Farm research reciewed at Calhoun field day By Ray Newbold The LSU AgCenter hosted a field day at the Calhoun Research Station on Thursday, October 29. Drs. Allen Nipper, Bill Richardson, and David Boethel, administrators with the AgCenter, noted that the Calhoun Research Station is the oldest Research Station in Louisiana. The Station was established in 1888; just one year after the Hatch Act was passed which gave federal land grants to states in order to create a series of agricultural experiment stations. State agricultural stations created under this act were usually associated with land-grant state colleges and universities. C.A. "Buck" Vandersteen, Executive Director of the Louisiana Forestry Association, recounted the effect that the recession has had on the forest industry, especially loggers. Legislative successes this year have included the extension of the prescriptive period for timber trespass prosecution from one year to five, and a phase-out of sales tax on logging equipment parts and repairs. An issue still being addressed is the need for additional allowances from timber severance tax for tree planting under the Forest Productivity Program. Dr. Mike Dunn, Associate Professor with the LSU AgCenter Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness addressed the falling timber prices as related to housing markets, home foreclosures, unemployment, and consumer debt statistics. The economy will eventually turn to a positive direction and the additional prospect of energy production from wood to various forms of fuel stands to increase demand, especially for small diameter and low quality trees. Dr. Cheng Piao, Assistant Professor at the Calhoun Research Station spoke about and provided examples of how small diameter trees can be used to manufacture posts, poles, and beams for structural purposes. Products can be round or square, and can be bonded together to create large dimension material for power line poles or guardrail posts for highways. Treated wood can also be recycled by re-sawing old poles and reconstituting the laminates into new products, but special attention to bonding issues is necessary. Dr. Piao also discussed creating "superhydrophobic" wood which resists water penetration by surfacing treated wood with "nano-crystal rods". By excluding water, the wood does not support fungi, thus no decay; U-V protection from the sun's rays is built in; the wood is environmentally friendly because the treatment chemicals will not leach out, and contact with water is not a problem. Dr. Hui Pan described how treated wood can be recycled by chemically extracting the treatment chemicals (CCA, creosote, or penta) for reuse. At temperatures of 250-480 degrees, a liquefaction process reduces the wood components to a liquid. Copper, chromium, and arsenic accumulate in sludge and are recovered to treat new wood products. The liquid portion can then be processed into ethanol or biodiesel for fuel. By recycling treated wood, disposal problems are minimized. Contamination to the air by burning and to water from burial is avoided, and scarce landfill space is saved. In a liquid form, the process becomes easier to handle, is cost effective, and the liquefied wood can also be used as a stock for producing polyurethane foam. Dr. Lewis Gaston, Associate Professor with the AgCenter discussed the potential for using fast growing grasses and forest litter as a source of fuel. A hybrid miscanthus grass can grow to a height of ten feet in a season and produce 20 tons of dry biomass annually. At a conversion rate of 120 gallons of ethanol per ton, that amount of biomass could replace the equivalent of 1,500 gallons of gasoline per acre. The final speaker, Dr. Michael Blazier, spoke on the topic of converting wood chips to fuel pellets. Pellets are becoming popular in Europe for heating. The pellets are 90 percent efficient and are low in particulate emissions where air pollution is a concern. Using wood as a source of fuel can capitalize on using low value trees in improvement harvests and avoids using food crops such as corn and soybeans for ethanol and diesel fuel. Wood now only supplies about 2 percent of the nation's energy needs and can never replace all the needs now supplied by petroleum. But with 40 percent of our energy coming from oil, and 70 percent of that imported, any advances to absorb a portion of that market will be beneficial to the nation. |