>
> A few years ago we did a lot of work on growing grasses for fuels.
> The idea was to harvest them in a lush green state, extract the
> protein (around 20% of dry-matter content), and sell this as a
> by-product. The fibrous material remaining is finely divided and
> readily dried, or alternatively hydrolysed to sugars, then fermented
> to alcohols. The fibre is largely hemicellulose rather than
> cellulose as found in mature grasses, and there is less lignin, so
> hydrolysis is easier than for high-cellulose crops. As usual, it
> was not economic given the ruling oil prices.
>
Rod,
The scheme you describe sounds more elaborate than anything I recall
reading elsewhere. Dovring mainly wrote about partial pyrolosis of
dry biomass then conversion of the
gases to methanol. The grasses would be harvested in a dry condition
which would reduce the need of energy for drying the raw
materials as compared to the scheme you described. The people at Oak Ridge
and the National Renewable Energy Research Lab are working on
conversion of celulose to ethanonl by fermentation. They wrote a paper
that appeared in Science vol 251 (1991): 1318-1323 "Fuel Ethanol
from Celulosic Biomass" They estimated that ethanol from biomass
would be economically competitive with gasoline around the year 2000.
I believe protien in the raw material would be recoverable after
fermentation.
I would be interested in seeing references to publications on the
work that you did.
Best Regards,
Greg McIsaac
> From: "Rod McDonald" <rmcdonald@HRR1.HORT.CRI.NZ>
> Organization: HortResearch,Ruakura,NZ
> To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
> Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 09:44:16 +1200
> Subject: Re: Soydiesel, ethanol, ILSR
> Priority: normal
> On 9 May Greg McIsaac wrote:
>
> > Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennesee has been doing work on using
> > grasses and short rotation tress for energy production.
>
> A few years ago we did a lot of work on growing grasses for fuels.
> The idea was to harvest them in a lush green state, extract the
> protein (around 20% of dry-matter content), and sell this as a
> by-product. The fibrous material remaining is finely divided and
> readily dried, or alternatively hydrolysed to sugars, then fermented
> to alcohols. The fibre is largely hemicellulose rather than
> cellulose as found in mature grasses, and there is less lignin, so
> hydrolysis is easier than for high-cellulose crops. As usual, it
> was not economic given the ruling oil prices.
>
> ************************
> mcdonaldr@hort.cri.nz <Rod McDonald>
> Engineer/scientist
> Horticulture and Food Research Institute
> Private Bag 3123, Hamilton, New Zealand
> Phone +64-7-8385675 work, +64-7-8552019 home, Fax +64-7-8385655
> ************************
>