Tobacco as fuel and as food

Adapted extract from a book-length disk sent to the Institute entitled 'Smoke and Illusion'.

Virtually unlimited amounts of low cost renewable fuels, primarily either pipeline quality biogas or fuel-grade ethanol, plus extremely high quality food grade protein as a primary byproduct, can be produced without economic or technical barriers using specially grown tobacco as a raw material.

However, the tobacco I am describing is completely different from the tobacco grown in carefully tended rows for smoking materials - the way we all normally think of tobacco.

When tobacco is grown as biomass material rather than as smoking tobacco it is literally planted wall to wall over acres, and it produces massive yields - I have historical evidence convincingly showing 400 tons per acre achieved in the Albuquerque area in the 1920s by a company growing Indian tobacco for insecticide production.

The energy potential of this material can be extracted using either ethanol or methane production production systems, yielding virtually unlimited amounts of $0.40/gallon ethanol fuel or even cheaper pipeline quality biogas. Please note that nicotine contamination is not a problem in these or any associated processut The costs are sufficiently low to allow profitable electric power generation at $.05-$.07 per kwh delivered to the residential customer, also enabling cost effective conversion of present nuclear steam plants to renewable fuel steam plants generating power at competitive rates and employing hundreds of rejuvenated family farms in nearby communities in the process.

Biomass tobacco turns out to have an extremely unusual and rich biological composition. In fact it turns out to be not only by far the best renewable biological energy resource material ever investigated, to my knowledge, but also a source of potentially unlimited human food and medicines.

There has been a tobacco biomass research project at North Carolina State University for many years, demonstrating the food and medical potential of tobacco protein extracted from regularly mowed, densely planted acreage of high sugar, high protein, no-nicotine tobacco. It is in fact an allergen-free, complete and balanced protein, which is actually 1/3 pharmaceutical-grade, and is produced in such enormous 'paid-for' quantities as a co-product of low cost energy production that it may provide a practical and cost-effective approach to helping huge, remote populations bridge famine and starvation.

While certain people will be nauseated at the idea of tobacco-burgers - ie the meat of animals raised and fed on tobacco biomass for biogas energy production - such meat would in fact be extremely high quality, as shown by a lot of good USDA research into feeding beef cattle and pigs waste from conventional tobacco agricultural production.

I have grown tobacco biomass myself in New Mexico, and have demonstrated ethanol production from tobacco several times, both at New Mexico State University and at the Floyd Agricultural Energy Co-op facilities in Floyd, Virginia

William Drake, 527 West Jefferson, Wara Machie, Texas, USA 75165.