Fuel
This is perhaps the most contentious and debated usage of hemp but also the most valuable for society. How may you be asking does this simple plant contend with the multi billion pound energy industry. Well although there are some obstacles to overcome. Hemp has the ability to end our dependence on crude oil. I’m not necessarily saying that oil is the root of all evil, I believe that a multitude of solutions will be necessary to solve the energy issue, hemp is just one of them. Life on earth would look very different from its current state without crude oil but alternative solutions are absolutely worth considering especially when they have the capacity to move away from monopolisation and towards decentralisation.
Petroleum, diesel, coal and gas from crude oil were not always the main sources of fuel. Alcohol fuel not only came first it was also far superior fuel, more efficient and cleaner burning.
Alcohol Fuels
Alcohol as a fuel could easily be a presentation all of its own. I highly recommend watching or reading “Alcohol Can Be A Gas” by David Blume to get a better understanding but effectively any vegetable matter (particularly agricultural crops like corn or sugar beet, anything that produces carbohydrates or sugar) can be distilled into ethanol and used as a conventional fuel.
Alexander Graham Bell was a huge advocate of alcohol fuel he said in 1922
“The worlds consumption of fuel has become so enormous as to show that are present supplies cannot possibly last for many generations more.”
As an alternative he suggested alcohol a beautifully clean and efficient fuel which can be produced from vegetable matter of almost any kind, the waste products from our cities are all available and the garbage from our farms.
Another huge advocate of alcohol fuel and the ability this gave for American farmers to produce and use their own fuel was Henry Ford. Henry Ford originally intended for his model T to run on ethanol fuel. The inventor of the diesel engine Rudolph Diesel (1896) intended for his engine to run using “a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils.” “Like most engineers, Diesel realized that vegetable fuels like hemp are superior to petroleum.”
Its worth noting here that there are different methods to extract these fuels from hemp (and other plants) and also different parts of the plant that would be used. Generally all fuels from plant sources are referred to as biofuels.
Diesel Fuels
Rudolph Diesels engine would be made from the oil of the hempseed. Traditionally thinned hempseed oil would have been used in lamps and for cooking or heating. This oil can be very easily converted into a petroleum diesel like fuel, with the simple addition of a little methanol. It would have a similar boiling range, viscosity and power output but with reduced carbon monoxide and 75% less soot and particulate.
Rancid oil could also be used as it is not intended for consumption and as the seed is the only part of the plant used to produce the oil the rest of the plants stalks and seed cakes can be used to make another type of fuel or other aforementioned products.
“Hemp seed contains 30% (by volume) oil. This oil makes high grade diesel fuel oil and aircraft engine and precision machine oil. Remember throughout history, hemp seed was made into fuel oil: the genie’s lamp burned hemp seed oil, as did Abraham the prophet’s and Abraham Lincoln’s. Only whale oil came near hemp seed oil in popularity for fuel.”
Jack Herer – The Emperor Wears No Clothes
The limiting factor in producing this type of fuel from the oil is the fact that other markets nutritional, as a lubricant and in fabrication are more profitable than 50 gallons of fuel per acre. However if farmers were able to produce this fuel in house it would help to reduce costs and increase profits overall at the same time as working wonders on their soil.
Biomass Fuels
Other types of fuel can be produced using biomass (simply meaning all biological produced matter). Any type of plant matter can be used to make fuel and if you’ve been paying attention the worlds number 1 biomass resource is, you guessed it, HEMP. The biomass would generally be the plants stalks and leaves of which the inner core (that is mainly cellulose) could be enzymatically or bacteriologically broken down into starches and from there fermented into alcohol fuels (this is similar to many other crops including grains and fruits, anything that contains starch or sugar).
Biomass can also, through a process called pyrolysis (applying heat to organic material in the absence of air), be turned into almost every form of energy currently in use. It can produce sulphur free methanol fuel to replace petroleum; sulphur free charcoal to replace coal; non-condensable gases as well as other chemicals important to industry such as acetone, ethyl acetate, tar, pitch and creosote.16 The methanol created from hemp can produce in 4 months up to 10 tons of sulphur free liquid methanol fuel per acre.
“The hemp plant offers everyone who has access to a piece of land the opportunity of “growing oil wells” with an output equivalent to around 1000 gallons of methanol per acre”. “Farming only 6% of continental U.S. acreage with biomass would provide all of America’s gas and oil energy needs and end dependence on fossil fuels.”
After 1937 (when hemp/cannabis was effectively outlawed in the US) Henry Ford grew hemp on an estate at Iron Mountain, Michigan to prove the cheapness of methanol production and created a bio fuelled and fabricated car he “grew from the soil.” “Its plastic panels, with an impact strength 10 times greater then steel”. Where made under 1,500 pounds of pressure and used cellulose fibres from wheat straw, hemp, sisal with a 30% binder. Plant cellulose plastic panels also meant that the car was not only far stronger then steel but a lot lighter then a conventional car, resulting in a far greater fuel efficiency.
Limiting factors to these types of biofuels
The crops are usually harvested seasonally (not all year round) and also require farm land to grow.
Biomass is bulky and therefore incurs compaction and shipping/ storage costs.
Infrastructure would be needed for large scale application (processing and pyrolysis plants etc.)
The other uses of hemp (oil and cordage) are currently more profitable then its use as a fuel.
However these factors aside hemp is still undoubtedly an incredibly useful source of energy. When it is considered how much land is unused or intentionally left fallow. When you consider the environmental concerns of crude oil and coal that are never factored into the true costs of conventional fuels.
Also the ability for farmers and land owners to produce fuels locally and that every by product or every bit of waste of the hemp plant (not to mention many other types of waste by products) can be used in some form to create energy. Its a no brainer that hemp along with other annual crops and waste by products could drastically alter our dependence on foreign oil (and the bloodshed that often accompanies its acquisition) and help to reverse the environmental concerns associated with petroleum or coal based energy sources.
Lastly you might have heard me mention hemp being the number one CO2 sequestering plant on earth, as it grows the CO2 that is taken from the air and into the plant is the same amount of CO2 that would be produced from the burning of the fuel it created. This is what you would call ‘ecological balance’.
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