Imagine a biomass fuel that:

• Produces more biomass per acre (20-25 dry tons) than any other non-food biomass plan,
• Can be grown on a wide variety of soil types and under a wide range of climatic conditions,
• Reaches harvest-able maturity in 18 months and may be harvested every 9 months,
• Has a plant lifespan of 25 years,
• Does not require tillage, fertilizer or pesticide.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Not if you are familiar with Arundo donax. You will certainly here more about this wonder-plant since several companies, including local company TreeFree Biomass Solutions, have figured out how to grow the plant as a crop.

For more information here is an article from North American Clean Energy magazine.

If you have ever wondered about the current state of research and development of technologies for utilizing wood for the production of energy, your wait is over.

A new report from the University of Tennessee Office of Bioenergy Programs and the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities reviews the current state of R&D of technologies which utilize wood for the production of energy. It is a rather substantial and worthwhile read if you are curious about what the coming years may bring to woody biomass based industry. The report characterizes industry process designs, stage of development or commercialization, and suitability for the marketplace.

Go here to download a copy of  “Wood to Energy: A State of the Science and Technology” (PDF)

With fuel prices where they are these days, there is a lot of talk about domestically available options. One type of fuel that is central to the debate is biofuel. You may recognize them by their other names – ethanol, biodiesel, biocrude, methanol and methane to name a few.

Don’t freak out on me, this is not your high school chemistry class, but there are some big questions that arise that are still under debate and as consumers of the product/byproduct it is important that we understand what is being discussed.

Central to the biofuel discussion are two fundamental debates:

1. Energy and Food Supply. Early biofuel supplies were built using a corn and other food supply feedstocks. Should energy products compete with the food supply?
2. Energy Conversion. Biofuels are created from organic material (e.g. corn, switchgrass & crop residues). What amount of energy is required to create the fuel from these feedstocks? If the amount of energy required to produce the fuel is less than the output from the resulting fuel, is it worthwhile? The conversation is a bit heated.

These are not simple questions. However, their answers are arguably simple – each resource should be used to provide its greatest return. In the questions we ask above — I would argue that food supply should remain as food supply. We can use the crop residue for energy. As far as energy conversion, I don’t need to look any further than modern biomass heating options with efficiencies greater than 70% (per US standards). Until the economics or science indicate otherwise perhaps we should be selective in our choice of the feedstocks for biofuels.

As someone who has made it this far, implies some level of interest, so I encourage you to take a look at this resource from Farm Credit of Canada that provides an overview on the biofuel discussion.