Biomass energy: A New choice for America;

              BIOMASS ENERGY
Agribusiness has reacted in a
number of ways to the soaring 1 cost of energy, including belt tightening, reshuffling its energy priorities, and, predictably, raising its prices-a move that only compounds the problem. All of these actions, in fact, only forestall the realities of energy depletion. But there is a bright idea growing in the Farm Belt that could in time produce a harvest of energy for America.
In spite of the inherent risk in any new idea, agribusiness is putting more than a little of its money and its hopes on biomass conversion. Briefly, this is the production of energy from organic matter, such as the field crops heretofore destined for human con-sumption or livestock feed. The in-dustry, in particular its farmers, sees in the early stages the promise of a major contribution to the nation's search for energy self-sufficiency.
At this point in its development, biomass conversion is accomplished in three ways:
• Direct conversion: the burning of feedstocks, wood, crops wastes, nut shells, or fruit pits to produce heat for space heating and steam for processing.
• Physical/chemical conversion: the decomposition of dry biomass material—such as rice straw, wood chips, tree trimmings, and cannery waste—into low- or medium-BTU (British thermal unit) gases.
• Biochemical conversion: the fer-mentation of animal waste into methane gas, and starch- and sugar-based crops-such as corn, wheat, and potatoes-into ethyl alcohol, also
anew choice
for America
by JAMES HANNON/Executive Assist. Thermal Co., St Paul, and JOSEPH F. BUCHAN/Partner Minneapolis
commonly known as ethanol
Energy resources like these have two apparent advantages: one, they don't have to be dug or pumped from the ground, and two, the supply is nearly inexhaustible. A third advan-tage, of course, is that the raw materi-als do not have to be imported.
One reason there has been no rush to melt down the nation's crops is
that such conversion does not begin to supply our energy needs. In fact, the nation will be lucky to displace '10 percent of its gasoline in this way by 1990. Like it or not, fossil fuel and its synthetics are still the best, albeit most expensive, energy source. Also, they are still necessary to any conver-sion process.
The situation is brighter than it seems, however. Biomass conversion is a positive energy source because it can yield more energy than it takes to produce it. In the future, some way will certainty be found to increase the energy balance of other processes and a real obstacle to commercial production will be hurdled. In the meantime, it is the agribusiness industry that will probably benefit most from this revolutionary process. And properly so, since the nation's food growers and processors have been the driving force behind it. Besides, they're closer to the source.
Of the various techniques for bio-mass conversion, the one most attractive to the farmer is biochemi-cal conversion, a variation of old-fashioned fermentation. It is also attractive because one plant can be built to serve the needs of many. And fortunately, the raw material is growing everywhere. Any starch- or sugar-based crop—including wheat, potatoes, sugarcane and beets, and sorghum-can be used, as well as such food processing wastes and by-products as cheese whey, molasses slurry, cannery wastes, potato scraps, low-grade starch, pulp plant waste, and other flotsam and jetsam of our throw-away society. But the feed-
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