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Old 06-23-2009, 01:17 PM   #1 (permalink)
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lawn mower fuel from grass?

would it be possible to make ethanol from grass?

when i bought my house it came with a nice electric lawnmower, wich unfortunately since we increased the size of our lawn, is no longer big enough. My still had a rusty but trusty petrol powered lawnmower they no longer used wich they gave to me... fired up right away and mows great.

unfortunately it's not all that clean than the electric one... however after mowing i noticed i had produced a quite respectable pile of biomass...

so now i wonder would it be possible to distill some sort of fuel from it for the mower....

any ideas on how to pull this off?


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Old 06-23-2009, 01:54 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Hi,

Have you considered a push reel mower?

Amazon.com: Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower: Home Improvement
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Old 06-23-2009, 02:24 PM   #3 (permalink)
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Don't distill, digest

Ethanol from grass is difficult, it takes expensive enzymes to get the cellulose to break down. Yeasts are like kids, they like simple sugers, not locked up inside vegetables.

It would be easier to make biogas with a digester. Biogas is a mix of methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. It comes from bacterial composting, not from fermenting with yeast, like ethanol.

It works better if the grass first goes through a sheep, chicken, goat, or cow to get the plant breakdown process going. It is pretty easy to convert an engine to run on biogas, but your horsepower rating will likely drop by about 1/4.

Mother Earth Magazine has some online articles about it. Just search the archive. Here is a link to some books that can also get you started:

KP
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