Could trees be a good source of biofuels?

Question

There's a lot of talk about ethanol from corn and biodiesel from palm and other oils, but what about trees? They're full of cellulose and lignin and there's a lot of them used in paper making and so on, so there must be some waste left that might be useful. Or mabye we should just heat them up and use the gas that comes off when we do? What do you think?

Answer 1

Cellulose is just sugar molecules in long chains, so would be much better than corn- if we could figure out how to break the bonds easily and cheaply.   Most of the waste is already being used for bark mulch or power production by burning at the paper/lumber mills.   Facilities to gassify wood are being built near my parents house in Maine now.   Problem is, trees grow so slowly there (and most other places) that they will run out of wood within 20-30 years.   If bamboo, which grows much faster than trees, or another type of crop were to be grown, it would be more feasible.

Answer 2

Trees grow too slowly.  For alcohol you want the maximum amount of carbohydrate per acre, because that's what is fermented to make alcohol.  Fiber is useful but not nearly as useful.  Corn is used because it's easy to grow, it grows almost everywhere, and it makes the maximum amount of starch and sugar per acre.

But if we really were serious about biofuels, we'd find ways to use just about any by-product, including tree bark and leaves, stuff like that.  Eventually we probably will.

As for fiber, did you know that hemp can yield 8 time as much fiber per acre per year as trees?

Answer 3

I think some more work needs to be done to invent cheaper ways to make ethanol from cellulose. But I think it is already easy to make methanol from cellulose.

Answer 4

Cool idea but don't you think the tree huggers will get pissed?

Answer 5

The hippies would love that one.  Maybe hippies could be used for biofuel.  They are full of cellulose.  Just a thought.  That would rid the world of 2 problems.

Answer 6

Trees would be a great source for renewable energy, and in some ways they already are.  (Managed forests).  

The problem arrises when you compare demand and ability to supply enough material, close enough to the plant utilizing said material.  

Simply put, there are very few locations where a facility could be placed, and supplied with enough local harvest.  The amount of land needed to grow a tree crop, large enough to continually support the facility on a 15-20 year cycle(tree growth cycle), makes it nearly impossible.  

Also, the amount of land required to grow trees, related to the overall energy output of just one facility does not work economically at this time.  

We are researching other trees, which have a shorter growth time requirement, but we are still juggling with the amount of land needed to grow trees......locally.  Local trees are obviously needed, as transporting trees costs money, added transportation costs simply makes a facility less likely to perform on an econommic gain.