Peggy's Update on Cattails

Slowly, we can see methodology emerge in the development of the domesticated cattail business. Here we learn that it is not too difficult to make the growing process far less thirsty, and optimally quicker. The best ratios exist at the four month mark. This will work even in the north.

Peggy is growing on well drained land on long beds that are kept sufficiently wet. This clearly facilitates harvest.

That up to four crops of stalks can be taken is noteworthy. I think she is looking to lay down a layer of chopped stalks next year to help in water retention.

Raising cattails as a row crop may turn out very well and provide a good framework for efficient harvest.

It is also noted that thin slicing of the tubers permits proper drying and long term storage. This will also allow recovery of starch by grinding and winnowing out the fiber. It turns out to be much like taro root – no surprise there. Obviously this is important if large quantities are to someday be used.

I would still like to see tools prepared to support a paddy based growing culture. Hand work is way too difficult for cattail culture to date and various forms of lifting and cutting tools are already part of the farm machinery business.

The row system pioneered by Peggy takes advantage of present hardware suited for dry environments.

Increasing Green Growth: Human Ecology, an Interdisciplinary Journal:(2009):

Presently, most Typha harvesters reported cutting ramets above the water surface, rather than cutting below water as had been done previously to control Typha. Cutting above water was reported to promote regrowth, as opposed to underwater cutting (n = 9). Harvesters also observed that cutting above the water surface avoided the Typha ramet base, which was too thick to be useful for weaving (n = 4). Only the youngest Typha harvesters reported cutting below water; they harvested from large wetlands accessible to the public and reported that Typha was never lacking. No one reported problems related to the sustainability of Typha harvesting, and most respondents harvested the same Typha plants four times per year, although some apparently harvested less frequently due to time constraints (n = 5).

But Why? What we want at this point is rhizome development to convert the rich polysaccharides into alcohol. During our evaluation study this summer we have witnessed the BEST rhizome development in the emerging plant and the BEST ratio of rhizome to stalk at about 4 months in estimated growth analysis of wild stands of cattail. Next spring we will be experimenting with the absorbent natural nature of the mulched green biomass. The object is to plant the cattail in soil that rapidly allows the moisture to reach the rhizome and then to spread the water (or retain it) at this level (between eight and eighteen inches. Moisture that seeps lower will encourage a strong ‘tap’ root that makes harvesting difficult.

Because we are not in a ‘flood’ zone, that tap root is not necessary to anchor the plant. Retaining moisture at the level of lateral rhizome growth propels the rhizome to grow in a shallow level thus facilitating harvesting. Also, evaporation is an issue in our current location. Therefore, keeping a moisture laden layer of biomass beneath the ground surface assists water use reduction. At this point we have ample wastewater; however, we also have abundant land that can become fields of cattail that will only be limited by the amount of wastewater that is available. It is best to discover moisture retention at an early stage. At this time we are experimenting with a proprietary biomass, yet it seems reasonable that the cattail itself may provide that retentive biomass. Please experiment and get back with us.

You may reach Peggy here:

Water Assurance Technology Energy Resources

40 Sun Valley Dr., Spring Branch TX 78070
FAX (830) 885-4827; Cell: (512) 757-4499
Email: rpk@gvtc.com

Furan for Gasoline?

This first item led me to the related item regarding the work on furan as a fuel. It competes directly with gasoline and relies on cellulose as a feedstock without a painful side trip through a biological intermediary.

It is easy to understand what drives cellulose based biofuel research. There is plenty of it and by its very nature, only termites and odd single cell animals thrive on its food value. Converting waste cellulose to a fuel precursor is a very desirable outcome. That furan is a deliverable fuel with the comparable energy density of gasoline is a welcome option.

No one mentions that the process also produces other important chemicals besides HMF that also must be dealt with. However, been able to throw everything into the chipper and then into a batch brewing process delivering a sizable percentage of HMT is a rather good start. It is something that a farm can master. Even if the resultant fluid is not separated, it is shippable.

So we have a chemical processing protocol that delivers a working fuel and additional chemical feed stocks of significance by a different route than imagined by other efforts with cellulose.

As I have posted many times, we must vacate the oil patch for our transportation fuels. A number of sugar and starch sources can give us a lot of ethanol, but likely not enough to ever avoid rationing. The major byproduct of all these methods happens to be cellulose. Converting cellulose directly into HMF and then to furan is a major break in the right direction. We still will have other byproducts but these are marginal compared to sponging up the sugars and the cellulose.

Process turns raw biomass into biofuel

http://www.biofueldaily.com/reports/Process_turns_raw_biomass_into_biofuel_999.html

by Staff Writers
Madison, Wis. (UPI) Feb 12, 2009

U.S. biochemists say they have developed a two-step chemical process that can convert cellulose in raw biomass into promising biofuels.

University of Wisconsin researchers said the new process is unprecedented in its use of untreated, inedible biomass as the starting material. They said the key to the new process is the first step, in which cellulose is converted into the "platform" chemical 5-hydroxymethylfurfural from which a variety of valuable commodity chemicals can be made.

"Other groups have demonstrated some of the individual steps involved in converting biomass to HMF (5-hydroxymethylfurfural), starting with glucose or fructose," said Professor Ronald Raines, who led the study. "What we did was show how to do the whole process in one step, starting with biomass itself."

Raines and graduate student Joseph Binder said they developed a unique mix of solvents and additives -- for which a patent is pending -- that has an extraordinary capacity to dissolve cellulose. And since cellulose is one of the most abundant organic substances on the planet, it is widely seen as a promising alternative to fossil fuels.

The research is detailed in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
A search led to this article, not noted at the time because of the use of the feedstocks of glucose and fructose. Switching to cellulose changes all that.

Avantium Engine-Tests Furan-Based Biofuel

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/10/avantium-engine.html
26 October 2007

Avantium, which spun-off from Shell in 2000, successfully completed an engine test to demonstrate the potential of its furan-based biofuels, or “furanics.” Furanics are heteroaromatic compounds derived from the chemical intermediate HMF (hydroxymethylfurfural, C6H6O3).

The cost-effective development of HMF and its fuel and chemical derivatives from biomass is of increasing research interest (earlier post, earlier post), given that the resulting fuels have significant advantages over first-generation biofuels.

For example, 2,5-dimethylfuran, one of the HMF-derived fuels being researched by Professor James Dumesic at the University of Wisconsin, has around a 40% higher energy density than ethanol, a higher boiling point (by 20 K), and is not soluble in water. Ethoxymethylfurfural (EMF, one of Avantium’s furanics examples) has an energy density of 8.7 kWh/L—very close to that of regular gasoline (8.8 kWh/L), nearly as good diesel (9.7 kWh/L) and significantly higher than ethanol (6.1 kWh/L).

Avantium is focused on the development of second generation biofuels and catalytic processes for the efficient production of novel bio fuels and bio-based chemicals. (The company also has a major focus in the pharmaceutical industry.)

By using its catalytic process development platform, Avantium has been able to find new and improved catalytic routes to specific furanics. Specifically, Avantium developed a one-step method for obtaining HMF derivatives in high yields from very hexose or hexose-containing starting materials such as sucrose and glucose.

The engine test. The engine test was performed by Intertek, in Geleen, The Netherlands, an independent test center. Using a Citroën Berlingo with a regular diesel engine, Avantium tested a wide range of blends of Furanics with regular diesel. The test yielded what the company termed positive results for all blends tested. The engine ran smoothly for several hours. Exhaust analysis uncovered a significant reduction of soot (fine particulates). Furanics do not contain any sulfur.

The excellent results of the engine test support the proof of principle of our next generation biofuel, and is an essential milestone for our biofuels development program. The significant reduction of soot in the car exhaust is encouraging, as soot emissions are considered a major disadvantage of using diesel today, because of its adverse environmental and health effects. We are developing a next generation biofuel that has superior fuel properties and process economics compared to existing biofuels. The production process of Furanics has an excellent fit with existing chemical process technology and infrastructure. Ultimately our ambition is to develop biofuels that are competitive with fossil based fuels.

—Tom van Aken, Chief Executive Officer of Avantium

The company plans to undertake an additional, comprehensive engine tests in 2008 to study engine performance and long terms effects of Furanics. Commercialization will also require studies of toxicologic and environmental effects, such as emissions.

Avantium also announced the filing of over a dozen patent applications on the production and use of Furanics as part of the company’s strategy to build an extensive patent portfolio for its biofuels program. In September 2007, the first two key patents were published, that claim amongst others the use of furanics as a biofuel and its production routes from sugars.

Making Primitive Biochar

Those who have followed my blog know that I proposed a method for producing biochar that was plausible inside the limitations placed on an antique society living in the Amazon rainforest. Key to the time and place was the use of maize as the principal source material. That this was so was confirmed by published pollen studies and by more recent translations of sixteenth century reports from southern Brazil which described widespread maize culture.

When I began my thought experiment, the presence of maize seemed very unlikely in view of the known dynamics of rainforest soils. Yet I needed a plant that produced packable waste that could be handled without steel tools. Wood was both high cost in human energy inputs and very resistant to charring and crushing. Most other crops simply failed to produce both a crop and much biomass. No primitive farmer was going to plant a stand-alone char feedstock and lose a season.

This is where corn or maize came in. It produced a stable easy to store high volume crop that also produced perhaps ten tons per acre of corn stover. This stover was also very packable because there are no branches. What made it more attractive was the root ball which is in the form of a disc and is often very easy to pull out of the soil. Thus a field could be stripped of its ripe corn and then stripped easily of its stover.

Stacking the stalks was easily accomplished and using the root balls to form an outer wall simply a matter of paying attention. The key idea was to provide an outer shell of mud that closed off the packed stover. Now they did not have a sheet of metal foil to add another heat resistant air tight layer, so it is likely that they slathered on a thin layer of river clay to form a air tight seal. Again field experiments will inform us as to the extent that this is all necessary.

At the end of the day, without any tools, we have a thin clay dome or a mud dome enclosing ten tons of packed stover.

This is then loaded with a charge of burning coals. I have considered top down but suspect that simply feeding a charge in through the bottom perhaps along a narrow trench will be good enough. A small amount of air will be drawn to the charge maintaining the heat production and the produced heat will steadily reduce the maize very quickly. Gasses will be captured and ignite as the burn progresses steadily reducing the load.

Eventually the whole load will collapse upon which it will be smothered with more dirt.

I had originally envisaged this process taking many hours, however corn stover is like paper and merely needs to be heated for it to curl up and quickly decompose.

Ten tons or one acres production would give us three tons of biochar which is ample for that one acre, particularly if one goes the extra step of creating seed hills on only a third of the surface. In one season, you are in business. The one remaining mystery is why this method failed to make it out of the Amazon, because it would have nicely augmented the three sisters throughout the Americas. Or perhaps it did and we simply never noticed or our steel got there first and disease got there first.