Aircraft Made of Hemp

[Floatsflyer]

Hmmmmmmm.......

A Waterloo, Ontario industrial hemp supplier, Hempearth, plans to build an airplane that is 75% made of hemp. Hemp is currently used to make all sorts of products like clothing, soap, oil, food, and construction and building materials. Canada legalized the growing of industrial hemp in the 90's.

The company has struck a deal with aircraft kit manufacturer Velocity Aircraft to build the plane on condition that the project is fully funded before building start. Supposedly, it will be one of Velocity's own models. The entire airframe, seats and seating materials will be made from hemp.

Velocity CEO Duane Swing says they tested the strength and durability of woven hemp before committing to the project. They made 2 identical planks, one made from woven hemp fibre, the other from fiberglass. They then tried to break them to determine which was stronger and found hemp was equal to or better than fiberglass, according to Swing.

The engine will run on hemp biofuel.

The eco-friendly benefits are obvious: a sustainable building material, low carbon footprint. What might be the non-environmental benefits? Will the costs to build be lower and therefore a more affordable aircraft to buy?

On those IMC days when you can't or won't fly, you can go to the hangar and smoke it. :>)

[Jeff Point]

Somebody has to make the joke, and it might as well be me...

There's more than one way to get high!

[rwanttaja]

Well, here in Washington State, all the hemp-built airplanes can now come out the hangar! :-)

Ron Wanttaja

[steve]

- You might have to build another aileron after giving a ride to my stoner brother-in-law.
- The drug sniffing dogs at the border would go bat-skit crazy.
- Survival training tip: Stay at the aircraft crash site. You betcha.

[Frank Giger]

Kinda gimmicky, in that replacing the fibers in fiberglass with hemp and then soaking it in resin isn't really Green Technology.

And I'm betting it takes more energy to make hemp biofuel than one gets out of it, making it a net positive use of fossil fuel. It's actually better for the environment to run MOGAS than to run something made out of plant material from a factory powered by coal...only to burn the plant material.

While I'm not a big fan of pot smoking, I would be an advocate of industrial hemp, though. It suffers from guilt by association, having a very low (.3 percent versus the 5-7% of its recreational cousin) THC content which makes it unsuitable for anything but making it into fibers for material. It's been long used for that purpose for very good reasons.

[Anders]

All the jokes aside, it sounds like a great idea. Provided, as others have mentioned, the construction and fueling costs actually make it viable. Which, after a little digging, I found this article that says it's really not, as of 7 years ago. I'd love to find something more current, and see if things have changed, but here's the most interesting part from the article about the feasibility of hemp bio-fuel:

If it were economically viable, Bobbee could get more excited about making biodiesel from hemp. Several years ago, when the Canadian hemp industry wasn't as well-established as it is now, Bobbee found himself with a surplus on his hands. A large hemp purchasing company went bankrupt, and suppliers like Bobbee were faced with low prices and few marketing options. The situation was particularly dire because hemp seed deteriorates after about a year in storage. The seed that Bobbee was stuck with was starting to go rancid. Since it could no longer be used in the food market, he took 20,000 liters (about 5,300 gallons) of hemp oil and turned it into biodiesel. Not only did the biodiesel have wonderful properties-better cloud point and cetane value than biodiesel made from canola or soy oil-its distinctive green color was a great marketing tool.

That experience turned Bobbee into a fan of hemp biodiesel. Still, he's a realist. As long as he and other hemp growers can get better prices from the food markets, they'll continue to pursue that avenue. At current values of CAN$1,000 for a 45-gallon barrel of hemp oil, it just wouldn't pay to make biodiesel out of the product. "It would be too cost prohibitive at this moment," he says.
The only way Bobbee's hemp seed would end up at the Bifrost Bio-Blends plant is if it didn't meet food-quality standards or if there was ever a surplus of the seed.

Arthur Hanks, executive director of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance, agrees that there are too many factors working against the use of hemp as a biodiesel feedstock. "People talk about it, but there's not really anything happening with that right now," he tells Biodiesel Magazine.

Price is the big issue, Hanks says, echoing Bobbee's sentiments. The human nutritional market pays well for hemp seed. Currently, conventionally grown hemp seed brings in about 45 Canadian cents a pound, he says. Certified organic seed garners 85 Canadian cents a pound, or nearly CAN$40 a bushel.

Then there's the hurdle of limited supply. Although healthy demand has increased hemp production numbers in Canada, there's just not enough quantity to go around. In 2005, 24,000 acres of hemp were planted in Canada, more than doubling to 50,000 acres in 2006. "That particularly, is very much an issue of economies of scale," Hanks says. "We are still very much a specialty crop."

Finally, there's the relatively low oil productivity of hemp. Hemp seed does have a relatively high oil content of about 33 percent, compared with canola at about 40 percent. However, it has a low seed per-acre yield. Typically, an acre of hemp yields about 700 pounds of seed, although some farmers have enjoyed production numbers as high as 1,200 pounds an acre in good years, Hanks says. Canola growers, on the other hand, can reap a crop of anywhere from 1,500 to 2,600 pounds an acre.

Anyway, I say keep working until a way is found to make it viable.

[mrbarry]

Henry Ford , hemp based panels .. Da , always liked ford automobile , he flew a Ford Built B-24 , flew good

[Bob H]

The choice of a structural fiber depends on it's ability to carry compression and interlaminar shear loads and tensile loading for beam flexure and the fiber modulus that determines stiffness. And those properties depend on the morphology of the of resin to fiber interface and long-term stability. Organics are usually sensitive to moisture and can't take heat for prolonged periods without breaking down. So trying to use hemp or cotton as a structural fiber makes for a lower strength laminate that won't last long. Materials like e-glass are stable, have no moisture problems and are cheap with a reasonable modulus.
Yeah, I know you wanted the street answer instead of technical stuff.