Posts Tagged ‘fuel’

Hemp, Fuel, and the Environment

Oct 29, 2008 Environment, Facts

Just last week, we posted about an article in the University of Maryland’s student newspaper, The Retriever Weekly about hemp in American history. Well, it seems that the editor at that student paper have are sympathetic toward the cannabis plant, and have just run another piece. This one looks at the environmental potential of hemp biofuel. The article is called Government should look toward hemp as a viable alternative fuel, and in addition to discussing how hemp can be used to actually produce biofuel, the author also provides an overview of all the other environmental benefits of cultivating the hemp plant en masse:

Hemp Global Solutions researches the use of hemp as a biofuel. They advocate hemp as a “potential solution to some of the major social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.”
[...]
Perhaps one of hemp’s best characteristics is its environmental friendliness. It grows faster than other crops like corn or rice and it comes with the added benefit of improving soil quality where it’s grown. Similarly, it does not need cleared land to grow and is naturally pest resistant, meaning that pesticides are not necessary which would help to ultimately reduce CFCs and nutrient leeching. Furthermore, hemp even kills pests in the soil, further reducing the need for pesticides. Unlike fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide and sulfur into the air, hemp actually converts carbon dioxide back into biomass at an astounding rate. The crop itself is extremely diverse and able to grow in conditions that other biofuel crops cannot. Its drought resistance makes it an ideal crop for farmers in the Midwest and other areas that are so-called “dust bowls.”

Although researchers have been looking at corn as a possible biofuel, hemp is much more productive and cost-effective. One acre of hemp can produce ten times as much methanol as an acre of corn, with an exponentially faster rate of growth. Capable of producing ten tons of biomass per acre in less than four months, hemp would only take six percent of the American land mass to grow enough hemp to completely eliminate our need for fossil fuels. The infrastructure change would not be a problem either, as traditional farming equipment could be used to harvest hemp.

Written by the same author as the article that The Retriever ran last week, this piece also touches on the role that hemp has played throughout US history — from Henry Ford’s famous hemp car to how Congress lifted marijuana prohibition during WW II. This writer just might be someone for the hemp industry to keep an eye. Of course, he might also just be another starry-eyed student who’s bound to grow disenchanted and apathetic once he actually has to start paying taxes and bills. Let’s hope that the former wins out over the latter.

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Hemp as Biofuel

Oct 2, 2008 Products

With the environment in decline and gas prices on the rise, biofuels are receiving quite a bit of consideration as an alternative energy source. The most popular sources of biofuels, however, are food crops, and given rising food prices, that poses a whole other set of problems. But cultivating hemp as a source of biofuel may very well solve many of the problems commonly associated with using food crops. As GreenExperience.net explains:

[...] The best kind of biofuel is one that is not food, grows in abundance, and supplies large amounts of biomass. Surprisingly, the plant that fits all of these requirements is none other than hemp.

[...] The specific process through which hemp fuel is made is pyrolysis, where high temperatures are applied to the plant in the absence of oxygen. This creates charcoal, which is a clean burning fuel that does not release sulfur (the primary cause of acid rain). Using adjusted methods, hemp can also be turned in to methanol and other oils.

Hemp is a fantastic biofuel because it grows quickly and in large quantities. An acre of hemp can produce five hundred gallons of gasoline, and in the process of its growth, hemp removes tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some of this carbon dioxide is deposited in the ground, where it increases soil fertility and is prevented from contributing to global warming.

Making the transition to hemp-based biofuels, however, both offers advantages and poses challenges. As the article elaborates:

Grown on a large enough scale, hemp could completely fulfill all of America’s energy needs, while reversing global warming and keeping soil healthy. Currently, because of a deficiency in innovation, harvesting hemp for fuel in practice would be somewhat inefficient, which is why more advancements are needed before hemp can be utilized to a significant extent.

For more details on how current biofuel production is like jumping from the frying pan to the fire, as well as how hemp might offer a solution to biofuel production, check out the full article. It’s definitely worth the read.

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