The Renewable Carbon Energy Industry
The renewable carbon energy industry is almost 20 years old…if you did not know about Rudolf Diesel. Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858. His parents were Bavarian immigrants. Rudolf Diesel was educated at Munich Polytechnic. After graduation, he was employed as a refrigerator engineer. However, his true love lay in engine design.
Rudolf Diesel designed many heat engines, including a solar-powered air engine. In 1893, he published a paper describing an engine with combustion within a cylinder, the internal combustion engine. In 1894, he filed for a patent for his new invention, dubbed the diesel engine. Rudolf Diesel was almost killed by his engine when it exploded. However, his engine was the first that proved that fuel could be ignited without a spark. He operated his first successful engine in 1897. His fuel was peanut oil.
We forgot about his renewable fuel for almost a century. We are back, and we are using renewable carbon sources for fueling internal combustion engines and turbines for mobility and electric power generation.
The current industry was stimulated in corn, rapeseed and soybean fields by farmers wanting to develop their own fuels from their crops and reduce their country’s dependence on foreign sourced fossil fuels.
Negative world opinion about using food crops to produce fuel has forced GREEN Tree Huggers to research other renewable forms of renewable carbon sources to produce fuels. Governments, research institutions, colleges and universities are leading the way to reduce the use of food stocks to produce energy.
A group of farmers in the Ozarks is taking the lead by stepping back in time to replace their fescue fields with the native grass of the Ozarks, called switchgrass. Polk County farmer and cattleman Ed Cahoj gathered some of his associates, and together they have formed the National Biomass Growers Association, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation focused on using switchgrass as an alternative energy source. Check out www.biomass-producer.org. Talk about a “grass-roots” organization!!
Ed is on the board of directors for Ozarks New Energy and is currently serving as the board’s vice president.
Jim Gardner