Posted on 02/04/2009 7:06:44 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Feb 03, 2009 — There’s been controversy lately about the diversion of corn crops from food for humans to ethanol for engines. Why not both? A new pilot program announced by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft saves the corn cobs for eating but makes ethanol out of the straw. If so, this would make the whole plant an energy factory for the human and the car he or she drives...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
Yum, corn cob chowder - twice the fiber without all that pesky nutrition.
For God’s Sake, Corn is for eating and drinking. Corn cobs are for wiping your a**.
That’s it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ethanol has screwed over so many people in so many ways it isn’t even funny.
Why not both you ask????? One answer is that best possible from corn is around 20 gallons/acre/year while algae offers more like 20,000. Producing ethanol from corn is basically a criminal activity; anybody caught doing it ought rightly to be hanged.
An old joke around here; What food do you remove the outside, cook the inside, and throw away the inside?
Wait until the mandates for cellulosic ethanol are phased in. You ain’t seen nothin yet when it comes to subsidies. Cellulosic ethanol (switchgrass, lumber scraps, corn stalks, etc.) is 10x farther away from being economically viable than corn grain fementation was 30 years ago.
20 gal/acre/yr? Ethanol? Current corn-based yield in high corn-yield areas is at least 500 gal ethanol per acre per year with about 2,500 lbs of high-protein animal feed/acre as a by-product.
* BTW, I say legendary because I was tutored in a former life by a Sioux scholar who showed me the recorded history of one tribe, about 150 years in a pictographic winter count. About 1825 (when white incursions into Sioux territory were still limited to an occasional explorer or fur trader), there is a pictograph of a cliff drive, where he explained that only the buffalo needed by the tribe were actually used, less than 1/10th of those killed.
While the tribal elders strongly disapproved and warned against this wasteful method of hunting, the young bucks thought the buffalo so numerous at the time that the herd needed thinning, lest they overgraze or, worse yet, provide a magnet for enemy tribes to move into their hunting area.
The ingested corn cob automatically cleans up after itself when it comes out.
The author of this article knows practically NOTHING about the process. Look at his terminology. Several have mentioned the traditional use for corn cobs,,, there is also corn cob jelly (made from cobs not previously used in the outhouse). Other than that, cobs were often used as a quick fuel source in Grandma's cookstove when she was getting a fire started. But I've never heard of anyone actually eating corncobs, altho I'll bet it happened during the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
I think what the author intended to say was the GRAIN would be used for human consumption; or the kernnels would be used for livestock feed.
And most likely the author intended to imply that the STOVER would be used for celulosic ethanol, rather than the hay.
What I'm trying to say is no one with any knowledge about raising corn would use the terminology we see in this article. Makes me wonder what else in the article is wrong.
Makes perfect sense to me. All he’s saying is that growing corn for ethanol no longer has to impact that part that we eat. It’s a win-win situation, as far as I can tell.
That is just wrong; and I am jealous I didn't post it first!
Your ethanol yield estimates from corn are addressed rightfully above. In addition, algae is being proposed as a source of biodiesel, not ethanol. I will believe the yield estimates once pilot experiments are scaled up.
One thing which was NOT addressed is that algae farming does not require farmland at all and is best done in desert areas. Other than that the yield differential is many to one and the idea of turning corn into fuel is still basically insane and criminal.
Well some serious city slickers wrote this article. Corn straw? How ‘bout stover?
Not a fan of ethanol for other reasons, but we need to start breaking corn down better into it’s oil, protein and sugar components, selling the first two and fermenting the last into some useful chemical. Might hurt the soda pop industry a bit but that’s about it.
Ethanol fuel mandates don’t make much sense right now. We need the ethanol for human consumption.
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