In 1916, a man by the name of George Schlichten invented a machine called a decorticator, which could strip the fiber from any plant, separating it from the pulp. It was an attempt to replace the need for trees to make paper, and he was successful in making pulp for newsprint at half the cost. The invention was hailed as a revolutionary device — Popular Mechanics published an article calling hemp the ‘New Billion Dollar Crop’ – that had the potential to halt deforestation.
However, hemp became restricted for the first time in America by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, amid special interests by oil companies seeking to oust competition from the market, as they had just invented a way to turn trees into paper using toxic chemicals. Schlichten’s decorticator was making their method obsolete. Restriction of hemp was achieved under the guise of prohibition of a dangerous drug -called by the previously unheard name for the plant – marijuana. It was restricted without the consideration of the American Medical Association, which had been prescribing cannabis medicine for decades, even to many of the congressmen who outlawed it.
Hemp is the world’s most versatile plant. Over a 20-year period, one acre of hemp will grow the same amount of biomass as 4.1 acres of trees. Hemp contains 80 percent cellulose; wood produces 60 percent cellulose. It is drought-resistant, making it an ideal crop in the dry western regions of the country. It can yield 10 tons per acre in four months, and because it grows at such a rapid pace, it chokes out other weeds on its own; it does this with little to no chemical fertilizer assistance. Incredibly, hempseed improves the soil on which it is sown. Yield has also been known to increase readily with subsequent harvests, making it a remarkably efficient and cheap harvesting process when compared with other agriculture.
By the process of pyrolysis, biomass material can be burned in a reactor to produce fuel oil. This method will produce 80 gallons of renewable gasoline fuel for every dry ton of biomass. This process also produces charcoal, with a heating value equivalent to coal when burned. This charcoal can be used as a raw material for organic fertilizer. The cellulose pulp from hemp can be used to make paper that lasts 100 times longer than wood paper. Hemp pulp can also be made into composite material for plastics for industrial use. Hemp fibers are the strongest found in nature, & increase the durability of cement and other building materials.
Hemp vs Petroleum