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Jet/Bio feul from tobacco seeds

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Ben Brand

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I had a interesting talk with a youngster today.

He is growing tobacco for research by Boeing USA and South African Airways. He only harvests the seeds, that will be used for the oils, that will be processed into Bio feul and Jet feul.
The variety he plants is Solaris, apparently a very low nicotine tobacco. He couldnt tell me if it was air, flu-cured or what its used for as he don`t use the leaves at all.
There is mention of it on Google, if anyone wants to have a look.
What next!!!
Ben.
Ps I wonder if I can use the leaves????
 

Matty

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Gonna take a whole lotta tobacco to fuel an airplane. I've seen this tried before with other crops. I just can't imagine what the logistics would be like. One 747 holds over 400,000lbs of fuel. Air Canada alone has a fleet of about 200 airplanes. There are about 100,000 flights per day worldwide. That is a LOT of tobacco seed.
 

FmGrowit

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It may be feasible in the lab, but I've seen what "bio-fuel" has done to the cost of food in the States. I couldn't imagine how much crop land would be lost to creating bio-fuel from tobacco seeds. Of course if the world population is reduced to a few million people from starvation, there will be all kinds of crop land available....kind of a catch 22 22 22 22 though.
 

BarG

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When they started growing corn for fuel the price of feed corn quadrupled,which raised food prices also and I personally could not hardly afford to keep trapping feral hogs
[up to 50 a yr ] which in turn leads to more destruction of land for farmers and cattlemen. Plus the govt. has to spend more to stop the proliferation of them.
 

jolly

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Irony....
Boeing thinking tobacco seed jet fuel is a good idea
Lady in pic thinking her car key can double as a pocket knife

If these are the new efficiency experts I'm in the wrong profession. (this post was typed with my elbows)
 

wrapper

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I hope this project dies a sickly death... Bio fuels are not the answer to the dire climate change issues we face #solaris #boeing #SAA. Taking land out of food production (usually in poorer countries with gullible and/or corrupt regimes) to feed the fuel guzzlers of the aviation industry is insane. Rather smash up the WTO and the petro chemical industry giants, stop global warming and rabid consumerism, and go back to basics. Unless or until, as FmG says, we are reduced to a handfull of souls... In which case let a decent brandy and a home rolled cigar be my solace...!!
 

webmost

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I hope this project dies a sickly death... Bio fuels are not the answer to the dire climate change issues we face #solaris #boeing #SAA. Taking land out of food production (usually in poorer countries with gullible and/or corrupt regimes) to feed the fuel guzzlers of the aviation industry is insane. Rather smash up the WTO and the petro chemical industry giants, stop global warming and rabid consumerism, and go back to basics. Unless or until, as FmG says, we are reduced to a handfull of souls... In which case let a decent brandy and a home rolled cigar be my solace...!!

Wrapper, relax, dude. Change is what climate does, and you're not gonna change that. Not a single one of the many dire predictions we have heard from gorebull warbling scaremongers has come true, nor looks likely to. Our zeitgeist's Luddite insanity does not foist it's silly schemes on backwards countries so much as on developed ones. Nothing in view is apt to stop rabid consumerism other than an inexpedient apocalypse. Only an outlier few ever go back to basics. We owe virtually all of our plush modern life, complete with plenty of years, plenty food to eat, plenty toys to play with, plenty over-population and, yes, even rapid air travel that gets us there in plenty of time, to the same "petro chemical industry giants" you would smash up. The engine of plenty is not the enemy.

Enjoy your cigar. I prefer rum, myself; but if you prefer that cough syrup called brandy, go for it.
 

ringanator

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Agreed webmost climate change is a normal cycle of the earth. It has happened in the past way before humans and will happen again. Glacier have melted and reformed during ice ages recapturing carbon. These are thousand year earth cycles. Any man that this they can stop it has purely been brainwashed by left wing agenda. I am not saying climate change is not real or man had no part in it acceleration what I am saying is that this would have happened anyway. One volcanic eruption produces more greenhouse gasses the 10 years of human activity. This climate change ploy actually has more to do with more consumerism then the climate itself think about what it takes and what it cost to change the entire society to green energy.....trillion of dollars. And the other focuses of getting off the oil standard to back financial institutions. Climate change has nothing to do with our planet it has ever thing to do with money and power.
 

wrapper

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Hai! Denialists at work! I take it as given that denialists do not live any where near the coast, or if they do they might want to roll up their pants for they will get soggy. Sure climate change can happen all on its own, and it does, as previous ice ages etc. demonstrate, just like volcanoes erupt and meteors strike. But we are not helping prevent changes that are preventable and a 2C rise in temperature (directly attributable to burning fossil fuels) in our life time is no longer preventable. Maybe 4C works for you? Fine: bye bye most coastal cities and a bunch of pretty islands, hello mass migrations and a very changed world. Maybe that is ok. It better be, because it is now almost inevitable and we can push off to Greenland and plant some tobacco there. It is money and power that put us in this predicament, and pig headed folk with no need, apparently, to examine the science. Rather spend the trillions on renewables and get off the oil standard. I have already converted my distillery to 80% solar, and every little bit helps. Now looking for the courage to disconnect from the coal powered utility for good. I sleep better.

Pot still brandy trumps rum. Any time. Sorry!!
 

wrapper

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Short essay on "exponential"...
There is a myth: "an exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature". Sadly, this is not true. Following a business as usual approach without steps to stop using fossil fuels and limit greenhouse gasses, we will reach 950 moles per million per volume of atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] by the year 2100. It will have taken approximately 200 years (from 1850 to 2050) for the first doubling of atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from 280 to 560 ppmv, but it will only take another 70 years or so to double the levels again to 1120 ppmv. This will result in an exponential rate of global warming, not a linear rate. With this scenario we can project that the global temperature in 2095 will be as high as 7°C above pre-industrial norm, with a best estimate being 4.0°C.
 

Hasse SWE

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Interesting question Ben.I don't know if you would become so happy with that leaf but you will never known if you never check..I think a little bit like Fmgrowit and BarG. But also tobacco can be growing in alot of places (and will be needed to also). Can see the comic thing with no more tobacco year xxxx!!
-So I really don't know what to say about this?
I would like to believe that they can make something with help from the tobacco (they often can), but not if they gonna steal more land from the farmers and that is really what they will do and laying to the world about it..

http://www.sunchem.it/testo-il-gruppo/?lang=en
 

deluxestogie

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The science related to the subject of this thread raises some difficult issues.

Arable land can be loosely divided into two categories:
  • land that is naturally highly productive
  • land that offers only marginal productivity
Much of the productive land is already in use for food production. Converting some of it for use in biomass fuel production raises food prices (globally in a globalized market). But productive land incurs the lowest lifecycle carbon footprint for making biomass fuel. (Requires less fertilizer and fewer other industrial inputs to grow the biomass.)

An effort has been made to convert marginally productive land to growing biomass fuel. This approach has little impact on food prices, since most of such land has already been taken out of food production as a result of high production costs of these areas. Studies of the lifecycle carbon footprint of making biomass fuel on marginally productive land seems to approach parity with fossil fuel on a per unit of energy basis. That is to say, you don't get any carbon savings from growing biomass on marginally productive land.

This conundrum might be mitigated by better selection of biomass species to grow, but as the technology stands now, you can:
  • reduce fuel carbon footprint by using good agricultural land, which raises food prices
  • or you can leave food prices out of the picture, while not solving the carbon problem.
  • I suppose a third option is to bury your head in the sand.
Bob
 

wrapper

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The science related to the subject of this thread raises some difficult issues.

Arable land can be loosely divided into two categories:
  • land that is naturally highly productive
  • land that offers only marginal productivity
Much of the productive land is already in use for food production. Converting some of it for use in biomass fuel production raises food prices (globally in a globalized market). But productive land incurs the lowest lifecycle carbon footprint for making biomass fuel. (Requires less fertilizer and fewer other industrial inputs to grow the biomass.)

An effort has been made to convert marginally productive land to growing biomass fuel. This approach has little impact on food prices, since most of such land has already been taken out of food production as a result of high production costs of these areas. Studies of the lifecycle carbon footprint of making biomass fuel on marginally productive land seems to approach parity with fossil fuel on a per unit of energy basis. That is to say, you don't get any carbon savings from growing biomass on marginally productive land.

This conundrum might be mitigated by better selection of biomass species to grow, but as the technology stands now, you can:
  • reduce fuel carbon footprint by using good agricultural land, which raises food prices
  • or you can leave food prices out of the picture, while not solving the carbon problem.
  • I suppose a third option is to bury your head in the sand.
Bob

Highly productive land is obviously out of the equation. Marginal land takes significantly more petrochemical inputs to produce bio fuels, so I guess the fertilizer companies won't mind. We can rely on Monsanto to lend a hand too. Bless them.

Or we could ask Brazil to chop down some rain forest, hell they have yards and yards of it. Africa too; Indonesia. What do we need forest for? Slash and burn. Plant bio fuel crops!! Terrific idea. Just so long as we have our toys and SUVs.

Or we can take heads out of the comfortable sand and square up to an inconvenient truth: we cannot carry on this way.

Algae, wind, wave, tidal, solar, geothermal, hydrogen. We do not HAVE to use arable land, marginal or otherwise, for fuel. The science is there, done already, to make the move to clean renewables. The resource is there, all around us. But where is the political will? It is lining its pockets and handing out trillions of your money in subsidies to maintain the status quo and to keep the world at war with itself.

Nope. We are seriously going to need that land for food (and tobacco).
 

deluxestogie

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I was politely trying to return the discussion to the actual subject of this dead, but now resurrected thread.

Discussions of the disruption of earth's biosphere, atmosphere, polar albedo and deep ocean currents, etc., along with the collapse of species diversity--all of such discussions on this forum in the past have led to acrimonious exchanges and entrenched positions. Hell, all such discussions in most media lead to acrimonious exchanges and entrenched positions, except among those most knowledgeable in the relevant fields of study.

I'm an old codger, but also a scientist for whom verifiable data and testable hypotheses reign supreme. I apply that to my tobacco growing. As for its application to climate science, that must be done elsewhere.

I'll close this thread now.

Bob
 
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