Gasification of Energy Crops: What it is, its issues, and its
potential  The demand for energy in this country is enormous,
and fossil fuel prices are high and volatile. Industries in the
region are looking to land-based bioproducts as replacement
feedstocks for coal, gas, and petroleum. The race for the
perfect biorefinery is on, and the papers are full of reports
that promise "real soon now" we'll be making substantial
quantities of everything from biofuels to pharmaceuticals out of
lignocellulosic materials. In the meantime, there are many
questions about building the supply chain to get huge quantities
of biomass to those dream refineries. Getting the supply chain
jump-started requires early markets for the materials, and there
are three "bridge markets" in our region that have potential:
fuel pellets for residential and small commercial furnaces, co-
firing coal boilers with some proportion of biomass, and
gasifiers. The third technology, gasification, turns dry, solid
biomass into a fuel gas that can be