I am wondering why we don't simply use sugar cane or sugar beets for ethanol production instead of corn?

Question

My impression is that corn and other cellulose containing sources for ethanol fermentation must first be broken down into sugars before they can be fermented. Why not start with sugar beets or sugar cane and begin the fermentation immediately since the product is already sugar? Then after fermentation to ethanol, place the solids in an anaerobic environment and let anaerobes convert the remaining solids to methane gas. After methane extraction is complete, use the remaining solids for mulch or burn in a power plant. Locate all of these steps near the power plant to avoid transportation issues. Excess ethanol and methane can also be burned to generate electricity at the nearby powerplant.

Answer 1

Good question, answer, because there are a lot of very rich farmers in the corn belt giving lots of money to our "elected Representatives", because thought if anyone actually thought about it, why in heavens name would you use food for fuel when there are other things we can use which are actually better at producing what we need.

Answer 2

Good question is call BIODIESEL you take vegetable oil, peanuts, sugar cane, and other products. In a cone shape plastic tank mix with water, hen mix is complete boil the water at 200 degrees C, mix with Methanol and Naoh wait 24 hours and you'll have BIODIESEL.

1 acre of seaweed can create about 20 thousand gallons of Biodiesel.

There's no difference in miles to the gallon but is an easy process and the air in the mix reduces CO2 emissions about 400 ppm.

Biodiesel is a natural lubricant and keeps your engine life lasting longer.

The difference between diesel and Biodiesel is that Biodisel has oxygen and therefore the smoke is clear where diesel smoke is dark.

Answer 3

Sugar cane would work, but it doesn't grow well except in Florida.

Answer 4

Sadly, Dr. Jello is right.  It has to do more with politics than solving an fuel problem.

The corn growing states (Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc) are  considered "swing states".  Politically, these states are believed to be able to either sway the other states or shift the balance of the vote to one side or the other.  

Corn based fuel is not as efficient as they would have us all believe - not to mention the impact it will have on the rest of the economy.  

Did you know that the cost of eggs, beer, bread, soy, milk, etc will go up as a result of this change in fuel?  Farmers who used to plant wheat, soy, barley, etc are now planting corn to keep up with the demand (and because they will now be paid a premium for their corn crops).  

As part of a global economy, I'd rather we create sugar cane crops in Mexico that we depend on (and hopefully slow down our immigration problems), rather than continue to be beholden to the Middle East.

Answer 5

Iowa doesn't grow sugar cane.

It does have the first primary.  Politicians give money to the Iowa farmers as a way to buy votes.

It's not their money, so it makes no difference how inefficient corn is.

Answer 6

i'm wondering why we can't use our poo as bio fuel. and dead people should be cremated at power plants so their bodies can be used as fuel

Answer 7

sugar cane would be a much more efficient source of energy.  However- it's kinda' hard to grow in most of america, so it doesn't solve our 'energy independence' problem.

Answer 8

It takes a lot more fossil fuel to MAKE the ethonol than it saves in green house gasses to use it.  It is all a joke, money in certain peoples pockets, that have come from under a table.

Answer 9

You wouldn't want to make ethanol.  That's very, very inefficient because distillation takes a LOT of heat energy.   Four pounds of coal goes into making six pounds of ethanol. (but it's American coal, and the farm lobby loves the corn subsidies, which is why the government supports it.  It's not for the environment, they just say that to sound pro-environment.)

If you were going to run a power plant, you would just burn sugarcane directly.  Boilers can run on it, and so can diesels.  (Really! Ingersoll Rand built em, for sugar plantations where they had plenty of the stuff.)

However the smart play would be to grow tropical oil crops and squeeze oil out of em, and use it straight or make biodiesel. (which is much simpler than the other fellow said, and takes very little energy.)  Ships can run on vegetable oil as-is, and locomotives could with a little modification.  Be good for their engines too.  Cars, make biodiesel.

Answer 10

Biodiesel is a diesel alternative and cannot be added to petrol. Sugarcane does not take 14 years to grow thats wrong information given in one answer.

Sugarcane would be a much better option but it needs more of tropical climate and lots of water. Sweet sorghum could be a better alternative too as per the link below.

People need to experiment a bit especially the farmers and find out what works best, it will get them more money too.

Answer 11

Sugar Cane is much more efficient than the corn-based ethanol that is heavily subsidized in the Midwest.  Unfortunately we have high tariffs on Brazilian Ethanol and sugar cane is hard to come by here.  Check out this interesting article that breaks down the various bio/alternative fuels and their costs vs. emissions output I learned quite a bit.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/40a71f96-8702-...

This last link shows the trends in import/exports of Ethanol which I found interesting as well.

http://gog2g.com/2007/06/19/ethanol-fact...

One day our government will realize that corn-based ethanol is a joke compared the real carbon friendly source but until then they will continue to line the farmers pockets with these subsidies.   As a result we use our grains for a less efficient fuel and we also get higher food prices, its a lose/lose situation in my opinion.

Answer 12

hmmm.... sugar cane doesnt grow well

but come to think of it.

corn would be really a waste of food.

especially when the world is facing fod shortage...\

but sugarcane takes 14 years to grow and it is tough to grow, so it would be even more of a wastage of 14 years just to grow something for fuel.

corn is easier to plant. so there you have it

Answer 13

Politics

Answer 14

why go for ethanol in the first place???

Growing food for fuel will mean rising food prices

read this about Ethanol

They are intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest's in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,

Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest's,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.

Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.

All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,

The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.

"Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. "We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.

Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.

Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.

The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.

"The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.

National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. "Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there," he said.

Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.

Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. "Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people," Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.

Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. "Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.

The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.

One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.

Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. "Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.

However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. "Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this."

This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...