Tobacco: A Gift Of Food &
Energy
Last Modified December 1, 2008
Summary
While almost every plant on earth has been
investigated as an alternative energy resource, for some odd reason tobacco
has been entirely overlooked. I call this odd because the high sugar &
starch composition of tobacco is well-known, as is the very low lignin
encasement of its cellulosic materials. With this data alone it should be
clear to science, agriculture, and industry worldwide that the tobacco plant
has a nearly ideal composition for direct digestion to ethanol, and is also
an ideal candidate for biomethanation or gasification. Tobacco-based ethanol
can be produced for far less cost per gallon, with far more economically
valuable sidestreams, than corn-based ethanol ( see below for full details).
It has also been conclusively demonstrated in lab and field trials in Europe
in 2008 that by adding tobacco to manure a very, very significant
enhancement of biogas production can be achieved. With biomass tobacco's
demonstrated low costs of production, it is clear that biomass tobacco is
the first cost-effective purpose-grown biogas substrate and ethanol
feedstock. Further, it is known that tobacco is a heavily coppicing plant,
enabling it to produce very high biomass tonnage, and it is also known that
tobacco thrives on poor soils in a wide range of environments.
Perhaps the most attractive aspect of tobacco-based
biomass fuel is that not only would tobacco fuel not take away from food
crop production, as corn-based ethanol does, it would actually add immense
tonnage of food-grade protein that can be extracted from the sludge
remaining after ethanol is produced. Fraction-1 protein is an odorless,
tasteless crystalline substance that can be extracted from tobacco, and it
is a complete protein - as efficient a source of human food value as beef.
It would be totally 'paid for' by the ethanol produced from the tobacco
biomass, and so it would be, in effect, free food. It can be added to flour
of all kinds and used to produce baked goods like bread and tortillas,
adding enough high quality at no cost to these basic foods to practically
eliminate protein deficiencies in even the poorest countries. Does this
sound like a pipe dream? Please read on.
Another of tobacco's real advantages over all other
biomass energy plants comes from its potential as a source of high quality,
low cost animal feed. This property is supported by strong anecdotal
evidence from commercial Tobacco farmers whose fields are sometime overrun
with grazing animals who find a way in, but hasn't been proven in formal
trials as far as I know. If it can be shown conclusively that cattle, sheep,
goats, pigs and chickens accept and thrive on sweet, young, zero-nicotine
biomass tobacco in various forms (grazed, ensilaged, pelletized, etc), then
before energy is extracted from tobacco biomass, it can be fed to animals to
produce ultra-low cost meat and dairy protein, eggs and other human foods.
While it is likely that many of the limitations experienced in feeding the
residues of ethanol production from corn and grain to animals will apply to
both fresh tobacco biomass and to the residues of biogas and ethanol
production from tobacco, it is also possible that by mixing a
to-be-determined proportion of fresh biomass with their conventional feed,
the cost of feeding animals can be lowered very significantly.
The manure from protein
production can then be used as a rich energy feedstock for either liquid
fuels or methane gas, and as a chemical feedstock for other co-products.
It is this dual-use potential of biomass tobacco, combined with the
economics and environmental advantages of production, which I believe
makes it such an attractive candidate for investigation.
Here, briefly, are some of the major facts. When
grown as biomass rather than for smoking, tobacco yields between 100-200
Tons/Acre of low-cost high value biomass materials. This production range,
and fully accounted costs of @$1500-$2000/acre (USD) have been established
in university trials. When grown as biomass there are none of the high
costs, labor requirements, chemical inputs, or geographic restrictions
associated with conventional tobacco production - in fact, we might as well
be talking about two entirely different plants.
Tobacco biomass has multiple high value economic
uses in renewable energy and sustainable food production, as well as in
industrial agriculture applications. The dry weight yield for biomass
tobacco is between 10-20% of wet weight, yielding 10 at a minimum and up to
40 at a maximum Dry Tons/Acre. This material is 25-28% highly digestible
sugars, and 20-25% high quality protein. Tobacco's 40% cellulose is very low
in both hemicellulose and in lignin. This means that Tobacco's cellulose is
readily available for chemical digestion, like ethanol production without
expensive added enzymes, or natural digestion, like for animal feed.
As livestock feed, biomass tobacco will probably
cost well under $10/ton. With costs this low for high quality livestock
feed, truly cost-competitive electric power production from manure becomes
feasible. Also when directly digested for ethanol, the fermentable materials
in tobacco biomass extrapolate to between 700 - 2500 gallons/acre, and the
digested sludge remains an economically valuable material. Most of the
world's agricultural regions are already familiar with production of
commercial smoking tobacco, so a shift to production of tobacco as an energy
crop would require minimal additional infrastructure/capital requirements
and would produce minimal disruption to existing work patterns.
Everything considered, I believe that biomass
tobacco production can mean between $4000-$6000 per acre net profit for any
farm cooperative and even for many individual farmer/rancher/growers,
depending on their available acreage.
If you find this all either very odd,
simply unbelievable, or perhaps interesting, you're cordially invited to
visit and browse.
- Tobacco
Bioenergy FAQS
- Tobacco
biomass flow chart that illustrates the principal pathways and major
outputs from tobacco biomass acreage - based on achieved sustained
production yields
- Tobacco
- A Gift Of Food And Energy (Document =
225K - possibly a long download)
- Images
of the original biomass tobacco trials at North Carolina State
University in 1981, and of Nicotiana Rustica trials in New Mexico in
1980.(bitmapped graphics - moderately fast download)
If you would like to have a
full set of the data in #1 and #2 above in Excel 4.0 spreadsheet format
e-mailed to you at no charge, or if you have data to contribute to this
public resource, please forward your request or comments to the webservant
at bdrake@ktc.com