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11 Sorghum: Fuel and Utility Types
Pages 195-214

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From page 195...
... This chapter highlights sorghum's potential to produce both solid fuels and liquid fuels, to yield industrial products, and to help maintain the overall sustainability of agricultural production. FIREWOOD Although food is fundamental, fuel is almost as basic to the modern diet.
From page 196...
... This would be a respectable annual production for even the fastest growing trees. The overall yield in fuel-calories per hectare may also be comparable, although even the densest sorghum stem will not equal the caloric output of a wood sample of equal volume.
From page 197...
... SORGHUM: FUEL AND UTILITY TYPES 197 1 j ~ a ~ ~ I Al Sorghum stalks make ~ poor Mel, but for miDions {hey are ~1 {hat is avadable. To Ibis extent, they provide ~ v]
From page 198...
... Moreover, maintaining mobility is critical to the public welfare: police, fire fighters, ambulances, mass transit, and construction fleets all depend on liquids that will explode in the cylinders of internal combustion engines. For these and other reasons, the growing dilemma over future petroleum supplies makes it imperative to investigate renewable fuels, especially those suited for use in existing engine types.
From page 199...
... The average fermentation efficiency was 90 percent and the fermentation process took 48-72 hours to complete. 6 The pilot model consists of flat-plate solar collectors (38 m2 in area)
From page 200...
... Although such levels will never be approached in practice and it seems axiomatic that grain yields will tumble when sugar is also produced, the NARI concept is a powerful one that could be a big breakthrough that boosts sorghum into an energy resource worldwide. And perhaps, after all, it is not too far-fetched to envisage sorghum producing both high contents of sugar in the stem and high yields of grain.7 United States A large sorghum-for-alcohol project was carried out across the United States between 1978 and 1984.
From page 201...
... 201 produce each year. The same equipment is used to process both sugarcane stalks and sweet-sorghum stalks.
From page 202...
... The newly released sodium reacts with carbon dioxide to form sodium bicarbonate, a soluble salt that is less injurious to plants and mostly washes away in the rain. After growing sordan on sodic lands for about 2 years, farmers can often re-use the soil for conventional crops.'° Reclaiming Toxic Soils in Lincoln, Nebraska, have found that sorghum has an exceptional ability to absorb pollutants out of soil.
From page 203...
... Instead, chemical processes break down the sugars in a way that releases carbon dioxide. A weak natural acid carbon dioxide reacts with the soluble alkalis (sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate)
From page 204...
... Of the 16 crops Bilbro has tested, forage sorghum is the most promising. He thinks that farmers will soon start using it to protect soil because it will save them money, help the environment, and (because the sorghum plants live such a short time before the frost arrives)
From page 205...
... Frank Einhellig, a biologist at the University of South Dakota, and James Rasmussen, an ecologist at Mount Marty College of Yankton, South Dakota, recently completed 3 years of field trials on Young's farm. On test plots covering 6 hectares, they had Young plant strips of sorghum, maize, and soybeans, and they measured the number of weeds that came up in the following year's crop.
From page 206...
... Nothing more was done. The sandy land had already been treated with nitrogen for the cotton crop and although most observers believed that the rains had probably already leached the fertilizer below root depth everyone hoped that the combination of furrow-planting and sorghum's deep roots would ensure at least a solid stand to cover the land.
From page 207...
... Years before they had used it as a rotation crop, and now they would like to use it that way again. Planting sorghum one year in four, they think, should break the buildup of cotton pests and diseases in the soil and help avoid future failures of the cotton crop.
From page 208...
... Snap beans and other crops planted in the residue the following season required almost no weed control. Now, many of Young's neighbors also plant sorghum and are finding reasonable weed control without herbicides.
From page 209...
... become a major crop · The viny types of lima beans, common beans, common peas, and runner beans that tend to be the highest yielding varieties but are seldom grown because of the expense of staking them or the lack of poles. · Beans, squash, or other climbing plants traditionally grown on maize.
From page 210...
... Today, products made of this sorghum are used in millions of American households, warehouses, stores, factories, steel mills, smelters, cotton mills, and barns. They range from whisk brooms to yard brooms for rough sweeping and special purposes.
From page 211...
... . Resins There is a black-grain sorghum from Africa called `'shawya" that shows promise in producing industrial resins.'5 ANIMAL FEED The United States probably leads the world in developing sorghum as a feedstuff.
From page 212...
... Moreover, it is increasingly sought these days because synthetic food dyes are suspected of causing harm. Red-sorghum leaf sheaths contain over 20 percent of the apigenin and are said to be the only known source of such large concentrations.
From page 213...
... But the crop is a more important feedstuff even than that. Only about two-thirds of America's sorghum plants are harvested for grains, and most of the rest also goes for animal feed.
From page 214...
... Page 214


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