Redleg

That was part one of the study, part two is gonna explain how the yeild from hemp exceeds the energy demand of production.

12valve@heart

Let me guess, hemp causes a reduction in energy demand when it's converted to smoke as opposed to oil, right?

P.J

This has been studied for 20 + years. The problem here is that the Government will have to blow less money on the "War on Drugs" A.K.A., let the pedofiles and rapist go while we lock up pot smokers. What does this equal?
There are about 500 good uses for the hemp plant, but some people don't understand the difference between it and cannibis sativa. Therefore when you mention the word HEMP, everyone gets all upset thinking we are going to legalize marijuana..........

Just keep thinking that Big Oil's pockets are deeper than most other industries, that's one of the main reasons that alternative fuels are not explored more aggressively.
Ever heard the rumors about them buying up the rights to fancy carb's that got like 50MPG's, and other conspricy theroies?

SoTexRattler

OH NO! Palm trees?? Nasty things!! I believe you could probably squeeze additional oil out of all the cockroaches those things harbor! Then use their squished carcasses for fertilizer to grow some soybeans to produce some REAL fuel.

Keith

Redleg

Heard all about the rumors... motor city is only a couple hours away after all. Anybody ever snope it? To a certain extent, I don't care if they smoke themselves into oblivion. Hemp may have good uses, but are they great uses? Not just big brother, but I imagine industry and technology hamper bringing it to market as well. BHSF, DOW, or any of the synthetics producers would be against competittion from hemp politically, and their technology of products that aren't biodegradeable, are water and/or U.V. proof, etc. would dominate any market. Drugs are federally regulated, rape and murder is not. Nobody just lets them go. A sex crime is probably the hardest case to prosecute, even if the suspect is known by the victim. With the volume of cases tried every year, there is gonna be some that slip through, just like everything else in the world. If it happens alot in your area, then that's something to look at locally, are you listening California? It's the stupid or greedy ones that get caught doing the drug crimes, not everybody. The reply was a knock on Berkley for publishing a study on something that seems to have the potential for a solution they did not appear to have looked into. How long did they feed wood to the locomotive that was pulling coal cars before they got one that ran on coal? How long did they use a steam powered pump oil for an oil well before they got a diesel pump? Seems to me Brekely has done a number of studies on superfluous topics.

Begle1

I've been in contact with a lot of folks at Berkely, some higer-ups even, trying to chase algae-production schemes, and I've never gotten anything but the cold shoulder... Berkely is strange when it comes to sharing information- essentially all they've ever done is stone-wall me. It seems every researcher there has their own political agenda...


But ultimately, considering that all fossil fuels come from algae to begin with, there is no scientific reason for why we can't corner the market by short-cutting the production process by a few million years. The economics are killer, however. Whoever figures it out is going to make just a little bit of bank. And I'll be damned if they figure out hydrogen-production schemes first; but unfortunately, that's where the research is going. At least CE-CERT out in my neck of the woods is still on the bioDiesel bandwagon...

Haulin_in_Dixie

I heard that Berkley was working on a new engine that burns Bibles and other religious materials.

AlpineRAM

Well, those studies might be interesting- but then why do we manage to run a farm entirely on biodiesel, without fertilizers or pesticides, herbicides etc (one big consumer of dino juice), run all the farm vehicles and still sell some biodiesel- transported to the station with a biodiesel powered truck?
Naturally this is expensive, but some farmers over here do manage it. One big problem on that is only that if yu look at the net gain per area Austria would need to be many times the size it is to supply all the vehicles on the road etc with biofuels.

Just my 2c

AlpineRAM

PS- it's legal to grow hemp over here- it just needs to be one of those extremely low THC sorts, so it's no use smoking it

Begle1

Exactly... Are you sure that all of the bioDiesel that they run for transit and production is produced by the farm?
And what crop would they be growing?

edwinsmith

I think the people who did this study are pushing their own idea of energy production of solar and wind power. The idea that it takes 1.23 gallons of fuel to produce 1 gallon of biodiesel is simply preposterous. I'm sure the stats were massaged in order to show what they wanted.

Also, using soybean oil for biodiesel isn't the best use of the land. Soybeans produces about 48 gallons/acre and is pretty far down on the list of oil crops. Palm oil yields are the highest at 635 gal/acre. Even peanuts are more than double the yield at 113 gal/acre. There are many more crops which yield more than soybeans.

Look here for more info: http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html

Edwin

newriverSpecon

Remember no conversion is 100%. There will be some losses. I did not see any information about energy required for #2 processing. Considering most vehicles are only 30-40% effecient I don't think the small percentage increase (if it is in an increase) of conversion losses would mean much.

Randy

AlpineRAM

The main energy oil crop is rapeseed over here. Palmtrees won't really like it and the women won't knit them any pullovers
The yield is about 2.6 times higher than with soybeans.
Over here the fuel oil crops are grown separately and they don't need too much if any chemical support because the problems you have with rapeseed will only ruin the taste in most cases but will only have a minimal impact on the yield.

AlpineRAM

Haulin_in_Dixie

Lets see now, with farms subsidised to grow nothing, I would guess that it would not take too much gain to make it worthwhile. Something is better than nothing.

Mike D

I heard Berkley is working on a new form of transportation. It's rumored it will run solely on trapped armpit gasses and worn out Birkenstocks.

edwinsmith

If we rendered all the greens how much biodiesel could we get? They should be willing to help out don't you think?