Ethanol Storage Tank Safety Release Valve #2 Reflux Pump it by tripling its protein content. This high protein residue could even be dried and used as a protein supplement in foods for human consumption. In fact, a shipment of distillers' dried grain to a nation ravaged by famine would inake much more sense than ·~ shipment of unprocessed corn. The world food shortage is primarily a shortage of proteins, not starches, and ethanol production leaves the protein contents of all energy feedstocks intact. While large corporate distilleries plugged into the current petrochemical-intensive system of farming may prove to be ecologically unsound, farm- and community-based distilleries may still be integrated into balanced systems of food and energy production geared to maintain long-term soil fertility. The organizations built in the • past decade to produce, process, distribute, and market origanically grown foods can play a vital role in building new fuel n.etworks in the '80s. To create the skeletal outline of this net_work in the years ahead wiJl be a difficult but not impossible task. The first and most important step in this process is to establish a firm connection bet~een energy·crop production and agricultural practices which maintain long-term soil fertility and minimize fossil fuel inputs. The second step is to begin the financing of on-farm and cooperatively owned distilleries to process energy crops. This task has already begun in the Midwest where angry veterans of the farm strike movement have lent considerable financial and technical support to the construction of numerous on-farm distilleries. The A. T. community could find much more common ground in working with the farm strike movement leadership towards the creation of a de~ C centralized, locally controlled, liquid fuel industry. • Don Smith, a national representative of the American Agriculture Movement, the loosely structured organization which spearheaded the tractorcade protests of the late 1970s, has fought hard to limit corporate control of the gasohol industry. He told the U.S. House Agriculture Committee in May of 1979 that, "We are not interested in supporting the development of a new industry for the benefit of those who already have farmers over a barrel by-virtue of their superior market leverage ... but want to see the production of alcohol fuels-maintained as close to the source of basic feedstocks as possible, either on the farms or in the small rural communities ... where participating in the ownership and operation , can be broadly shared as a means of restoring economic health and viability to rural America." In these on-farm and community distilleries, lesser proof ethanol fuels (ranging in strength from 160 to 194 proof) can be produced in direct, unblended form for tractors, trucks and automobiles. These . October 1980 RAIN Page 7 vehicles can readily be converted to run efficiently on ethanol by changing plastic parts s~sceptible to ethanol corrosion, boring out carburetor jets to establish proper air to fuel ratios; and increasing the compression of engines. The technology for converting diesel engines to operate on ethanol is still in the developmental phase. However, there has been considerable success in utilizing 100 proof ethanol in 20% blends with diesel fuels. A s·ystem marketed by M&W Gear Company of Gibson City, Illinois, injecting the 100proof ethanol into the engine in a turbo-charger system, has performed quite satisfactorily in initial testing by various farm groups and community colleges. Ethanol fuel will certainly not be the only product of an alternative fuel network of on-farm and community distilleries. In the Midwest, 100 bushels of corn harvested from an acre of farmland could yield 250 gallons of ethanol and 1700 pounds of 27.% protein mash. The mash can provide a key portion of a balanced diet for livestock which, in turn, can provide at least part of the fertilizer for farmers' fields or 'a metha~e digestions system. Carbon dioxide produced by fermenting mash can be captured and pumped into greenhouses (partially warmed by waste heat from the distilleries) to promote rapid plant growth. Roof-top solar collectors that would preheat water used in the distillation process could be installed in many inidwest locations with corn cobs possibly providing part of the system's process energy source. . There are endless regional variations·on this concept of integrating ethanol production into a broader development of farm-based alternative energy sources. In the Southwest, solar stills may prove to be more ec~nomically feasible than traditional column systems while in the Northwest, waste.woods from mills could provide much of the process energy sources for distillation. Feedstocks would also differ sharply from region to region, with sweet sorghum holding considerable promise for midwest and southern regions and sugar-fodder beet hybrids for the Northwest. The introduction of these new energy crops need not inevitably increase erosion rates. Jerusalem artichokes, for example, are a • hardy perennial crop needing little tractor cultivation work. They could be planted on.marginal soils unsuited for intensive annual row cropping. On other ma.rginal lands, ethanol tree crops such as the honey locust (whose pods can be converted into ethanol and whose roots fix nitrogen in the soil) may be planted. And work in progress by agricultural researchers·at the University of Wisconsin may result in the utilization of certain forage crops for the.producil P&iii♦illil~~
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz