First two schemes that have lodged in my brain over the years.
> There is (was?) a power plant in the UK which runs on willow wood.
The wood is fast growing. The trees are cultivated in rows and in
such a way that they produce virtical wands 2 to 3 meters tall, this
all leads to easy automated harvesting.
> If a farm were to turn 10% of it's area over to producing
sunflowers, the oil yielded from the seeds could be used to run
deasel machinery without modification and would be sufficient in
volume to run all the farms machines. This is from memory and at
least 15 years old so please don't try it on my word alone.
Both of these schemes are the harvesting of bio-mass and it strikes
me that this is exactly what I and probably many of you do most
weekend for half the year while mowing the lawn. The question is, is
there an easy way to use grass clipping as a fuel source?
Direct burning of grass is very unpleasant unless considerable effort
is spent in drying it. A better solution would be to utilise a micro-
organism to digest the cellulose and produce either a flamable gas
which could be collected and used immediately or a liquid like
ethanol which would require distillation to extract it and could be
stored for use later.
BFN
Pete