An Ethanol plan which will actually work?

Question

Check this post, and see what you think. Then give your opinion. http://www.regardslarry.com/ Regards, Larry.

Answer 1

In reality, the process of producing ethanol just creates more pollution as ethanol refineries depend on fossil fuels as the source of energy.

Answer 2

"non food crop maize"  so what, it still takes away from food because you could plant for human consumption maize.

Answer 3

http://www.coskata.com/

Answer 4

Not a good idea. Ethanol is NOT the answer to our energy problem. The growing and processing the corn requires substantial amounts

of resources like energy, water, and fertilizer. The yield is low, because you only get a small amount of biomass that you can convert to ethanol—about five tons per acre of corn. And, because you’re

turning food crops into fuel, corn ethanol production helps to drive up prices of food, like the cost of tortillas in Mexico. That trade-off is unacceptable. Ethanol may be good in certain drinks, but it isn’t

necessarily the best fuel we can conceive of. We make ethanol simply because we know how.

Ethanol isn’t even the most attractive of fuels. The energy

content of ethanol is a lot lower than gasoline, delivering only .7 times the mileage. Moreover, the existing fuel distribution infrastructure cannot be used to store and deliver ethanol. Ethanol has high vapor pressure, and because of its high affinity

for water, it readily takes up water and corrodes the

tanks and pipelines that carry oil. Also, ethanol

can only be blended with gasoline up to about 10

percent before car engines need to be modified.

As a result of these problems, and the fact that

ethanol can’t be used to fuel trucks or jets, many

people are interested in alternatives to ethanol.

The alternative to using corn or other foodbased crops for fuel is to use cellulosic feedstock. In the short term, we’re talking about things like

rice straw; corn stover, which consists of the

leaves, stalks, and other waste matter

from corn; bagasse, which is what’s left over after you extract

the juice from sugar cane; and corn fiber, the byproduct of milling corn into syrup. In the long term, we need to move toward dedicated energy crops, such as switchgrass or miscanthus, which not only produce as much as 30 tons of biomass per acre, but also need minimal water and nutrients and grow very rapidly. A study by the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture estimates that the United States could produce 1.3 billion tons of cellulosic biomass per year, without having a grossly negative impact on food supply. A back-of the-

envelope calculation shows that 1.3 billion tons is the energy equivalent of some three billion barrels of oil—a considerable fraction of the total U.S. annual consumption of about seven billion barrels. Biofuels aren’t going to solve the energy problem alone, but their contribution can be significant. So the good news is that there’s a lot of energy stored in biomass and the United States is in a very

good position to be making renewable fuels. The bad news is that photosynthesis isn’t very efficient. In the midlatitudes, where we live, only 1.2 percent of the sun’s energy, averaged over the course of a

year to allow for daily and seasonal fluctuations and weather patterns, is converted to chemical energy in the form of biomass. Additionally, growing biofuels requires a lot of land—we’d have to use much

of the currently marginal and unused farmland to grow energy crops. There are also major engineeringproblems, the biggest being that biomass in its natural form is not something you can put into

your automobile. You have to convert biomass to liquid fuel.

So why is this so darn hard? Why isn’t there a biomass-to-fuel factory on every block? The reason is that plants have evolved to defend their structural integrity. They eventually give up and degrade,

but they’re pretty robust. Some 25 percent of the plant is this stuff called lignin, which is chemically similar to asphalt, and very few things can break down asphalt. They say you can make anything

from lignin except money. It’s basically trash—you can’t break it down, and you can’t convert it into anything useful, at least not in an economical fashion. So it just gets burned to provide energy

for the rest of the process.

Brazil, a major ethanol producer, ferments glucose

straight from sugar cane—a process that’s both

easy and, especially with current high oil prices,

profitable. Brazil basically runs its auto fleet on

domestically produced ethanol, and has become

a supplier of ethanol to the rest of the world. In

the United States, ethanol is primarily made from

corn. Corn kernels are mostly starch, so processing

them requires an enzyme to break the starch down

into sugars that can be fermented. This extra step

makes it more expensive. When we begin producing

dedicated biofuel crops such as switchgrass,

which don’t even have a high starch content, we’ll

have to go through even more mechanical and

chemical steps to break down the cellulose, and this will drive up the capital cost of the biofuel

facility. The good news is that the feedstock, which

is a major factor in fuel costs, will be less expensive

than sugar or corn.

One good possibility,

however, is ethanol’s bigger cousin, butanol

Answer 5

Developing a poor-soil maize is a dead end when you have switchgrass that thrives in poor soil.

"Among the 19 research sites in the Eastern and Central United States raising switchgrass for the BFDP studies, Bransby's site holds the one-year record at 15 tons per acre. Those are dry tons weighed after all the moisture's been baked out. Convert that into ethanol, an alcohol that can fuel vehicles, and it equals about 1,500 gallons per acre. Bransby's 6-year average, 11.5 tons a year, translates into about 11,500 gallons of ethanol per acre. An added bonus is the electricity that can be produced from the leftover portions of the crop that won't convert to ethanol."

Switchgrass yields five times more energy than it takes to produce that energy.  Maize is about a 1:1 ratio with current technology.  When you factor in the energy required to farm maize, the switchgrass advantage is raised higher by a factor of 4.

According to a five-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540 per cent more energy than was needed to grow, harvest and process it.

"This clearly demonstrates that switchgrass is not only energy efficient, but can be used in a renewable biofuel economy to reduce reliance of fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance rural economies," said Ken Vogel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service geneticist.

Try doing that with maize.  The sad fact is that it takes more energy to produce ethanol from maize than it does almost any other biomass.  The reason for this is that maize is largely starch and the starch must be broken down into sugars before it can be fermented and distilled.  This is not a problem for the small home distiller, because (a) you  are not on a production schedule and do not have to operate at a profit, and (b) you can add other expensive, non-renewable ingredients, like sugar and yeast, to jump start the process.  With cellulose-based production, you crush and pre-treat with ammonia compounds (recoverable) and have to hydrolyze the feed stock with an enzyme, such as cellulase.  The really neat thing about cellulose-based ethanol production is that you don't have to wait for fermentation.

As for the Coskata model, here is what they are saying:

"It's not five years away, it's not 10 years away. It's affordable, and it's now," said Wes Bolsen, the company's vice president of business development.

Answer 6

I am a fan of GMO, but you have some momentum to overcome.

Answer 7

you are right I think that it will work.

For someone that has the vision and is short on land, the marginal land might be leased very cheaply.