Switchgrass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn 560
statemachine writes to mention that the USDA and farmers took part in a 5-year study of switchgrass, a grass native to North America. The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent. "But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. 'To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,' he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. 'Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber.'"
Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Informative)
jatropha-think citrus (Score:4, Informative)
I agree with the other poster, either switchgrass or industrial hemp are better targets for exploitation for biofuels using marginal land in most areas of the US.
Sugar beets - really tough (Score:4, Informative)
Ethanol yield/per acre for sugar beets is about 2x times that of corn, and about 25% higher than sugar cane.
Sugar cane is more efficiently made into ethanol yielding 8 times as much energy as required to make it, sugar beets only about twice. Corn is nearly an even output.
Sugar beets and the great energy changes ahead (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two good positives here, energy demands are just always going to be going up,so this biofuels idea will be continued to be worked on, and farmers love to farm, because it is a hard job, and if they didn't love it, they wouldn't do it, there are any number of easier ways to make a buck. So it will work out.
In fact, a ton of the good innovations and tweaking with biofuels are going on right now in real world deployments directly on farms for fuel use on-site, because they are so tied to energy availability and costs. They are the serious beta tester devs right now for all of this...so I say support them in general terms, let them sort this out better, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Society is right now asking a minuscule percentage of the population to double their output, in two critical areas, food and now they are going to be tasked with being the liquid energy producers as well. This is an incredibly HUGE undertaking, and I think it is more than fair that the rest of society, who will be the primary beneficiaries of the food and now energy production, be prepared to cut loose a few dollars for this effort, to offer a bit of understanding and acceptance of the size of these projects in total and realize there will be failures as well as successes along this new energy path, and to give them a chance to tweak it out better without a lot of condemnation and outright dissin'.
No other segment of our society has been tasked with a doubling or tripling of their projected work load en masse like the farmers have now accepted to attempt. The closest historical parallel we have would the durable goods manufacturers-with a much higher workforce total and much higher governmental support structure- who had to gear up and run triple time, plus alter product lines drastically, for the world war 2 effort. The coming transition to mostly biofuels as conventional petroleum sources become more iffy and more dear, is at least of such a scale the way it is being projected now.
algae (Score:3, Informative)
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We have pretty much done most of the damage that will be done buy making the prairies into farmland, why would we destroy the ecosystem of thousands of acres of ocean as well? The only real reason we have been using corn, is that there is so damn much corn sitting around this country because of the ridiculous corn subsidies. Maybe if switchgrass becomes the new cash crop those subsidies will shrike in favor of the new fuel source
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But, an aside: I think all I need to do is listen to NPR/TOTN/Science Friday, SciAm, et
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Insightful)
All the major food sources have been "heavily modified genetically".
It's called selective breeding/pollination.
Direct gene manipulation is pretty much the same thing, but faster and more precise.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's called selective breeding/pollination.
Direct gene manipulation is pretty much the same thing, but faster and more precise.
First off, we are seeing cross-species gene transplants, that does not ever happen naturally. But go ahead and forget about that issue since it is not so widespread yet.
The other problem is exactly what you wrote -- faster changes. Faster change mean faster mistakes and less chance to catch non-obvious mistakes. With selective breeding you get multiple generations worth of time to discover problems with a new breed, long before it enters mainstream consumption. With gene-splicing a wholesale change can be made across thousands, even hundreds of thousands of animals/plants within the span of one generation.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Insightful)
To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,"
Now, if I remember right, one can plant legumes and they will perform nitrogen fixation to resupply the soil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation [wikipedia.org]
So, crop rotation?
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Yes, there will be loss, but it's not anywhere near as bad as some make out. Any decent organic farmer can lecture for hours on the wonders of compost, and as long as the farmers are careful about irrigation runoff, it isn't too bad.
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Nope Switchgrass is not plowed every year, it is mowed, sometimes twice annually. Replanted every 10 tears. Requires little fertilizer, if any.
You can grow all three you know. (Score:2)
Also, how does one use hemp as food?
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Re:You can grow all three you know. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You can grow all three you know. (Score:5, Informative)
It's a shame that prohibition drives the seed prices through the roof.
Re:You can grow all three you know. (Score:4, Funny)
(I know, I know... but I couldn't pass up the chance to say that).
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Yeah, good one, that's hilarious. Perpetuating utterly false misinformation that keeps a highly useful and sustainable crop from being legal is SO funny. If that is clever, I've got another one for you:
Hemp seed is imported into the US only by terrorists
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Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Insightful)
Growing corn gets you fuel, OR food. Farms aren't going to use the same crop to produce fuel and food-- they'll produce one or the other.
Also, should your fuel sources be competing with your food sources?
Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.
Hemp doesn't produce a sizable amount of food.
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To reinforce your point, animal feed prices have tripled due to increased demand for ethanol, which in turn has driven up the price of beef.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is good logic in the argument that tying food production to fuel production is a bad idea. However, the argument that food prices are rising because of ethanol production ignores the complexity of the equation. Corn production and price is tied to fuel production regardless of whether ethanol is added to the equation. Adding ethanol to the equation, corn production is actually stimulated. Also, one would expect some form of a fuel price decrease (on a macro level) with the replacement of gasoline with ethanol. Therefore, there are numerous variables to account for in analyzing the effects of ethanol on food and fuel price and production. It is simplistic to assume that ethanol production is the sole source of rising corn prices.
Additionally, cellulosic ethanol is not a silver bullet. Encouraging the planting of high performing switch grass can have a few harmful impacts. Switch grass can be planted where other crops cannot. Some of this unplantable land is wetland which is important as habitat and a filter for our water supply. Also, if the economics work, switch grass may also displace food production.
Finally, the headline "switchgrass makes better ethanol than corn" is misleading because it conveys the idea that this is some kind of revelation. The real news is the number the study has yielded. However, the article massacres the actual comparison. The article's quote is: "This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies." Without careful reading, it appears that the writer is saying that corn ethanol creates an energy deficit, this isn't true. The SA writer makes things confusing by comparing the actual energy produced by switchgrass ethanol with the amount of energy produced in excess of the input for corn ethanol. The writer of the SA article is comparing apples to oranges and I am skeptical of the motives of journalists that play with numbers. Also, don't forget that cellulosic ethanol can also come from corn. Plants in the Midwest have begun to to add stalks and husks to the ethanol process in the past two years. I really don't care where ethanol comes from, I think its a good idea. But the debate should not be a shadow game of massaged numbers.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Informative)
>same crop to produce fuel and food-- they'll produce one or the other.
I am a farmer, and I'm right in the middle of this. I'm hoping to profit nicely from ethanol demand.
The corn I grow is a commodity. I really don't care if the buyer uses it for food or ethanol production. I store it in my grain bins and sell it when the price is right.
Corn is a nicely flexible commodity. I like it.
>Also, should your fuel sources be competing
>with your food sources?
It doesn't really matter. We farmers can grow extreme amounts of corn without much effort. We're so good at it, we've had to hold ourselves back on production for decades.
Switchgrass, on the other hand, doesn't have much use other than (potentially) as fuel. I sure don't want to eat it. I could grow it quite easily if the market demands it, but I'd need to tool up with different equipment and farming techniques. It's a real hassle to bale and store hay...I don't expect switchgrass would be much different. The root system created by switchgrass would make a field hell to get back to where I could plant corn again if it were needed for food.
I can't think of any marginal land where growing switchgrass would make much sense, either. If it's not growing corn, I've got better uses for it, even if it is only grazing land for livestock.
>Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.
Don't get me started on that damn ditchweed. It's rough on equipment. My family tried it years ago when it was needed during the wars. We're still trying to reclaim land lost to it. You can't eat it, and you sure as hell can't smoke it. About the only decent thing I can say about it is it's good for erosion control. That's why it's called ditchweed.
>Hemp doesn't produce a sizable amount of food.
Damn straight.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Informative)
it's hard for something to be "free, as in beer" when a bottle of beer is very expensive to make due to a hops shortage.
it never makes sense to burn our food.
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except that many hops farmers have switched from farming hops on their premium farm land, to farming inefficient corn, thus driving up the price of beer.
Mass produced domestic beer IS going up in price, but this is not really because of the hop shortage. The hop shortage is severely affecting the homebrew and microbrew markets, but the big brewers don't use much hops, if any, in their brews. Instead they use isomerized alpha acid, a synthetic version of one of the major hop bittering compounds. Sam Adam
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Who cares, ethanol in general is not a good long term solutions to the energy crisis (emphasis on good, it could be a solution, but it has to many flaws). Renewable energy sources like water, sun, and wind power could be good long term solutions but the still need a lot of work and increases of effectiveness to reach that point. Nuclear could do the job
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ethanol, on the other hand, takes much of its energy input from the sun. It could thus contribute to solving the energy crisis. It can also do so on the quick and on the cheap, since we have lots of experience utilizing the energy stored in it. Its use creates pollution where it's consumed, which is unfortunate for people like me that live in major cities.
What do you think are the flaws inherent in ethanol that make it a necessarily bad energy solution? The worst things I've heard is that (when made from corn) it struggles to yield net-positive energy, and that it pollutes at point of use. To me, if the problem of efficiency is solved ethanol seems that it could be a source of power for cars in a generation.
The other power sources you mention, wind, solar and nuclear, are (along with coal and oil) currently sources for electricity generation. They're competing for something totally different. I am not really an expert on this, but I'd guess based on this that gasoline and ethanol aren't as efficient for mass electricity generation; if this is true, then yes, the true energy solution is to centralize generation in big, efficient power plants and use electricity and fuel cells at point of use.
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For example, if you cut the price of bio/petro diesel in half relative to gasoline, I could easily see 50% of the vehicles on the road being diesel within 5 years.
A diesel-electric hybrid would be capable of some scary efficiency and low emissions. Most pollution from diesels are from them operating out of their ideal powerband.
It's easy to design a diesel engine optimized for a constant RPM and load that'll last halfway to forever that gets high effici
Gasoline is a one trick pony. (Score:2)
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Informative)
This means that corn gets you negative amounts of fuel (you'll use more farming it than you'll get out of farming it), while switchgrass gets you fuel.
The only reason corn has been chosen as the main crop for getting ethanol in the US is because of the strong cron lobby. It really isn't a feasible energy *source*, since it uses more energy than it produces.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Funny)
I know the accurate scheduling and execution of many of my Linux system processes has benefited greatly from the strong United States cron lobby!
This message brought to you by the United States cron lobby. Lobbying today for a better tomorrow.
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Lobbying today and tomorrow, but not Sunday, and then for the next six days, but always excluding the first of February.
Re:Switchgrass is a one trick pony. (Score:5, Informative)
2. Corn is subsidized, thus its true costs are hidden from us.
3. Corn must be re-planted every year from seeds. Switchgrass is a perennial whose 'produce' can be harvested from the same plant each year.
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AFAIK it's a different type of corn they use for ethanol, and when you they use corn for ethanol, they use ALL of it.
Generally speaking, it's the same corn used for feeding livestock and human consumption. There isn't anything special about it...right now anyway. You are correct that once the corn is used, it is mostly starch depleted. The used "brewer's grain" can be dried and fed to livestock, but its done to supplement the vitamin/mineral intake for the livestock, not so much as being the primary "energy" food (carbohydrates), which comes from other sources, such as hay/silage/green feed.
There are methods in the works to use leftover fiber from corn or other plant based waste as fuel, but these are just methods of recycling waste products, not significant energy producers.
Celluloistic ethanol pr
Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:4, Informative)
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That is so funny that I almost fell out of my seat. Corn prices have stayed fairly constant for the past three decades. I am not talking about being adjusted for inflation. If the corn farmers have a powerful lobby then that must mean that lobbiest truly have no power at all. (not the case)
If you take the price that corn sold for in the 1970s and adjusted for inflation, corn should be selling for above $10/bushel today. The prices of corn and other commodities ha
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Because destroying the country's ability to produce food internally is a bad idea. What happens when externally produced food skyrockets in price, or worse, is not available at all?
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Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:4, Informative)
I get a check every year that disagrees with you.
They may not be sugar-lobby powerful, but they still manage to farm the government well enough.
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, you are a master of the non sequiter. The price of corn is not a good measurement of the power of the agribusiness lobby -- what you want to measure is how much influence they have over legislators. It's difficult to measure influence directly, of course, but what can be objectively measured is how much money agribusiness donates to politicians. And there we find that in the last 20 years or so, agribusiness has donated a total of 415 million dollars [opensecrets.org]. To put that in perspective, that is over three times the amount donated by defense lobbyists [opensecrets.org] in the same time period, and I don't think anyone would scoff at the influence of defense lobbyists on our government. So yes, I'd say the agribusiness sector (note I deliberately don't say "farmers" because what we are talking about here are massive farming corporations like Archer Daniels Midland [admworld.com], not mom and pop and their 40 acres) has plenty of influence in Washington. Which is of course why so many government handouts are going to corn-based ethanol, even though corn is clearly one of the least efficient sources for that product.
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Informative)
You must have a rather slippery seat.
pdf [taxpayer.net]
Re:Almost anything is better than corn (Score:5, Insightful)
-Ted
Wrong study. (Score:5, Funny)
"The polling firm found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver only 0.54% of the voter cast in the states capable of producing it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can yield around 24% of the votes cast in the states that produce it."
It's not about EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Investment), it's about PEOPI (Politicians Elected On Pork Invested).
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Switchfoot Makes Better Music Than Korn (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Switchfoot Makes Better Music Than Korn (Score:5, Insightful)
I've only looked at corn ethanol in much detail, but that stuff requires MORE oil to produce, per unit of burnable energy (that you can actually pump into your car), than gasoline does. It gets fertilized with oil, harvested with tractors that run on oil, transported with oil
Maybe switchgrass is a little better than corn, but I have some serious reservations, and this study doesn't dispel them (considered how deep in the pockets of ADM and the oil companies the government is). Show me a large-scale ethanol process, sunlight-to-tank, that doesn't take petroleum as an input and then I'll be much more impressed. So far I haven't seen one that seems practical.
Energy != oil (Score:3, Informative)
That's total nonsense. Not all energy is oil!
Take a look at the studies on ethanol - Pimental's, for example. About 90% of t
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The Ethanol debate is NOT about fuel! (Score:5, Informative)
Let me remind you why we have a demand for ethanol in the first place: a replacement for MTBE [wikipedia.org], a gasoline anti-knock additive (letting the engine run at higher compression ratios, and thus more efficiently) which was found to be leeching into groundwater and concentrating. MTBE is being phased out, and ethanol is a replacement chemical. Whether or not ethanol will be used as an energy source is irrelevant. It's critical today as a fuel additive for gasoline. Beyond that, it's a pretty inefficient energy carrier. Switchgrass may do better, but we're not there yet.
--
Electronics kits for the digital generation! Free videos -- click here. [nerdkits.com]
Re:The Ethanol debate is NOT about fuel! (Score:4, Insightful)
E85 is available now. Not widely in the US, and the vehicles that can use it are uncommon, but it's definitely viable as a fuel source.
Brazil uses ethanol from sugar cane in various formulations hugely, though. About a third of their automobile fuel is sugar-based ethanol.
Regardless of what the article says, we're still a ways off from cellulosic ethanol. Once we master that, though, it's going to be a fantastic fuel source.
President George W. Bush Was Right? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm scared too.
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Re:President George W. Bush Was Right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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when President Bush championed swithgrass in his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, and the news folks sorta laughed at him, he was actually right
Well, the news folks were kind of right to laugh at him, as switchgrass isn't really a short term solution to the problem, and we don't really know if it's one of the long term solutions.
The thing no one here is talking about is the fact that cellulosic ethanol just isn't really economically viable with current technology. It may be some day if we c
Energy Used (Score:2, Interesting)
Also of consideration is what is the energy yield per acre? Of course, corn at 24% would be a total loser ($1 of energy provides $.24 of energy), but even at 540%, switch grass might not be the most economical method based on land used. Consider if you supply an acre of switch grass with 1 watt of power and
You are ignoring . . . (Score:5, Funny)
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"13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed"
I'm not so sure you should classify the switchgrass growing cycle as being a heat engine though.
bad summary: 25% vs 125% (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad summary: 25% vs 125% (Score:5, Informative)
For those who say there aren't refineries, ScuttleMonkey took out my quotes and put different ones in. I said the DoE is partially funding new refineries, the first of which will come online in Georgia -- also in the fine article.
Although I credit and thank ScuttleMonkey for greenlighting my submission whereas it was flatly ignored yesterday when I submitted it, please complain about his editing, and not my original content, if you feel the summary was vague or had omissions. You can compare both if you read the firehose submission (complain to me if you don't like that one).
Why worry about it? (Score:2)
Re:Why worry about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
ANWR is not the be all end all that drillers tout. There are between 6-16 billion recoverable barrels (from pro-drilling site [anwr.org]). Right now, refineries use about 15 million barrels of oil per day (from the EIA -- scroll to bottom [doe.gov]).
That means the US uses around 5.4 billion barrels of oil per year. If you buy the pro-driller propaganda, ANWR is AT BEST, 3 years worth of supply. If you took the highest estimate of oil in the ground and assumed the magically ability to extract all 30 billion barrels -- that's 6 years of supply.
ANWR is just another method to enrich Cheney -- like the logic of paying contractor truck drivers 120k per year to drive truck in Iraq when a regular soldier makes about 1/6th of that. But that's another tale.
In my view, the better plan is to consider ANWR to be "money in the bank". Oil price increases are just starting. We'd be better off sitting on it for 50 years because by then, we'll be lamenting the days oil only cost $90-100 per barrel.
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however here in the US we have massive reserves of it in Alaska where we cannot drill for oil there.
The total proven reserves in ANWR are about 10 billion barrels [mediamatters.org]. Our daily consumption of petroleum is about 20,687,000 barrels/day [doe.gov]. Doing the math, that means the entire ANWR reserve discovered so far would give us about 10.4 billion / 20 687 000 = 502.731184 days of petroleum.
<sarcasm>Yeah, real massive. </sarcasm>
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The government is *ALWAYS* ten years late on supporting technology, and usually picks the wrong one. Same situation with PV, hybrid cars, and nuclear power... about the time some lobbyist gets enough "representatives" to sign on to some legislation that makes their life easy, a new start-up or breakthrough makes them obsolete.
One more reason to vote for someone who believes that open markets will drive innovation a lot faster than corporate/agricultural welfare, and that states can be more responsive when government needs to have a role.
I know, I'm yet another rabid Ron Paul supporter. But at least if we elect him, hemp will have a chance to compete with switchgrass. Which will be great, except your car will have the munchies and will insist on calling you "dude" and "bro" when your door is ajar.
When your application doesn't work, refactor the code.
When the government doesn't work, refactor the system.
Aye, but it's more expensive at this point (Score:5, Informative)
Corn has higher amounts of the simpler sugars that bacteria need to work on to produce the ethanol. Switchgrass and other cellulosic feedstocks, which are largely equivalent in feasbility in general terms, have those sugars bound up in...you guessed it...cellulose. Because of this it requires much more processing prior to fermentation. There are several ways to do this with varying costs and efficiencies, but at the very least is technically viable.
However, this pre-processing and the fact that large-scale cellulosic ethanol production is a new technology means the initial costs are higher. According to Wikipedia (with original sources referenced), corn ethanol plants cost about $1-3 per gallon of annual capacity to construct. The first round of large scale cellulosic ethanol plants now under construction are billed about $7 per gallon of annual capacity. Production costs are expected to run about $2.25 per gallon initially, or about $125 per barrel of oil energy equivalent.
However, as the method is proven, that cost is expected to come down. About $350 million of cost is also being funded by the federal government under the new energy plan. Also, the cost of the feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production is much lower, as it can use switchgrass as mentioned in the summary, corn stover, wood chips, or just about anything else containing plant matter, where as the corn method requires corn (duh), and thus competes with food production.
Of course, the article makes the energy-return benefit over corn ethanol obvious. Elsewhere it has been estimated that cellulosic ethanol production could account for 30% of our transportation energy needs in a couple decades. Obviously far short of weaning us off foreign oil, but a start nonetheless. However, an added benefit of using grasses like switchgrass is the fields don't have to be replanted every year, reducing soil depletion and erosion.
Remember... (Score:5, Funny)
Butanol is a much better alternative than ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
About Butanol Energy [renewablee...access.com]
However a researcher from the midwest (Ohio I think) has patented a process by which it can be produced more cheaply than ethanol *without having to change existing gasoline infrastructure.*
Here's the researcher's company.
More Butanol Information [butanol.com]
From what my friend told me, the only thing preventing this right now is a lack of funding and public awareness. So please read it for yourself and spread the word.
Re:Butanol is a much better alternative than ethan (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that BP is thinking along the same lines too.
BP's Bet on Butanol [technologyreview.com]
BioButanol: a better biofuel (fact sheet) [bp.com]
Biofuel angst (Score:4, Insightful)
The other day I saw a diesel Passat with this bumper sticker, and I just wanted to rant to a crowd that would understand:
BIODIESEL
The 100% solution
Kyoto compliant, carbon neutral, OPEC free
I wanted to run him off the road and give him a math lesson as he lay torn and bleeding in a ditch. If we covered every square centimeter of arable land in the US with the most magical crop available, it could not make enough fuel for us to be OPEC free. Not by a LONG shot. And we need to grow food, too!
Biofuels can be a great part of a solution. They are not a solution by themselves. But some people are driving around believing that "they" are stopping us from deploying perfect solution. I'm sorry, Passat man... It isn't that simple. I beg of you, do the math and reduce the scope of your conspiracy theories. The truth is bad enough.
Follow the carbon (Score:5, Insightful)
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The production of fuel from dead dinosaurs pulls carbon from the ground. The production of fuel from plants pulls carbon from the air.
Creation of ethanol also requires a great deal of heat and electricity. Most of that electricity is from coal-powered plants, and the heat comes from burning excess material, which continue to put carbon back in the air and pull carbon from the ground.
Check out this graphic [nationalgeographic.com] for a comparison of the various biofuels. Click the Energy Balance tab to see input vs. output of carbon.
Ethanol is better than straight-up gasoline, but it's not great ye
Re:Follow the carbon (Score:5, Informative)
Hence the term "Carbon Neutral".
After the fuel is burnt, you end up with the same amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. OTOH, with petrofuels, you end up with more CO2 than you started with.
At the moment, yes. But there's little reason to believe that will always be the case, especially with the advances in wind, solar and tidal power, coupled with increased intrest in Nuclear power.
The excess material was created by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. So burning it is still carbon-neutral.
I'm not sure what the heck you're talking about here. The Energy Balance tab has nothing to do with carbon. It's comparing the energy of the final fuel to the energy required to make it. Energy is energy in that graphic, whether the energy comes from oil or from a nuclear reactor.
Now, if you're talking about the CO2 tab, that one actually does deal with carbon. However, there's several sources of ethanol, so it's not clear what you're referring to. The worst being corn at 22% reduction, and best being celluose at 91%Re:Would someone please explain to me... (Score:5, Informative)
Balance (Score:2)
The theory behind the whole thing is simply to avoid adding more carbon from underground sources into the atmosphere/biosphere.
Personally, I believe the whole warming thing is a bunch of total bullshit based on an incomplete and possibly inaccurate data set, since temps haven't risen in over a decade.
Re:Balance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, I will believe you over the thousands of scientists who have stated that global warming is not total bullshit, including a few folks who work for Federal agencies under the Bush administration.
I look forward to driving my Hummer around full of idling two-cycle lawnmowers with impunity. Thank you come again.
Re:Would someone please explain to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I am sure it is not a net-zero result, probably a net-gain in carbon, but you are at least using something that can take much of the carbon that is emitted for use back to make a new plant.
And IMHO, anything is better than using resource heavy and subsidy heavy corn for ethanol and bio-diesel.
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Because a racist post complaing about a racist post is just too funny.
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