Monday, June 22, 2015

Marrying tobacco and hog manure

Resourceful Americans are marrying tobacco and hog manure.

The manure comes from Murphy-Brown farms in the Carolinas, ones owned by Smithfield Foods Inc. which is, in turn, owned by a Chinese company.

The tobacco comes from Ttton BioEnergy which grows varieties intended for biofuel production, not for smoking.

The manure is blended with harvested tobacco plants and produces ethanol.  It’s less likely to draw the ire of critics than distilling corn to get ethanol to blend with gasoline.

Smithfield and Tyton also will develop applications for Tyton's tobacco-based biochar and activated carbon products, which can be used for a wide-range of filtration, land remediation, and soil amendment purposes.

Other research activities with Tyton co-products will occur in parallel.