Re: (Dramatic)Improvement of energy crop yield

[Carefreeland@aol.com]

  Dear Dr. Paszner, 
       I hope you intended to address just me and not the whole list, as this 
is how your letter was addressed. ( I made the same mistake answering Dr. 
Reed) I encourage you to forward your wonderful letter on to the entire 
bioenergy list as it contains very welcome and significant information.  I 
will respond on list. 
       My argument for focus on hardwood improvement takes into consideration 
the preparation of the fuel for combustion.  All of the other methods of 
refinement for combustion require steps beyond harvesting and transport. 
Softwoods have low density and therefore are inefficient for transportation 
and storage. Often densification such as pelletizing at net energy loss is 
recommended.  
       I am specifically interested in retort char production and find 
hardwoods are the only source not requiring briquetting.  I find charcoal to 
be the only bioenergy fuel source suitable for both long term storage and 
having high energy density.  New methods of producing this fuel are 
approaching 50% efficiency.  The waste heat from the pyrolisis process can be 
harnessed, adding to the total overall efficiency of a production system. 
       Coming from Ohio, my definition of hardwoods generally starts with 
woods of an equal or greater density than Elm.  We consider Silver Maple to 
be a trash wood (softwood) in these parts, even though it has been widely 
planted as a fast growing yard tree and is plentiful. People pay $5.00 a ton 
or more to dump this type of wood locally on a limited basis. 
       I believe that softwoods should be included in any growing scheme so 
that a balanced forest environment can be maintained.  We must look at the 
other effects of managing large tracts of land on the environment. This would 
include wildlife and watershed management. I am opposed to tree farming of 
monocultivar stands and clear cutting.  I believe we CAN have the cake and 
eat it too where forest management is concerned. 
       Softwoods can be chipped and directly combusted or gasified and used 
for combined heat and power schemes(CHP).  Why not gasify on the logging site 
and pipe the producer gas through portable poly lines to local portable power 
stations tapping into the power grid wherever possible?  Transportation seams 
to be one of the greatest faults of bioenergy.  Waste heat from the portable 
system could convert some of the fuel to char and/or methanol on site as 
well.  Ashes can return directly to the forest floor with the daily arrival 
of the logging crew. 
       A scheme like this would require little diesel fuel for 
transportation.  Let's think out of the box here. 
        Now imagine working on a say 60 year rotation but harvesting roughly 
1/3 the timber every 20 years. With greatly improved cultivars, these trees 
could be equivilent to say 120 year old or even someday, 300 year old 
hardwood trees of today. Timber would be the hardwood cash crop, softwood for 
paper pulp.  All other unusable wood wastes go to the fuel production system. 
 All wastewood and wastepaper goes to regional power, charcoal, producer gas 
and methanol conversion stations at the end of it's service life. 
       This is the system I imagine. Crunch this into your global energy plan 
and you find a greatly reduced role for fossil fuels.  Other bioenergy 
sources such as biodigestion of farm wastes could produce methane as a 
stablized hydrogen fuel for fuel cells. ( Why work with nitroglycerin when 
you can use dynamite?) Add other renewable resources such as solar thermal, 
solar photovoltaic, wind power and so on.  At this point, crude oil would be 
mostly used for lubricating purposes with a supply forcast to last thousands 
of years. 
       All of this depends on improving the basic conversion yield of solar 
energy to bioenergy in a minimum of energy consuming steps.  Basic plant 
breeding has allowed numbers of persons unimaginable to inhabit this earth.  
The plants have this all figured out, so why dig, pump and burn their dirty 
ancestors when we can better grow and use them now? 
                     Daniel Dimiduk
       Shangri-La Research and Development Co. 
                  Dayton, Ohio, USA                                           
                 

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