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easy and cannot be run by farm workers in the hour or so a day available between other jobs. Ethanol production must become a definite part of the farm activities and have not only its own operators but also its own assured feedstock supply- - running an ethanol plant on damaged and surplus crops is not on.

The alcohol produced is generally not better than 190 °. Upgrading this to 200 ° for general commercial use can be done off-site for the smaller plants, or can be done as part of the process in the bigger cooperative plants which are not really farm plants but commercial alcohol-producing factories taking in feedstock from nearby farms. Off-site up-grading presupposes that the necessary facilities are available, and large- scale alcohol production assumes there are enough vehicles and engines around converted to run on alcohol mixtures. Even with the smaller on-farm plant use of, say, half the ethanol off the farm is envisaged.

Alcohol production is not to be undertaken lightly as the answer to fuel problems on the farm. Many things have to be considered and production by a single farm with no other outlet or back-up facilities may not be viable and, of course, local Customs and Excise, denaturation and so on must also be taken into account.

However, for anyone who is seriously thinking of producing ethanol, for scientists and others interested in alternative energy sources, this book is a valuable source of information and is to be recommended.

P.H.

Energy from Biomass--lst E.C. Conference. Edited by W. Palz, P. Chartier and D . O . Hall. Applied Science Publishers Ltd, London, 1981. 922 +xx i ipp . , 210 illustrations, 15.5 c m x 23 cm. Price £39.00.

This is a vast publication of the proceedings, both spoken presentations and poster session, of the International Conference on Biomass held at Brighton, England, U K in 1980. It is, in a sense, impossible to review a book such as this. It contains about 140 papers given at the meet ing--some are good, some not so good; some tread old paths, some report new ideas and experiments.

There are six papers in the 'Opening Session', on the prospects for biomass energy and its possible contribution to energy needs, together with some idea of research programmes in the field. The next two sessions contain a larger number of papers dealing with assessments of the amounts, or possible amounts, of 'Agricultural Residues and Energy Crops' and forests that are, or could become, available for energy product ion- -much of this is a variation on an often reported theme. Two further sessions deal with biological production of ethanol and gas and thermo- chemical production of gaseous and liquid fuels. Session V is entitled, 'New Concepts in Fuels by Biological Routes' , but some are hardly 'new' concepts and

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some are not concepts for fuel production as such, but only routes for production of algal biomass which could be converted to fuels.

The last two sessions are on ' Implementat ion ' in developing and developed countries, But here there is little data on the running of actual plants incorporating the ideas of bio-, or physico-chemical-, technologies discussed in theory or tested on a laboratory scale.

This is only one of a number of books of papers from meetings on the uses of biomass which the reviewer has lately seen. It will obviously be of interest to those engaged in research on the topic. It presents results by workers not taking part in other meetings. But a problem with this type of book is that only certain papers are of immediate interest to most individual workers or laboratories and the price of this book, like most, is high for the individual: it is a library purchase really. However, the book does give the worker in one field an idea of progress in technologies which could be alternatives to his own work, and this is more useful than the books devoted to one technological aspect.

It was said at the beginning that it is impossible to review a book of dozens of short papers by different au thors - -one cannot say that this book must be obtained or must not be obtained. All one can do is try to describe, briefly, what it is.

P.H.