[Gasification] biogas vehicle

[Harmon Seaver]

Mark Ludlow wrote:
> I'm on Harmon's "kill list" so I don't expect his response,

   You are?


> but I doubt his
> numbers. 

   Well maybe you need to educate yourself. You could start by reading
David Blume's book, "Alcohol Can Be A Gas" http://www.permaculture.com


> Is there a grand conspiracy to promote corn as an ethanol
> feedstock?

   Corn is used because of the gov't subsidies for growing grain. You
maybe aren't old enough to remember, but we literally had huge piles of
corn (and soybeans) sitting around rotting because farmers were paid to
produce it even tho there was no market. Even sorghum and sugar beets
are much better crops to make ethanol out of, but the farmers would lose
their subsidy money if they grew those instead.




 What fraction of cropland is suitable for cattail production?

    Actually tremendous amounts, at least in the midwest corn belt,
because millions of acres of wetlands were drained to make cropland. And
it's trivial to smash those drain tiles and return that land to
wetlands. But even better is to use the sewage treatment water to create
cattail paddies.

> Buffalo gourd? Are farmers (agro-industrialists) all stupid?

   Yeah, pretty much. Or at least pretty well suckered by the
ag-industry touts from Monsanto, etc.

> Why not hemp? 

  For ethanol?

> No one I am aware of is deliberately doing the wrong thing. If there are
> miracle gains in efficiency to be had, the system will discover them. Such
> is the nature of a market economy.

   Market economy? What parallel universe do you live in? We live in a
fascist corporate welfare state. Monsanto and it's gov't lackeys decided
what the farmers will plant.

> 
> Mark
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org
> [mailto:gasification-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Harmon Seaver
> Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 10:32 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
> Subject: Re: [Gasification] biogas vehicle
> 
> Max Kennedy wrote:
>> I don't think Roger missed anything.  Corn silage as in the original post
> is the whole plant ground up.  The mash that results from fermentation,
> although an excellent animal feed, is not food for people. 
> 
>    ??? Neither is the corn. The vast majority of the corn grown in the
> US goes to feed animals, not people. And the vast majority of what
> doesn't go to feed animals goes for industrial purposes, like making
> plastics, high-fructose corn syrup, etc.
>    People can talk all they want to about meat production not being an
> efficient way of producing food for people, but that's just totally
> irrelevant, because like it or not, most people eat meat, not just in
> the developed world, but rapidly increasingly so in the 3rd world as well.
>     You can day-dream all you want about converting everyone to
> vegetarianism, but it ain't going to happen anytime soon.
>     I'm certainly not pushing corn for ethanol, as I said, there are
> far, far better feedstocks for that. The best you can get with corn is
> about 400 gallons of ethanol per acre, and that only with a whole lot of
> chemical, fossil-fuel input. Plants like buffalo gourd will give you
> twice that amount of ethanol, plus 100 gallons an acre of biodiesel per
> acre from the seeds, and you only have to plant it once. Cattails will
> give 1500 gallons per acre of ethanol with no fertilization, 2500
> gallons per acre with organic fertilization, and you can use it to
> totally purify sewage water at the same time, and only plant it once.
> 
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Harmon Seaver