Sunday, November 4, 2012

What the hay, Part II

Went to Ask.com and started looking at the costs and so forth.

You can get 4 tons of hay per acre, it says here.

As for what it would cost, here's a source:

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/news/fbmu/2011/12-01/article_3_fbmu_12-09.html
Now, the assumption for the price of hydrogen is about 9 bucks per kilogram.  Wrong, at least according to this!  So, how much hydrogen can you get out of a ton of hay?

Not directly answerable, but this source says the following:
Using mature gasification technology, one ton of biomass can be used to produce 165 gallons of methanol, as opposed to only about 100 gallons of cellulosic ethanol

A gallon of water weighs 8.33lbs, methanol is less dense than water at a ratio of  0.7918 giving the weight of a gallon of methanol at  6.596 lbs or about 3 kg.  About 1/8 of the mass of methanol is hydrogen.  That's about 3/8 kg times 165 equals 61.835 kgs per ton of biomass.  From the table above 181.25/61.835 equals
$2.93 per kg.

Given that other products are available from the biomass, and other considerations, it may be guessed that the price of this could be less than 9 bucks per kg.


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