Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Lawn-Based Biofuel

So I talked with my kids today about this idea of farm-scale supply and demand, then expanded to publicly available biofuels, and one of the kids said that someone around here is already doing that - already sells biofuel. I've got to find out for myself if that's true (other teachers were doubtful).

But.

Here's a small modification to that system. What if, once the distilling operation was functioning, people could bring their lawn clippings from their yards to this place and drop them off in return for a discount on fuel? Sweet, eh?

All the environmentalists in my life who don't like biofuels don't like it because it's not going to be a large-scale remedy/replacement for gasoline. It would take crops grown over an area the size of Kansas someone said. But grass is the #1 crop grown in America. What if we just ... used it? People could switch to Switch Grass (hehe), or they could just stick with conventional grass (which does have some cellulosic stored chemical energy). We could probably have enough, eh? We'll have to run that calculation with the students.

It could also be extra revenue for restaurants if they could sell their grease to a biofuel-producing station.

It's evolving.

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