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  • From: Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>
  • To: permaculture list <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Harvesting of prairie biomass for energy?
  • Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:46:20 -0800

I'm at an ag conference in Guelph, Ontario and just learned about
http://www.reap-canada.com

They harvest prairie biomass in early spring. Dried plants, pelletized and
burned without the ethanol step. 10:1 ERoEI compared to ethanol's 1:1, and
the prairie stays intact. 50lbs/acre of nitrogen added instead of corn's
160, and as they improve the mix of N-fixers that will improve further.
Convert all those cornfields back to prairie!

Toby
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Details at http://patternliteracy.com
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On 1/25/07 6:15 PM, "Lawrence F.London, Jr." wrote:

> Rael Bassan <rael@...> writes:
>
>>
>> In a recent [Permaculture Forum (Upper Midwest)] post there was some
>> concern about the proposed harvesting of prairie biomass for energy,
>> suggested by the Minnesota studies of David Tillman's group. According to
>> their analysis, using a prairie plant mixture of up to 14 species "comes
>> out 6 to 16 times better than corn grain ethanol or biodeisel [sic] ."
>> www.vnps.org/chapters/princewilliam/wildnewsjanfeb07.pdf
>
> Doesn't hrvesting prairie plants for conversion to ethanol result in serious
> organic matter and accompanying soil microflora depetion in those soils?
>
> LL
>
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