tobacco - a new source of energy and food

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 100-400 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 20 to 80 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 - 5500 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 $6000-$10,000 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.

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