Justus For All

The article makes no mention of hemp. Oil from algae may be just a fraction of what it could be if oil came from hemp.

I don’t claim to know the numbers, but my impression is that hemp, while superior to corn as a possible fuel can’t compete with what could theoretically be extracted from algae.

First of, as the article talks about, Aglaes small size gives it a very high surface area. That makes it very efficient.

Second, and probably more important, algae grown in large bags doesn’t require using arable land that could be better used for other purposes. Hemp requires good farmland, just as most of the other proposed bio-fuels do. This seems to me to be a poor tradeoff.

According to my info,

when considered on a planet-wide, climate-wide, soil-wide basis, cannabis is at least four and possibly many more times richer in sustainable, renewable biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals on the planet — cornstalk, sugarcane, kenaf, trees, etc.

The Emperor Wears No Clothes, Jack Herer, p. 9.

I’m not sure I understand what “surface area” has to do with the volume of fuel that can be produced from algae. Nor is it clear what fuel(s) can be made from algae.

Farming only 6% of continental US acreage with biomass crops would provide all of American’s gas and oil energy needs, ending dependence upon fossil fuels.

Ibid., p. 57

Hemp doesn’t require good farmland. It grows quite well on marginal land. It is after all, a weed.

I thought this rang a quiet bell

For comparatives of the yield from various crops, scroll down a bit. Given where hemp ends up in that table, I wonder if DD has an ulterior use for the plant?

Click on the word “hemp” in the table your link takes you too and read about the many uses of hemp. There you will see some “ulterior” motives.

The hemp plant is over 500 million years old. It’s the only plant that has cannabinoids, which may have played an important role in its survival.

Efforts are being made to see if hemp cannabinoids can be implanted into other plants, presumably to enhance their survivability and nourishability.

Apparently it’s the cannabinoids in the hemp plant that increases life expectancy of birds by 20 to 30%. It’s likely to have the same effect on people.

The hemp plant has been with humanity for 10,000 years, and there are 5000 years of documentation of its medicinal and spiritual uses. The cannabinoids of the hemp plant can be used to treat a wide variety of human ailments.

Studies of Jamaican pregnant and nursing mothers who smoked marijuana (it contains the cannabinoid THC) and/or drank marijuana tea, had healther chidren than mothers who did not.

The cannabinoids of the hemp plant are not drugs nor are they addicitive.

Sorry, DD, just could not resist the borax.

The one thing about these alternative fuels is the “hidden cost”.

For example (and I am trying to find o/l confirmation from a reliable source) it is my understanding that up to 40% of the cost of bio-fuels such as ethanol and derivatives is made up of added energy. It seems counter-productive in the extreme to promote “green” fuels which require the addition of “non-green” energy at that level…

MTC I am sure.

If I recall correctly, it cost about $6.80 ± a gallon for ethanol made from corn.

Fuel made from hemp cost about $1.68 a gallon. Hemp can be used as fuel, burning it’s own hurds. I understand the the marijuana plant burns even hotter. However, I’ve not read of any explanation as to why.

I was wondering what the costs would be for producing fuel from algae? Algae would have to be harvested from the ocean, presumably transported ashore, then processed.

DD, it is not the monetary cost that interests me.

I have been delving into the dark realms of (as an example) HMF and DMF conversion from fructose. Sounds like an interesting idea from the little available on the web, and is certainly the sharp end of current research.

But if I pick this one idea, I have to ask the following questions…

How much energy is required to (for example) extract the raw material (whether glucose or fructose)?

How much energy is used to get the raw material to the conditions where the catalytic process works?

One of the papers I have scanned through promotes DMF as having 40% higher energy potential than ethanol. Nowhere in that paper or any of the others available give any inbdication.

However, there are many papers (most seem to be promoted by Green movement organisations) pointing out that from plant to fuel the ethanol fermentation process is a non-starter. The rationale is exactly the problem I am referring to.

It is essentially the same old story - there are no free lunches. The mass scale production of cheap fuels is still a long way off. Brazil has managed to achieve a good measure of self-sufficiency using sugar to ethanol conversion. But (without having looked to any statistics) I can imagine that the social dependence upon personalised transport (viz. cars and other “fossil-fueled” methods) would be very considerably lower per capita than NZ or the US.

So, this seems to be the most authoritative I can find…

To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities without reducing food supplies. We use these criteria to evaluate, through life-cycle accounting, ethanol from corn grain and biodiesel from soybeans. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more. Compared with ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%, and 13% of the agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants, respectively, per net energy gain. Relative to the fossil fuels they displace, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by the production and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel. Biodiesel also releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol. These advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from lower agricultural inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks to fuel. Neither biofuel can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies. Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Until recent increases in petroleum prices, high production costs made biofuels unprofitable without subsidies. Biodiesel provides sufficient environmental advantages to merit subsidy. Transportation biofuels such as synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste biomass, could provide much greater supplies and environmental benefits than food-based biofuels.

Biofuels are not going to be a viable alternative unless hemp is included in the equation. That’s because of the volume of hemp that can be grown compared to soybeans, corn, switchgrass, wood chips, etc.

Too, hemp can be grown without the use of herbicides and pesticides. So there’s no negative impact from growing hemp. Hemp is also sulfur free. Sulfur-free charcoal can be made from hemp.

That’s why the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want hemp legalized.

Canada is looking into growing hemp for biodiesel. However the downside of that is, there’s more money in hemp for food than for fuel.

The cost of growing hemp is run up by the US government’s paranoia over THC. The federal government uses language such as “hallucinogenic,” “psychoactive” and “high” with a negative connotation.

However, these experiences are not negative but positive. The negative connotation drives up the cost of producing hemp products.

Were all references to hemp removed from the Controlled Substances Act, then the cost of producing hemp products would drop considerably.

I know you said the monetary costs didn’t interest you, but given the contemporary economic system, that become a big factor in whether or not something becomes available.

“Biofuels are not going to be a viable alternative unless hemp is included in the equation. That’s because of the volume of hemp that can be grown compared to soybeans, corn, switchgrass, wood chips, etc”

WRONG!!

Go back to this.

Crop | kg oil/ha | litres oil/ha | lbs oil/acre | US gal/acre

hemp 305 363 272 39

opium poppy 978 1,163 873 124

Canola 1,000 1,190 893 127

So whether you are after bang for buck, or oil per hectare, you would be about three times better off growing opium.

No, DD, totally wrong. Read the numbers.

I’ll have to let the statisticians figure all this stuff out. Mathematics is not my forté. Here’s the latest I could find:

Hemp seed oil for Bio Diesel

Production of oil

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[iv] to yield as much as 38% oil, and a record 2,000 lbs. per acre was recorded in 1999. At this rate, 760 lbs.of oil per acre would result in about 100 gallons of oil, with production costs totaling about $5.20 gallon. 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.

http://fuelandfiber.com/Hemp4NRG/Hemp4NRGRV3.htm

This is showing about 100 gallons of oil per acre, but I have seen some figures of 350-500 gallons per acre and even up to 1000 gallons per acre.

Since the government won’t allow anything hemp to be researched, I’m not sure just how reliable any of these figures are including the one on your chart.

One point I would like to address, without getting into the whole bio-fuel argument –

DD – “Studies of Jamaican pregnant and nursing mothers who smoked marijuana (it contains the cannabinoid THC) and/or drank marijuana tea, had healther chidren than mothers who did not.”

This study is one of several conflicting reports done on a very small sample of individuals with only 2 separate data points, and done only at 3 days and 1 month of age. The one you are refereeing to is the only one to claim benefits.

Large scale studies done on a more reasonable sample size (not 20-24 per group), shows long term negative consequences of marijuana exposure including low weight, slow mental development, and a significant increase in SIDS.

The bottom line is that you can have a study with a small sample and 2 data points show just about anything you want to show. Doing the large scale studies that have been done by respected Universities and Hospitals shows the real story of how damaging marijuana exposure is to infants.

As far as bio-fuel, Brazil makes it work thanks to their ability to grow huge amounts of sugar cane compared to their population. Last I saw it was about $2.84 for a litter of unleaded and $0.99 for a litter of ethanol. Our hope most likely lies with the genetically engineered oil-pod plants that are currently being developed.

Voice:

The source for the Jamaican study came from the book The Benefits of Marijuana by Joan Bello. She has a web site at: http://www.benefitsofmarijuana.com/ask.html

At this site, there’s an e-mail address where she can be contacted. The study is based upon the University of Massacusetts Nursing Education Department. The site for this study is at: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/2/254

As for the risk of SIDS and marijuana smoking I found this:

The smoking of cannabis and tobacco is common in many countries. In contrast to tobacco, which is an established risk factor for the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), nothing is known about cannabis and its effects on SIDS risk.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2001.tb00256.x

Finding studies that isolate cannabis use alone is difficult. The following addresses this issue: