I don't mind bending over backwards if it means reducing the occurrence of things like this:
Posted on 01/09/2008 10:43:39 AM PST by cogitator
How we bend over backwards to keep the movie stars from seeing oil rigs off the coast through their telescopes, and not disturb the landscape that perhaps 1 in 250,000 Americans will ever see in ANWR... Oh, and keep the no-nukes crowd happy.
Can we have an energy policy rather than an energy dogma someday?
If they use switchgrass for fuel it will artificially inflate the cost of good switches and kids won’t get their proper discipline. Tax on conservatives again!
As far as I know, all photosynthesis is six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produces one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen.
I believe the relative advantages are in other inputs to crop growth.
Since enzyme progress has been the actual key to cheaper corn ethanol, there’s no reason to think it won’t be the key to other biomass ethanol.
I worked out the math here cause it didn’t add up to me. The US used up about 150 gallons of gasoline per year. Figuring in the 300 gallons per acre cited and 80 million acres of land used to grow corn...turns out that if every single acre we used to grow corn was converted to switch grass, we’d have to grow 7 crops a year to switch to an all ethanol economy.
That said, we have a lot of little used land out west that would be perfect for growing this stuff.
Which is why any article mentioning ‘greenhouse gas’ in relation to ethanol is probably just bs anyway.
I don't mind bending over backwards if it means reducing the occurrence of things like this:
One desirable feature of biofuels is that they don't contribute CO2 to the atmosphere in the full process.
ooo-kay. But where oh where is the water to grow all that tall grass going to come from?
The trick is going to be getting farmers to grow the stuff. Now that food crops are way up in price, crops are going to be competing for the avalable crop land. And lets not forget, more farming—more pesticides and fertilizers end up in the soil, groundwaters, and streams. Furthermore, don’t think for a minute that the environmentalists aren’t going to start sceaming the minute land where some obscure species hangs out is threatened, or worse, protected federal lands.
Cool!
Sounds promising. It grows on otherwise undesirable land and will not affect food prices.
Now we just gotta get past politics.
What kind of waste product does this process produce? Displacing 30% of this country’s octane would generate a LOT of waste. Will we have to deal with megatons of unusable muck that will bulk up landfills? Or does the waste product have secondary uses?
And someone posts a picture of Chernobyl to say no to nukes, and everyone feels self satisfied because we should always make energy policy based upon aberrations rather than the norm. Fascinating.
As someone else noted, you can burn some of what you don't ferment to power the fermenters. As for the fermenter residue, don't pigs eat just about anything?
I think nuclear power is safer and a better choice for our future energy needs than fossil fuels, by a long shot. In case you wondered.
Then you want more domestic drilling and offshore platforms connected by pipeline instead of importing most of our oil by tankers from foreign nations.
“The trick is going to be getting farmers to grow the stuff. Now that food crops are way up in price, crops are going to be competing for the avalable crop land. And lets not forget, more farming—more pesticides and fertilizers end up in the soil, groundwaters, and streams. Furthermore, don’t think for a minute that the environmentalists aren’t going to start sceaming the minute land where some obscure species hangs out is threatened, or worse, protected federal lands.”
The switch grass grows in areas you can’t till or are difficult to till. In 1999 there were about 90 million acreas in the CRP program, that is land that you and I are paying farmers not to farm.
Just getting that land out of CRP will save billions of dollars.
If you look at my posts, I am not a big believer in the ethanol economy. It is just too expensive and inefficient to convert food or biomass into ethanol.
Now if you compress the grass into pellets, you have a cheap heating fuel. One acre could provide the equivalent of about 4,000 gallons of heating oil. Pellets are easy to handle and would be about as convenient as heating with oil.
The problem with pellets is that they don’t burn in internal combustion engines. But this is a problem that should be solved in the next five years. Direct heat to electricity systems are being developed. They will make coal plants much more efficient but will also open the posibility of using pelletized fuel for transportation fuel. At this point, petroleum is in trouble and has to compete with the agricultural industry on price. This will keep the price of petroleum and biomass low. Assuming the government does not get involved.
well it is grass, doesn’t need that much. Yields would prob be lower but if it’s scrub land anyway...
Expensive when oil is $50 a barrel, or expensive when oil is $100 a barrel?
First. The Cap Cost of constructing a cellulosic ethanol plant is $6+ per annual gallon. That means it would take over $600 million for a 100 million gallons per year plant. That compares to around $250 million to construct for a comparable grain based or corn based to ethanol plant.
Second, it takes 4 times the mass of switch grass or whatever biomass to produce cellulosic ethanol vs. grain based ethanol.
Third, to even come close to economically viable the cost of the biomass, switch grass, corn stover or whatever would need to be delivered to the plant site for less than $50 per ton. NO one is going to collect and transport biomass for that amount.
Fourth, if you are taking biomass from the farmers field such as corn stover, it will deprive the soil of badly needed nutrients provided by normally letting in rot in the fields. And fifth, the enzymes that will need to be developed to breakdown biomass to a form that can be fermented must be highly selective depending on the feedstock. Having so many enzymes available at a biomass cellulosic plant for use with the multitudes of different biomass feedstock will greatly add to operating cost.
The most economic thing to do with biomass if it can even bee collected efficiently is burn it to create the plant energy required to produce ethanol from grain. This will greatly reduce the cost of producing ethanol from grain based feedstick.
Economically, celullosic to ethanol is still a long way off and may never even become a reality.
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put on your flame suit!
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