Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, Green Culture
Hemp in the gas tank
The Kalamazoo Gazette in Kalamazoo, MI ran a Viewpoint column last week where the writer, Richard Holcomb, wrote about all the benefits of growing hemp to wean ourselves of oil imports for fuel and plastics. Hemp activists have an incredibly hard time convincing people to seriously consider growing hemp because of its connection to marijuana (hemp itself is not psychoactive), but Holcomb does a good job of describing the difference between hemp and marijuana and how hemp could be used to make ethanol much more effectively than corn.One thing Holcomb mentions that I had never heard is that Henry Ford "hoped to be able to create a car from the soil using hemp as a fuel source. Ford created a car with a composite hemp plastic body that could withstand blows from a sledgehammer without breaking. The composite hemp plastic was 10 times stronger than steel and the overall weight of the automobile was two-thirds the weight of a regular car." Sounds ideal. Wonder how true that is.
[Source: Kalamazoo Gazette]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Glenn A. 10:24AM (5/25/2006)
The crude plastic that Ford had his people working on were indeed from the earth, but they contained huge amounts of formaldahyde, so the poor guys who worked on the experimental cars had to go outside the workshop periodically to get fresh air. The cars smelled like a mortuary.
I've recently read (probably on autoblog) that bamboo is being used as a basis for some car components in Japan (I think as a strengthener in a plastic in the same manner that fiberglass strengthens plastic in that composite), and that the Japanese (in fact, I think it was Mitsubishi or Toyota) had developed new plastics which were earth-based instead of petrochemical based.
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Tush 11:36AM (5/25/2006)
Yeah right, they're probably just using bamboo in cars so that they can get more people to become try Bamboo. Those damn kids smoking their bamboo all the time, we'll have bamboo-heads running around Japan eating everything!
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Tush 11:38AM (5/25/2006)
-become
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1985 Gripen 2:39PM (5/25/2006)
I'm astounded at the bad rap industrial hemp gets. It's amazingly versatile. How did we go from George Washington growing it and the sails and ropes of the Mayflower being made of it to not even being able to grow it in the U.S.!?!? Hey DEA, go out and learn the difference between industrial hemp and marijuana!!!
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len 3:20PM (5/25/2006)
as i recall,Mr. Ford was depicted hitting the fender with a sledge hammer but naming the material source as soybeans. wonder who killed the research in that direction, so many years ago.
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Ron 8:01AM (5/26/2006)
Hemp-- 500,000 products can be made from hemp. Beer, Cheese, salad oil, oil to fuel vehicles, cloth, plastic, rope and paper are just a few products. In Canada hemp can be grown but the government makes one jump through many hoops. Hemp is a native plant so little fertilizer, water or pesticides are needed. It is an easy and economical crop to grow. What are the road blocks or rather WHO?
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