day. http://www.fuelandfiber.com/Archive/News/Legalize/BioDemo/biodemo.html Oops, I am rambling. I need to get back to work. In summary, from my perspective, hemp has a role to play in the energy scene more as a political issue than as a good feedstock for energy. The exception would be to employ the Fuel and Fiber Company Method - which is to fraction the material as a first step - retaining the high value bast fiber and only using the remaining 66% of biomass for energy and other co-products. Ok, a word about co-products. As has been correctly pointed out here, the majority of profits from a barrel of oil come from the co-products. The fuel itself is actually quite low value, comparatively. The same principal will apply to the Biorefinery envisioned. We will produce ethanol more as a public benefit than as a profitable venture. The profits will be found in the co-products and value adding done during processing. Lastly, I wanted to invite you to register and login to the all new FaFCo portal, www.fuelandfiber.com - I have set up a whole set of tools for you to use. Perhaps there is something useful there? Tim [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
