A new class of plants for a biofuel feedstock energy crop.
Directly burnable biomass to be used primarily in steam boilers for power production has been researched and demonstrated in a variety of projects in the United states. The biomass typically comes from wood wastes, such as tree trimmings or the byproducts of lumber production, or from a cash crop, grown by farmers. Of this latter group, the main emphasis has been utilizing corn stover, or a prairie grass called switchgrass, or using tree seedlings such as willow. In this article, I propose an alternative to these energy crops that consists of several different herbaceous plants with the one consistent property that they annually generate an appreciable bulk of dried-down burnable mass. The fact that they are a set of plants (nine are offered as candidates) gives this energy crop a great deal of flexibility as far as growing conditions and annual harvest time line. Their predicted yield is impressive and leads to speculation that they can be economically feasible.
Kamm
James
J
University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, USA. jkamm@utnet.utoledo.edu
D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods*; D031164:Ambrosia; D018533:Biomass; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000379:methods*; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources; D035264:Flowers; D006368:Helianthus; D010944:Plants; D014197:Trees