Posted on 01/11/2008 8:07:03 AM PST by tobyhill
Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.
Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares).
Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good."
But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. "It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close." 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciam.com ...
Logically, cellulosic material should be usable to create ethanol. This information on switchgrass is quite interesting because of the increased energy component of the final product, when compared to corn.
Clearly deserves more research.
We need to get off foreign oil; all foreign oil. Ehtanol is but one way to help achieve that end. Others include increased drilling in domestic properties, construction of new refineries, and deployment of more solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear generation caoacity.
Time for the tree huggers and enviro-whackos to get out of the way.
From just my own personal observations I would say this is true. I cover quite a bit of area for my job (most of it rural farm country) here in Nebraska, and I am seeing fewer and fewer fields of soybeans and more corn. Some farmers that previously rotated between the two each year, are sticking with corn since the prices are so high. The big problem with this is that corn sucks the nutrients out of the ground so much, that if you don't rotate and give the ground a "rest" then you will have to augment with more and more fertilizer (especially nitrogen).
Yeah, we call it “orange” diesel out here. . . had some stolen out of my bullet tank recently.
caoacity = capacity
Saw that tagline on FR: QWERTY ERGO TYPO
I think of myself as digitally dyslexic...
Forget ethanol as a fuel. Butanol would be the way to go instead if you can't use BioDiesel (from algae).
Sugar cane makes better ethanol than either, but they don’t row it where it will do either party any political good.
Corn-based ethanol was ALWAYS a bad idea for biofuels.
Better idea - burn the refuse from the corn grain production, applying something called Startech’s Plasma Converter System, which may also be used to transform feedstock materials such as used tires, municipal solid waste and biomass into ethanol.
This is a concept straight out of Star Wars, and it has been refined to a pretty high level. Electricity may be co-generated with this process, and in the end, it is practically carbon-neutral, if it is using only organic waste. A secondary by-product from the plasma, a kind of slag that could be used as a building material, is formed from the inorganic substances that are dumped with the organic trash.
A third byproduct, heat, may be used directly to generate the energy needed to create the plasma torch that is the heart of the system, creating a temperature of 33,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the center of the torch. Not perpetual motion, but a great deal derived from something that is essentially a disposal problem. Look it up.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/Raw_Materials.pdf
Logically, we shouldn't be using ethanol for fuel.
The “usual government subsidies” and the high price of corn are, by and large, mutually exclusive. For the past year or so, the market price of corn has exceeded the FSA target price.
Why not?
Low energy content, attracts water, and can’t be transported by pipeline.
True it takes 22 pounds of corn to make one gal. of gas not a good cost ratio plus it takes two gal. of ethanpl to do what one gal. of gas can do E85 is a waste of time and money.
If grass works as a fuel without the magical application of tax subsidy, then more power to it.
These are all technological issues. Do you believe that these can’t be overcome by research and development efforts? Once addressed, the resolutions will be subject to cost/benefit pressures, like most other things in the broader marketplace.
The cost/benefit issues like these are merely obstacles to be overcome, not show stoppers...unless we let them become show stoppers.
just build a still........plenty of plans on line, and if ya use it for ethanol, the government will give you a permit...the only problem is that the by product is 80 proof alcohol...you have to PROMISE to dump this back into the boiler and re-process it......
More important to today's farmer is there is no market today to buy it.
From the article:
there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material...
Better? no. Just more expensive.
THE ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF ETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM SUGAR IN THE UNITED STATES
http://www.usda.gov/oce/EthanolSugarFeasibilityReport3.pdf
USDA July 2006, see page iv
U.S. Corn wet milling = 1.03
U.S. Corn dry milling = 1.05
U.S. Sugar cane = 2.40
U.S. Sugar beets = 2.35
U.S. Molasses = 1.27
U.S. Raw sugar = 3.48
U.S. Refined sugar = 3.97
Brazil Sugar Cane = 0.81
E.U. Sugar Beets = 2.89
All in dollars per gallon
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