prairie grass and wood waste to fuel

Pulp wood is selling for 8 per cord to the tree farmer. We have an over supply of wood chips and International Paper is shipping wood chips from Brazil to U.S. paper mills. Yet a cord of pipe contains 15 million btus of energy and when you divide the btu value of one gallon of gasoline which is 128,000 btu's you get 117 gallons worth of fuel in a cord of wood. Now say the conversion process is 50% that is 55 gallons of liquid energy per cord of pine and a cord is sell for $8 but turned into methanol or ethanol it has a value of over $200. Why are we not pushing wood waste to energy?

Tags: Wood, fuel, is, price, right., the, to, waste

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Phillip Ridings on August 19, 2008 at 1:18pm

My guess would be the cost in building such a refining station and support system to make enough to be cost effective.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by SJC on August 29, 2008 at 1:39am

Biomass to Liquids (BTL) can get more than100 gallons of alcohols from one ton of biomass.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/02/syntec-catalyti.html
Range Fuels is building a plant in Georgia to use wood for making biofuels.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/02/range_fuels_to_.html