Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The New Bio-Fuel
The US is currently struggling with oil dependency, we are importing too much from the rest of the world and overall the worlds stock is just about at its peak. In order to produce more efficient gasoline that produces less greenhouse emissions we have experimented with adding ethanol. Ethanol could become a sole source of fuel with the right planning. When gas prices skyrocketed a few year ago there was a big push for ethanol in our gasoline to reduce prices. Now that prices have settled a bit people are not thinking about it as much but even today almost all gasoline at the pump is E-10 which stands for ten percent ethanol. Currently there is a push from major ethanol producers to increase that amount. The problem is where this ethanol is being cultivated from coming from. Currently our ethanol comes from corn, when using corn for ethanol it must be diverted from food production, which takes a greater toll on our economy as a whole. Also the efficiency of corn’s production to ethanol is only about 25% more than each gallon of gas that it takes to process the corn into ethanol. Currently there is research being done on alternative sources of ethanol one of these sources of which still grows on the fringes of cornfields in the mid-west. It is grass, but not the green soft grass you normally think of, this “switchgrass” as it called can grow up to ten feet and is hard as a pencil. As corn can only produce 25% more then the gasoline input, switchgrass projections top at 540%. The production possibilities for switchgrass production into ethanol are much greater than those of corn. Switchgrasses were naturally growing on the land that is now cultivated for row crops such as corn, and soybeans. Once grasses are restored they can grow in places that corn could not with far less cost input to maintain. In using projections, ethanol to reduce green house gasses switchgrass ethanol was 50-60% more effective. Currently there is no structure in place to fully process this opportunity, if the government diverted some of its 7+billion dollar subsidy of corn ethanol and put that money toward production and growth of the switchgrass industry the US could be on its way to a much more independent fuel economy with a less greenhouse gas emissions.
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I agree that switchgrass is a much better way to produce ethanol than corn. There is actually a project going on down in Tennessee where the University of Tennessee is being funded by the state. They are building a pilot scale cellulosic biorefinery in eastern Tennessee. This biorefinery, Genera Energy, will be using switchgrass grown from local farmers to produce ethanol. I think this is an awesome project and it could lead to the elimination of gasoline.
ReplyDeleteI agree that producing ethanol from corn takes a big toll on the economy and decreases food production of that crop. Switchgrass seems like a great alternative, but I think we can also argue that bio-fuels in general, could cause other problems. Growing all these crops or switchgrass would compete with food crops for already scarce agricultural land, we could end up producing more GHGs in actually growing it (fuels, chemicals, fertilizers), and it could end up cutting more forests down that would be sequestering carbon to make room for the crops to grow.
ReplyDeleteI agree that to make enough biofuels to account for the energy that oil provides, a lot of land needs to be used to produce the switchgrass. With our growing population and growing demands for fuel, we would need to clear forests to accommodate mass switchgrass production. I also think that technology to transition and produce these biofuels may be expensive.
ReplyDeleteI found your blog interesting, and it reminded me of some things I read in Lester Brown's Plan B. 3.0. Corn is now the world's dominant feed grain as well as the leading ethanol feedstock. Now people are competing with cars for crops, in Brown's words. The US corn production is huge, and accounts for 40 percent of the global harvest and two thirds of world corn exports. What will happen when demands for corn go up both to feed a growing nation, and an energy hungry world! Are biofuels really the answer when we already face shrinking available land and eroding soils?
ReplyDelete--- Kirsten Dobson
I think that biofuels can be the answer to America's growing energy needs. However, we need to use the right kind of crop to produce them. After the events of the past few years, it is obvious that corn is not the ideal plant to produce biofuels from. It takes more energy to produce corn based ethanol than it supplies, and converting corn fields to produce fuel corn has a disastrous affect on food prices. There are alternatives to corn that are much more ideal for biofuel production. Switchgrass is one such alternative. This hardy grass can grow in poor quality soil, is flood and drought resistant, and can grow with little or no chemical inputs. More importantly, it has an energy output-to-input ratio of 20:1, which is significantly higher than that of corn. Switchgrass has been studied as a source crop for biofuels since the 1980's and certainly holds a lot of promise.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that switchgrass is better than corn based biofuels, I do not think America should or can rely on them. I feel like turning to biofuels would simply be displacing our reliance on fossil fuels onto a different fuel source. In order to expand the cultivation of switchgrass or any biofuel input to meet even a fraction of our fuel needs an enormous amount of land would be needed. This could cause deforestation in order to free up land which would emit an enormous amount of carbon dioxide in itself. Biofuels can be used to supplement our transition into an energy economy based on truly renewable sources such as wind and solar, using these energies to fuel electric cars; however, any dependence on biofuels would not be without added consequences.
ReplyDeleteAh, the question of ethanol as fuel source or corn as food. It’s quite the controversy and sticky situation. When I first learned of ethanol from corn as a possible energy source, I naturally thought this was the answer to our dirty fossil fuel dependant world! However, upon further examination I realized that diverting land to grow ethanol as fuel would further reduce our food production. Growing ethanol or any crop, switchgrass even, as a fuel source means rapid soil depletion because instead of returning the corn ears or grassblades to the soil for rich biomass regeneration, you are not returning the nutrients to the soil. Only the future will tell what is to come of growing crops for fuel. I am of the opinion that it is necessary to start this transition and while it will limit food thus limit population growth for the first time in hundreds of human years (would this be such a bad thing?), to ensure human survival we must learn how to live on the planet sustainably. Our fossil fuel resources are diminishing and are exhaustible, non-renewable. Perhaps in time we will learn how to effectively rotate fuel crops as we rotate food crops so as not to devastate one square acre of land. One con (of the many) to using corn ethanol as fuel is the ratio of energy output to input. Thousands of corn kernels are needed to power small loads of energy.
ReplyDeleteI could potentially see the surprises that face us in the future are opposition from big coal and gas industries. These industries would not like to see a shift in our current mindset because they dominate the market currently. If there were a shift to green jobs and renewable energies, which we should, there industry would be virtually unnecessary. Also there may be an opposition from some of the public in general. People don’t really care for change unless they see there immediate benefits and a transition that is needed would be slow and not reap immediate benefits.
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