Marijuana Legalization/Decriminalization Efforts

[Buffy]

Interesting...seed oil....could it be used as a biofuel? The search for a b100 renewable biofuel is one of the limiters of a bio-diesel infrastructure. Could almost completely eliminate the need for petroleum-based fuels with it.

[Kohan]

Interesting...seed oil....could it be used as a biofuel?

Yes, and efficiently.

http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2010/10/...n-study-finds/

[Roranora]

Could almost completely eliminate the need for petroleum-based fuels with it.

No almost. Completely.

[archibaldcrane]

Slow your rolls there champs. First of all, making "biofuel" is correct, but generally speaking you're talking biodiesel, jet fuel, petroleum-based products like paint additives and animal feed. Not so much gasoline - ya know, what most motor vehicles use. Second of all, even for something like commercially farmed jatropha (also a plant that grows on marginal land without a ton of inputs and produces a seed oil that is good for biofuel) - even if you planted the entire state of Texas with it, you'd only get enough jet fuel to power half of the commercial flights in a year. (A good friend of mine works for a jatropha biofuels company with a huge farm on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico)

Now, that's not nothing, but Texas is fucking huge, and we're talking about acreage covering the entire state. To just get half...of the jet fuel used alone. Not even touching cars and trucks, much less those that require gasoline instead of diesel. (That's more acreage than America has planted with corn, soybeans, and cotton COMBINED)

[archibaldcrane]

Let me finish this off:

Finally, there's the relatively low oil productivity of hemp. Hemp seed does have a relatively high oil content of about 33 percent, compared with canola at about 40 percent. However, it has a low seed per-acre yield. Typically, an acre of hemp yields about 700 pounds of seed, although some farmers have enjoyed production numbers as high as 1,200 pounds an acre in good years, Hanks says. Canola growers, on the other hand, can reap a crop of anywhere from 1,500 to 2,600 pounds an acre.

Ok - so in a good year, 1,200 pounds of hemp seed per acre per year. 33% oil content, so 400 pounds of oil. Roughly 10 lbs. per gallon means 40 gallons of hemp oil per acre per year. That jatropha estimate I gave above, size of Texas? That's assuming 250 gallons of oil per acre per year. PLUS - because hemp oil is valuable as a food source, it is WAY more valuable in that market, meaning it's never going to be plentiful enough to push food prices down so far that it's more valuable to burn as biofuel than to use as food.

Hemp biodiesel is a cute science experiment, but it is orders of magnitude worse as a biofuel feedstock than alternatives to be even remotely feasible on a real scale, much less "completely eliminate the need for petroleum based fuels". Don't spout nonsense.

[BaneTheBrawler]

well individually it might not be as efficient, but given the multitude of other uses hemp has, how many products can one plant/field create? like, can the same plant yield oil, textiles, and hempcrete fiber? if it can yield enough across a broader spectrum, it could still be a hugely efficient crop, just not at any one thing. generalist v specialist, except in this case the generalist is as good as some of the specialists it competes with.

i suppose a lot of that would depend on the processing facilities.

[archibaldcrane]

Hemp oil is a viable product, just not for biofuel. It's just far too valuable as a food product to burn it for transportation.

[Roranora]

You know when I typed that, I pondered about an archie slow your roll. I was only paraphrasing a Doug Fine, an author amongst the speakers. He said confidently we could retire petroleum today. (*'-');

Damn that coffee was good though.


More pics!

You see, the fuels compete with more the construction materials than the food. (spine vs top or ends) The seed oils are expeller-press extracted from the seeds, largely harvested similar to wheat, cutting off the top of the plants. But yeah, no way to get too many different uses from a single harvest of a single cultivar. It seems best to just harvest for the seed oil now and mix up remaining plant product for insulation or add some % lime for construction material.









can't read, np

[Roranora]

Not sure what "nutrition" is all about.. I think she got a little carried about with just adding more words. It's powerful enough without redundancies or ambiguous nothings.

[Restrat]

The problem with growing anything for biofuels is that combustion engines are way way inefficient and you need a ridiculous amount. If you were to just burn the plans in a power plant and use electric cars you would get more out of it.

[Roranora]

Cannabis has huge uses, but the biofuels and textiles ain't happening without a lot more engagement and efforts. Unlikely anytime soon. Get to know the foods and lotions before the shirts. Or at least the best hemp shirts to come.

What some hippies can do for now is small scale hemp operations, make a handful of various products. And take a little solace from living, producing, and consuming a little more healthily and sustainably.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Not sure what "nutrition" is all about.. I think she got a little carried about with just adding more words. It's powerful enough without redundancies or ambiguous nothings.

that branch continues up and has the coffee/tea/etc on the end.

so if its harvested similar to wheat, couldn't they set it up to keep the chaff instead of letting it blow away, and use it for materials? then go through and use the rest of the plant for those materials?

[Roranora]

Yeah, you would come back after an initial pass for seeds and seed oils. But that material is probably only good for insulation, simple construction material, or compost burned for its gases and assorted small scale energy uses.

[BaneTheBrawler]

sounds pretty efficient to me. Using the whole plant vs using only some. Would definitely make this a popular crop, I think.

[Quixon]

It would have an impact for sure. People just need to temper their expectations a bit lol.

[Kohan]

What I personally think is hilarious about this whole argument is that I originally responded about its efficiency without any further context. The article that I pointed to doesn't talk about using it for transportation—instead, it notes that many farmers who grow hemp do not keep the seeds (despite the subsequent discussion about its value as a food, which is subject to local demand, concerns with distribution, and so on), but that they could, and that they could then efficiently convert them into fuel that they could use on their own farm.

It's perfectly viable for self-sustainment. In general, too, hemp is great if you want to grow something in areas where you can't really grow much at all. (As long as you're not in the US, anyway.)

[djzombie]

http://www.theonion.com/video/new-ma...re-high,35386/

this is awesome, watch it a couple of times. i've watched it about 5 times now and the video has been slightly different each time you refresh the page

[Meresgi]

Apparently Maryland just decriminalized it. Awesome news for me.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/m...-bill-23322045

[notorious bum]

Maryland

[ringthree]

The Maryland State's Attorneys Association sent O'Malley a letter Friday, urging him to veto the measure. The group's president says the bill was passed too hastily. Charles Smith wanted amendments that would keep it a crime to smoke pot in public or carry it onto school property.

This is total bullshit, it was an attempt to keep their jobs. There are already laws in every state about public intoxication as well as having anything on school property. It was just an attempt to slow legislation so that they can continue to attack it or hope that interest dies down.