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Switchgrass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn
statemachine writes to mention that the USDA and farmers took part in a 5-year study of switchgrass, a grass native to North America. The study found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver around 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can only yield around 24 percent. "But even a native prairie grass needs a helping hand from scientists and farmers to deliver the yields necessary to help ethanol become a viable alternative to petroleum-derived gasoline, Vogel argues. 'To really maximize their yield potential, you need to provide nitrogen fertilization,' he says, as well as improved breeding techniques and genetic strains. 'Low input systems are just not going to be able to get the energy per acre needed to provide feed, fuel and fiber.'"
Switchgrass gets you more ethanol than corn sure, but that's all you get. Growing corn gets you fuel and food. Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Almost anything is better than corn. Corn is only popular in the US because corn farming has a powerful lobby. Sugarcane and practically anything else commonly used to produce ethanol is better than corn.
"The polling firm found that switchgrass ethanol can deliver only 0.54% of the voter cast in the states capable of producing it, as opposed to corn ethanol which can yield around 24% of the votes cast in the states that produce it."
It's not about EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Investment), it's about PEOPI (Politicians Elected On Pork Invested).
Switchfoot makes better music than Korn, too, but such opinion is no more revolutionary than the one in the article. Ethanol IS NOT the cure for our energy disease.
You can even decide how much of each to grow, to maximize your farmland and fertilizer usage.
Also, how does one use hemp as food?
Blar.
Do you mean to assert that you have no niggers, or do you insist that our society as a whole contains zero? I would be inclined to agree that such a word would hardly be a fair epithet to be hurled indiscriminately at members of our society. I would as well share your pride at owning no other human beings save yourself, for such a practice is both antiquated and horrible.
...how switching one hydrocarbon for another (ethanol being two carbons, five hydrogens, and a hydroxyl group) will solve man-made global warming? The production of fuel from dead dinosaurs pulls carbon from the ground. The production of fuel from plants pulls carbon from the air.It's true that corn is a pretty poor feedstock for ethanol generation. But I think most people (farmer subsidy lovers) think that ethanol has come into focus because of its potential as a fuel *replacement* for gasoline.
Let me remind you why we have a demand for ethanol in the first place: a replacement for MTBE, a gasoline anti-knock additive (letting the engine run at higher compression ratios, and thus more efficiently) which was found to be leeching into groundwater and concentrating. MTBE is being phased out, and ethanol is a replacement chemical. Whether or not ethanol will be used as an energy source is irrelevant. It's critical today as a fuel additive for gasoline. Beyond that, it's a pretty inefficient energy carrier. Switchgrass may do better, but we're not there yet.
--
Electronics kits for the digital generation! Free videos -- click here.
When you replace oil with ethanol, you stop using carbon that was fixed a long time in the past (and thus did not contribute to present levels of co2), and instead use carbon that was fixed in the last growing cycle. The net co2 added to the atmosphere in a year is zero, because the corn/switchgrass has to fix the co2 before you can later release it in the burn cycle.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
So let me get this straight... when President Bush championed swithgrass in his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, and the news folks sorta laughed at him, he was actually right?
The plants remove exactly the same amount of CO2 during their growth as is liberated by burning the resulting ethanol, and actually the same as would be released if the plant died and decomposed naturally.
The theory behind the whole thing is simply to avoid adding more carbon from underground sources into the atmosphere/biosphere.
Personally, I believe the whole warming thing is a bunch of total bullshit based on an incomplete and possibly inaccurate data set, since temps haven't risen in over a decade.
Because you are no using hydrocarbon that are in carbon sinks [oil] that would almost never see the light of day had we not dug it up. By using something like cellulose or grains, you have a carbon cycle. You grow the plant, which takes carbon from the air to grow, becoming the carbon holder, then you use it, releasing the carbon. But when the next crop is grown, the plant uses the carbon you emitted using the fuel from the last crop.
Now, I am sure it is not a net-zero result, probably a net-gain in carbon, but you are at least using something that can take much of the carbon that is emitted for use back to make a new plant.
And IMHO, anything is better than using resource heavy and subsidy heavy corn for ethanol and bio-diesel.
The idea is to stop injecting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle; the carbon in biofuels comes from the atmosphere rather than underground deposits. Of course, ethanol is not the only biofuel hydrocarbon, just the most fashionable one at the moment.
DNA just wants to be free...
Technically speaking, the poster/article should say 'human-provided' energy. After, if switchgrass took in X amount of energy and produced 540% of X in output, that would break the laws of thermodynamics.
Also of consideration is what is the energy yield per acre? Of course, corn at 24% would be a total loser ($1 of energy provides $.24 of energy), but even at 540%, switch grass might not be the most economical method based on land used. Consider if you supply an acre of switch grass with 1 watt of power and it produces 5.4 watts - that's definitely not worth it.
Why are we even worrying about Ethanol? Sure we may need better fuels then oil however here in the US we have massive reserves of it in Alaska where we cannot drill for oil there. Also, if we take out government grants and the like, Ethanol based on Corn (and chances are switchgrass) will never be more then minor fixes that could end up being more expensive. We have lots of hydrogen and sunlight, they are free and can be used as power sources, we have lots of oil. Corn and switchgrass though we don't have much and will only lead us into over-farming to try to get those.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
. . . the giant glowing thing in the sky.
Unfortunately, I don't see any candidates supporting the "Big Switchgrass" lobby (lol) with federal grants and subsidies.
;)
The government is *ALWAYS* ten years late on supporting technology, and usually picks the wrong one. Same situation with PV, hybrid cars, and nuclear power... about the time some lobbyist gets enough "representatives" to sign on to some legislation that makes their life easy, a new start-up or breakthrough makes them obsolete.
One more reason to vote for someone who believes that open markets will drive innovation a lot faster than corporate/agricultural welfare, and that states can be more responsive when government needs to have a role.
I know, I'm yet another rabid Ron Paul supporter. But at least if we elect him, hemp will have a chance to compete with switchgrass. Which will be great, except your car will have the munchies and will insist on calling you "dude" and "bro" when your door is ajar.
When your application doesn't work, refactor the code.
When the government doesn't work, refactor the system.
What it comes down to is overall "betterness." Different things produce different results - there's a reason NASCAR doesn't use the same stuff my car does. And you wouldn't want that same exhaust in your house. Using ethanol you get "more better" because 1. the carbon is (as stated) already around so there's no net gain, 2. it's renewable, to an extent - we can just grow more corn/switchgrass while we can't kill more dinosaurs and wait a few dozen million years, and 3. at the very least, ethanol has less carbon than, say, octane or all the aromatics they add to gasoline. Now, if we could just get a methan(e)(ol) engine...
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
But it's a pretty good trick.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
This has been circulating around the intarwebs for a few days now, so it spurred me to do some background reading already.
Corn has higher amounts of the simpler sugars that bacteria need to work on to produce the ethanol. Switchgrass and other cellulosic feedstocks, which are largely equivalent in feasbility in general terms, have those sugars bound up in...you guessed it...cellulose. Because of this it requires much more processing prior to fermentation. There are several ways to do this with varying costs and efficiencies, but at the very least is technically viable.
However, this pre-processing and the fact that large-scale cellulosic ethanol production is a new technology means the initial costs are higher. According to Wikipedia (with original sources referenced), corn ethanol plants cost about $1-3 per gallon of annual capacity to construct. The first round of large scale cellulosic ethanol plants now under construction are billed about $7 per gallon of annual capacity. Production costs are expected to run about $2.25 per gallon initially, or about $125 per barrel of oil energy equivalent.
However, as the method is proven, that cost is expected to come down. About $350 million of cost is also being funded by the federal government under the new energy plan. Also, the cost of the feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production is much lower, as it can use switchgrass as mentioned in the summary, corn stover, wood chips, or just about anything else containing plant matter, where as the corn method requires corn (duh), and thus competes with food production.
Of course, the article makes the energy-return benefit over corn ethanol obvious. Elsewhere it has been estimated that cellulosic ethanol production could account for 30% of our transportation energy needs in a couple decades. Obviously far short of weaning us off foreign oil, but a start nonetheless. However, an added benefit of using grasses like switchgrass is the fields don't have to be replanted every year, reducing soil depletion and erosion.
This is not news... it has been for over 2 years that switchgrass was better but the sagging corn prices due to over production was hurting the big corporate corn farmers. The republican controlleed congress wanted to reward the farmers in an effort to keep control. All it did was drive up the cost of corn, meat, milk, cheese, and all those nice sweet breakfast foods that kids love to eat.
Biofuels from plants (any plants) recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fossil fuels all release more carbon that's been sequestered in the ground for millions of years and add to the CO2 burden.
Ethanol is for drinking, not for driving.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I just noticed that the original article is inconsistent: the caption under the image says "540% more" (640%), whereas the actual text says "540% of".
I thought that producing ethanol from sugar cane is efficient enough to make it usable as a fuel. (I can't find any sources after a quick look though.) Brazil and Venezuela both are using tons of ethanol for their fuel. The US can't grow sugar cane (needs a tropical climate) so we are looking for alternative sources that are efficient to grow in North America. If a plant requires little energy that has to be put in by humans, it will be efficient to use it as a fuel source (i.e. sugar cane grows really easily and doesn't need a lot of irrigation, fertilizer, etc).
Understand the technology for switch grass is new. It costs 5-10 times are much to make it into ethanol vs corn. There also is no market or infrastructure for it. Meaning, once a farmer harvests it, then what? There is no elevator to sell it to. There is no futures market to sell it on. We have about 5-10 years worth of infrastructure to build up in order to move switch grass. We barely have corn ethanol going, let's not get the wagon ahead of the horse.
Corn based ethanol refineries can be upgraded to switch grass. Build them first. Get switch grass online and marketable and the rest will follow.
One of the pluses to switch grass is that it can be grown in places that corn and other crops cannot. At the same time, farmers are a greedy lot. They will grow what they think they have the best chance to sell for the most amount of profit. So at the same time we get switch grass online we need to have farm bill changed to reflect the countries actual needs both in fuel and food.
To whoever tagged this "inthishouseweobeythelawsofthermodynamics"... If you RTFA (or knew about it beforehand, like I did) they're saying the amount of energy WE put in returns a 540% yield. That does not count the energy the sun power added to the plants, or other things that we aren't actively putting energy in.
I got into a conversation about alternative energies over the holidays with a friend of mine who has her PhD in something Agricultural Science related from Purdue, and when the conversation went to ethanol she informed me that apparently there's a much better alternative in butanol. According to the first link I've provided, Butanol is both a "cleaner" fuel source than ethanol and has a higher energy content (110,000 Btu per gallon for butanol vs. 84,000 Btu per gallon for ethanol, for reference gasoline is 115,000 Btu per gallon). It requires little to no modification of existing engines and can be shipped through existing fuel pipelines. Historically it's been considered less viable than ethanol because of relatively higher production cost.
About Butanol Energy
However a researcher from the midwest (Ohio I think) has patented a process by which it can be produced more cheaply than ethanol *without having to change existing gasoline infrastructure.*
Here's the researcher's company.
More Butanol Information
From what my friend told me, the only thing preventing this right now is a lack of funding and public awareness. So please read it for yourself and spread the word.
The fertilization requirements mean that it's not out of the question that at some point, genetically modified switchgrass will be growing all over the midwestern states.
Many GM crops are already being used to increase yields in actual food (corn, wheat, soybeans) for animals, so it shouldn't come as a total shock, either.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
The problem with switchgrass is that it takes about 10 times the volume compared to corn to make the same amount of ethanol. So, since the factories are not on the farms themselves, there will need to be 10 times the trucks moving the switchgrass required compaired to the trucks moving corn for ethanol right now.
I've seen sugarcane referenced repeatedly in various threads related to this story. Brazil uses primarily sugar beets. Yes, sugar cane needs near tropical conditions. Sugar beets do not.
Also... there is a quicker way to use switchgrass for fuel. Pellet it and burn it directly. There are pellet stoves that work fine for this. This takes less investment and for heating is the most straightforward way to go.
Seems like science might be a better fit..
I read about the switchgrass-for-ethanol thing a while back. Sounds like a win-win: it restores the prairie to its natural state, we humans get something directly useful out of it, and you could probably graze cattle on the same land after the harvest. But of course in practice they will screw it up by fertilizing heavily with chemical fertilizers. Cow shit would be better.
Growing hemp gets you, gleefully, a bit more than what you specify. In particular, a great and unending way to party, party, party, at the expense of american taxpayers money though govmnt money going to crop production.
Yeah, i say lets go hemp!
NO SIG
Interesting. I hadn't heard of this before.
It seems that BP is thinking along the same lines too.
BP's Bet on Butanol
BioButanol: a better biofuel (fact sheet)
I am sure that they evaluated the quality of the ethanol very often. And I suspect they needed 5 years to get sober. Hard job.
Although, they could at least describe how it tastes.
That's true, IFF you aren't using the same or more oil to produce the ethanol that other people use to "replace" oil. So, the proof that ethanol is a viable replacement is simple and obvious: A demonstration of full-scale seed to tank production with zero oil as input.
The farm equipment must run on ethanol. The processing facility must run on ethanol. The fertilizer must be produced using no oil feedstock. No oil or oil products must be consumed during production. And no shenanigans like pretending a fuel cell that consumes aluminum is really a water-powered cell and not an aluminum battery. If you do that, and people complain, you must realize that they aren't "raising the bar." They're realizing that the bar was insufficiently specific to begin with. All energy inputs must be accounted for and subtracted from the ethanol recovered.
If considering only carbon neutrality, leeway may be given if the energy inputs are from non-carbon-based sources, but they must not be so large that "replacement"-scale production would require carbon-based sources to be economically viable.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Uh.. anyone hear of vertical farming. If switch grass can grow in harsh environments, can't it be grown hydroponically in large towers?
This anecdote pertains specifically to biodiesel, but among friends surely we can discuss all kinds of biofuels?
The other day I saw a diesel Passat with this bumper sticker, and I just wanted to rant to a crowd that would understand:
BIODIESEL
The 100% solution
Kyoto compliant, carbon neutral, OPEC free
I wanted to run him off the road and give him a math lesson as he lay torn and bleeding in a ditch. If we covered every square centimeter of arable land in the US with the most magical crop available, it could not make enough fuel for us to be OPEC free. Not by a LONG shot. And we need to grow food, too!
Biofuels can be a great part of a solution. They are not a solution by themselves. But some people are driving around believing that "they" are stopping us from deploying perfect solution. I'm sorry, Passat man... It isn't that simple. I beg of you, do the math and reduce the scope of your conspiracy theories. The truth is bad enough.
Jatropha will not grow in the bulk of the US landmass, it is a subtropical plant and can only tolerate a few light frosts. I looked into it for a fuel crop here and even this being Georgia, we are too far north.
I agree with the other poster, either switchgrass or industrial hemp are better targets for exploitation for biofuels using marginal land in most areas of the US.
Odd, how they worry about nitrogen for this crop while municipal sewer authorities on the east coast are dumping the stuff into lakes and rivers because they can't figure out what to do with it all.
Ya know what? I'm gettin pretty damned tired of environmentalists finding fault with and rejecting every new advance and discovery that doesn't meet their impossible standards for acceptable energy production.
Every new advance, no matter how small, gets us toward cleaner production and more efficient use of energy, and all we hear from greens is griping.
How about acknowledging for once that we're making positive steps, and maybe offer something more constructive than demanding we all live in caves?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Because Iowa has the first primary.
Also, because of the general state of politics over the Farm Bill, which is a fscking disaster beyond what I could really describe in this space.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Ethanol IS NOT the cure for our energy disease.
True, but mainly because there IS no 'one' cure.
Anyway, I see fuels such as Biodiesel and Ethanol as stepping stones to better technologies that aren't (yet) ready for primetime.
corn derived ethanol is made from the grain. you get fuel or food from growing corn, not both.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I know a few people that heat their houses with a form of pellet furnaces that use corn. In many cases, they end up using the same basement chutes that 100 years ago were used for coal.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
And Bush's speech spurred on some investing:
My wife says I make too much of that. My kids say so too.
(I suppose this may seem off-topic, but what I'm thinking is that processed human waste, while difficult to get approval as fertilizer for food crops probably could get easier approval for fuel-only crops. That is, you wouldn't have to have so much processing. In areas where the sewage system is split into dirty and clean paths (like most of Japan), easing the burden on the dirty sewage processing could significantly improve waste management and water quality.)
The entire corn plant can be pretty efficient at making feed for cattle. If you're a dairy farmer or beef cattle farmer, the stalk is generally used for feed as well, where the plant is trimmed at the ground and chopped up to make silage, a moist feed product. Silage is every part of the corn plant except the root and the lowest 8" of stalk, including the ears & kernels, and it's harvested earlier in the year before the plant dries out (think of eating corn on the cob/sweet corn). When you look at a farm and see the tall silo next to the barn, that's where silage is stored through to the next harvesting season.
If you're a cash crop farmer (where the majority of corn would come from used for making food & ethanol), you're only interested in the dry kernels of corn because it's the easiest to store, transport, and sell. In that case, then yes, the stalk, husk, and cob are waste products and mostly comprised of cellulose. I don't know if it's a different kind of cellulose than switchgrass, however, but I'd bet they're similar.
This means that the kernels of corn could go back to being used for food supplies and the "waste product" of stalk and husks could be used for ethanol. The problem then becomes determining a standard unit of measure (probably weight, but moisture content would need to be factored in) for sale, standard way of compacting the waste product (perhaps chopped up into chaff), and methods of transportation (could be done with end-dump trailers). Commodities work based on a value assigned to a standard product that falls into one category or another, and as far as I know, there's no corn-waste commodity yet.
Because of harvesting techniques, corn is restricted to growing in rows and grasses are not, so that might be a factor in how much switchgrass vs. corn-waste can be produced per acre. Another factor is how much nitrogen both take out of the ground. I know there was some talk about needing to fertilize with nitrogen, but only the best soils can be used to grow corn year after year, without crop rotation. I don't know about switchgrass' nutrient requirements regarding crop rotation.
Good call on that.
Sugar cane already works, and probably could be intensively improved with specific fertilizers, and genetic breeding/engineering, all that needs to be done is stop saying stupid stuff like, "oh, we need to wait for Fidel to kick it, so that Cuba can fuel the world" and help countries in the areas suitable for cultivation. Or at least do what Americans always do, buy land, equipment and government, or call in the marines. Sugar cane is so good, that to produce the ethanol needed for the personal fleet, you could probably produce enough bagasse(waste fibers) to replace all the coal used in the electric grid.
There are better food uses for those grains, as well.
(The idea that you shouldn't burn your food has a certain ironic twist when applied to beer.)
are the ones that no one can pin down.
The lobbies whose proponents don't even recognize themselves as part of a formal lobby are even more powerful in the end than the ones that hide their existence.
ftfa - "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."
corn-based ethanol therefore delivers roughly 125% of the energy used to produce it, not 24%
Simply put, politicians can't be trusted to get us off oil. Something this important needs all of our eyes and brains. How about this: 1. For two years, everyone - Big Oil, Uncle Joe, Crazy Mary who walks sideways, etc. - is allowed to experiment and submit proposals for reducing our dependency on oil by 25% in 10 years and 100% in 25 years. The deadline is two years away and for the effort, the person/company with the best solution get 1% of profits - forever. 2. All the proposals are posted on the Internet. We yell at each other, question each other's motives, listen to experts, become experts ourselves and in the end, vote for five of the most promising projects and test the concepts for the next year. Detailed monthly web updates are required. 3. Year three: we pick the best solution and we DO IT. 4. To convert the infrastructure will take money so each of us is taxed an additional 1%. Every dime is accounted for on the web of course. I, for one, am tired of seeing the oil profits used by madmen, seeing young people die on foreign soil, and seeing the pollution. Stop gap measures are not acceptable - 25% use of alternative fuels still means 75% on oil. Oil prices will plummet but that shouldn't stop us. Mike Honeycutt
Hmmmm...he might want to watch out on those cross country trips through the United States, some states have heavy gasoline taxes to pay for construction and maintenance of their roads and they take a rather dim view of truckers who fill up at the borders to drive through those states "without paying the tax". In fact, they set up checkpoints to stop trucks that don't fill up on the way out of their state and issue them a bill for taxes they would have paid if they did fill up. The whole thing is ridiculous if you ask me, but it is conceivable that if they (i.e. those states) take a dim view of cross border diesel fill-ups then they will probably take an equally dim view of non-taxed alternative fuel fill-ups.
Sugarcane, at 8% efficiency photosynthesis, is highest efficiency land plant. But don't tell the DoE: Venezuela is a perfect place to grow it, but most Red States not so great.
But if switchgrass means we'll stay dependent on nitrogen fertilizers and other stuff made from petroleum, then expect the switchgrass business to thrive.
--
make install -not war
Link
Biodiesel: I don't know what fungible means.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
This means that corn gets you negative amounts of fuel (you'll use more farming it than you'll get out of farming it), while switchgrass gets you fuel.
This is slashdot. What it REALLY means is that the article summary is wrong.
paintball
I agree that it's interesting as well. It would be nice to know if there are downsides to producing or using Butanol, such as waste product. The ButylFuel LLC page suggests feeding some to livestock and spreading the rest over farm fields to decompose naturally. That presumes that the production method allows it to decompose naturally without side effects, and I get the feeling ButylFuel LLC is more interested in testing their product than testing the waste produced by their product.
It's certainly worth investigating. I'd mod you informative if I had points... and if I hadn't already joined in the discussion earlier.
Not to mention that the root systems of these plants are supposed to be huge, which will be a carbon sink as more of it is grown.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
"So why the fuck is this racist shit not deleted? Clearly there are only WASPS running this increasingly shitty site."
Because a racist post complaing about a racist post is just too funny.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It isn't an inalienable right to drive your car, so we outsource the transportation fuel production. Guess what? Gas is friggin expensive and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it but suck it up and pay the price. If you outsource production, who benefits? Not that poor farmer in Bolivia or someone in backwoods China. They still get paid almost nothing for the work they do because their local economies don't require a large wage to live comfortably. Are the common people in Iraq and Kuwait living high on the hog thanks to our lust for gas? No, the people taking advantage of the income disparities are the board members and business owners. Not our business owners, theirs.
So we outsource production and we end up a) being unable to adequately supply ourselves in emergencies/bad production years, b)become totally reliant on someone else to produce things that keep us alive and c) make someone outside our country rich for it. Do you think that it won't just shift to some other corporation (or one of ours) taking advantage of farmers somewhere else?
I'll agree that the current system is the best, but it does help farmers and local economies. I grew up in one of those. It isn't about heritage, it is about self reliance. Everyone is screaming that we need to wean ourselves off foreign oil and you want to sell out our farmers instead? No thanks. I don't have much faith in the free market when corporations get to do almost whatever they want to try to control the situation.
They haven't got patents on switchgrass. Therefore, they can't control the growing of it. Therefore, they will pay off as many Congressmen as possible and this will never get anywhere.
Wonder if research has been done into some sort of saltwater based plant. Kelpy? Freshwater being a major concern for crops and all. Plenty of low lying saltwater marshes and salt evaporation plantations.
- Gronk!
Sugar beets have a high sugar content(therefore can make more EtOH), and can grow in fairly cold, adverse environments. Grows quite well in North America. Corn is being used because of the lobbying effort of Archer-Daniel Midland, a world leader in processing corn, wheat, soybeans. Corn is a lousy product to make ethanol.
Ethanol yield/per acre for sugar beets is about 2x times that of corn, and about 25% higher than sugar cane.
Sugar cane is more efficiently made into ethanol yielding 8 times as much energy as required to make it, sugar beets only about twice. Corn is nearly an even output.
..........FULL STOP.
There is so much nitrogen being produced as animal and human waste products that fertilization shouldn't be a problem. And since switchgrass isn't a food product, it's not necessary to be particularly careful about how to deliver it.
The fundamental problem is personal high speed transportation. Yes, it is fun. Yes, it has its uses. Yes, it has also created "greatest misallocation of resources in history" (Kunstler). The problem isn't the fuel - the problem is the consumptive lifestyle, of which the automobile is simply the object lesson thereof. Peak oil == peak asphalt, so even if we DO sacrifice the rest of the planet to starvation for the sake of filling our tanks, we're still not going to have roads to drive on.
IF there is a car of the future, it will be electric, and it will resemble something more like a curved dash olds with e dunebuggy body running on bicycle wheels, at around 30mph top speed. THAT'S the future. Ethanol isn't part of the equation. Billions of people not being replaced is.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
ethanol is ethanol
Were that I say, pancakes?
Factories on land that can produce cereal grains are not a good idea. But factories on land the kind of land that switchgrass grows on would be much less a waste of good land.
Remember that farming is not yet a perfect science. Many aspects of weather can ruin a crop of [insert ethanol-producing plant here], such as drought, flood, hail, tornado, hurricane, wind, and fire. Pests can destroy crops (hence the popularity of insecticide), and as well as other unwanted plants (hence the herbicide). Crops need maintenance and attention as much as anything else. While the demand for a crop may be constant, nature makes sure that the supply fluctuates.
I think some people get the idea that farming is easy: you just drop some seeds in the ground and a year later you cut down the plant and go collect your cash. It isn't as simple as that. (Some people think parenting is the same way - just drop your seed and wait for your welfare check to come in.) Anybody who's had a garden can tell you that there's a lot more to it.
Or something other than corn?
Yeah, it looks like going with butanol with this (patented) process would be a better return on human investment than ethanol from corn, but how does it compare to ethanol from other sources? (And is there a possibility that going to butanol instead of ethanol might make it easier to clear the cellulose barrier?)
I'm pretty sure they're making the exact same chemical, but more of it, or more efficiently.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Brazil uses primarily sugar beets
I don't know where you heard that. Wikipedia suggests they use cane, which makes sense to me since they produce over 400 million tonnes of it, twice as much as anyone else in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil
I would be in favor of more algae research and deployment, but not necessarily in the oceans but in controlled pools/tanks in the desert, in combination with some some solar and geo thermal and perhaps very large greenhouses. And mostly because they will most likely go for genetically modified algae and I wouldn't want to chance such a crop going wild with unintended consequences. I also think they could control it better in pools or tanks than in the wide open ocean. I've worked on the ocean before, it ain't always a flat millpond...
;)
I think the energy question will be answered with an "all of the above" solution, I am not seeing any single one solution fitting all circumstances everywhere. although back to the jatropha, mexico's oil fields are now in decline, it probably wouldn't hurt them a bit to see if they could start to squeeze a few million acres of the plant in there before it goes into fast decline....
Personally I am trying to eventually go full personal production for the fuels I need/use, to decentralize production (doing my bit to be part of the solution rather than just part of the problem), and also pure self interest-keep my wallet stuffed more than "theirs". I am not real far along yet, just wood as primary heating fuel, perpetual supply and carbon neutral, some solar PV,a greenhouse for year round food production (helps drop shipping demand/fuel use/pollution from imported foods, plus it is just better to make your own food onsite, IMO, tastier!), but am working towards liquid biodiesel next, that's why I happened to know about the jatropha, I had looked into it and had to abandon the idea. Most likely we will be looking at using waste chicken litter for a feedstock source, as we have that in rather large abundance
We wouldn't need any land mass at all if we made giant algae pools on the surface of the oceans to make bio-diesel, which is a much more viable alternative anyway, with the minimal needed changes in the infrastructure that's already in place.
You could also use algae to produce hydrogen.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There is a bit more then that stopping the widespread deployment of butanol. Butanol is primarily made from natural gas (IE- an oil product). The bio-converters and bacteria used to make butanol are more sensitive, and much more difficult to convert into an industrial scale bio-converter.
.80/l right now so anyone who doesn't mind keeping barrels of it at there home and the high gelling point is not an issue could convert today.
Butanol also gels at a much higher temperature then gasoline or ethanol; which makes its use as a winter fuel (You either have to have a pressurized pump that can push gelled fuel until the engine warms up enough to liquefy it; or adding some other additive to lower it's gelling point).
That said; butanol is
What part of human waste is non-biodegradable?
But I'm not really thinking of dumping the septic lines directly on the land where the switchgrass would grow.
What I'm thinking is stopping the sewage processing at the point where it becomes hard. Aerate the slurry a bit and then send it to fuel fields instead of evaporation pools. Maybe coarse filter it for toys and jewelry and such things that get occasionally dropped down the toilet, but I think that's usually done before aeration anyway.
The biggest problem with human waste as fertilizer is the parasites, and those are pretty much destroyed by the time aeration is complete. Any bacterial/viral products or biological poisons will break down naturally if you let the field lie unfertilized a year before you convert to food.
Of course, these days there are other things in the sewage, leftover anti-depressants and such. Is that what you're talking about? I'm guessing those will be better handled by putting them in fields than by putting them in the rivers. Guessing being the operational word, and I don't have the tools to test the guess.
joudanzuki
So, according to the Subject line, the corn produced from switchgrass is of a higher quality than the ethanol produced from switchgrass? Wow! I didn't even know we could get corn from switchgrass.
Hemp seeds are nutritious. Leaves can be used for salad and most everywhere else lettuce is used.
Just Googling for hemp "salad dressing" returns almost 18,000 results. Hemp food returns more than 250,000.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I agree with you on the sugar beets, but sort of disagree on the "why" of corn right now. The primary reason for the corn is because that is what we have the highest numbers of big farmers set up to grow with the equipment at hand, and that stuff just ain't cheap. Corn and soybeans, ethanol and biodiesel. We are in a transition stage now to all the various biofuels, so I wouldn't worry about it being corn forever, it just happens to be the handiest one we have right now. We are still at the 286 level with biofuels, it will get better, and in probably a roughly similar time frame.
There are two good positives here, energy demands are just always going to be going up,so this biofuels idea will be continued to be worked on, and farmers love to farm, because it is a hard job, and if they didn't love it, they wouldn't do it, there are any number of easier ways to make a buck. So it will work out.
In fact, a ton of the good innovations and tweaking with biofuels are going on right now in real world deployments directly on farms for fuel use on-site, because they are so tied to energy availability and costs. They are the serious beta tester devs right now for all of this...so I say support them in general terms, let them sort this out better, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
Society is right now asking a minuscule percentage of the population to double their output, in two critical areas, food and now they are going to be tasked with being the liquid energy producers as well. This is an incredibly HUGE undertaking, and I think it is more than fair that the rest of society, who will be the primary beneficiaries of the food and now energy production, be prepared to cut loose a few dollars for this effort, to offer a bit of understanding and acceptance of the size of these projects in total and realize there will be failures as well as successes along this new energy path, and to give them a chance to tweak it out better without a lot of condemnation and outright dissin'.
No other segment of our society has been tasked with a doubling or tripling of their projected work load en masse like the farmers have now accepted to attempt. The closest historical parallel we have would the durable goods manufacturers-with a much higher workforce total and much higher governmental support structure- who had to gear up and run triple time, plus alter product lines drastically, for the world war 2 effort. The coming transition to mostly biofuels as conventional petroleum sources become more iffy and more dear, is at least of such a scale the way it is being projected now.
That exactly is why I eat much more switchgrass than corn.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Hmmn
..:P
Wired.com had an article on this about six months ago
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
Anybody have any information on how energy from the ethanol from fermenting this grass compares to using the same acreage for solar power generation?
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
...How about we quit wasting time and energy on "bio-fuel" which is inefficient, wasteful, and expensive, and focus a little more time/energy/money on solar, which could easily supplant our current oil economy? All this ethanol and hydrogen talk is a total diversion. And a waste of time. And money. We pave Arizona with Silicon and we're done. We all drive a Tesla, everything else remains the same, and we stop relying on dangerous Arabic fascism and destroying the atmosphere and climate.
Or we could keep wasting everybody's time with the ethanol crap and further centralize our power industry control.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Friends
Sugarcane is the best option to produce ethanol, contrary to other crops, it produces huge ratio of glucose and saccharose (i.e. one type of sugar) by its biomass. Sugar can be easily transformed to alcohol using biological fermentation process (a really simple and well understood method... I believe for more than 2000 years).
Just to give a number, yields of 80 to 120 tons (per hectare) are common in Brazilian South-East states (and in controlled conditions, it can yield more than 180 tons per hectare). Contrast that to 5 to 11 tons/ha of switchgrass.
Brazil started its bio-fuel program (named 'Pro-alcool') back in ending 70s, during the oil economic shock. At that time, the country was still dependent of oil imports (but we are now independent).
Those massive yields are results of these factors: a) More than 30 years of genetic studies to select better producing sugar-cane species/subspecies b) Tropical climate c) More than 30 years of research to improve in field conditions of the crop (fertilization, etc).
What I'm trying to explain is: good things take lots of time and hard work. Don't expect to being able to achieve high levels of efficiency in biofuel production in *high scale* in less than 10 to 20 years.
**flamebait**
Obviously, if you North-Americans have an open market (without *economic barriers*), you could be running your cars and SUVs using ecological brazilian alcohol *right* now. Instead, your government prefer to give your taxes money to terrorist or dictatorship ruled nations.
**flamebait**
Best regards
Savago
That's total nonsense. Not all energy is oil!
Take a look at the studies on ethanol - Pimental's, for example. About 90% of the energy involved is for (a) fertilizer, or (b) distillation-process heat, neither of which involve oil!
Basically, you've been fed a lie.
It's better by about a factor of four; that's more than "a little".
Brazillian sugarcane ethanol is similar to switchgrass in that regard. Basically, anyone who's only looked at corn ethanol has a very, very biased view of what can be done. US-grown corn ethanol is a ridiculous product - it's agricultural subsidies in a bottle - and shouldn't be used as the basis of any sensible technological comparison.
Don't be absurd. Oil isn't going to vanish overnight, and agriculture uses such a small fraction of it (~5%) that even peak-is-nigh models like ASPO's predict the world will have plenty for agriculture for decades to come.
Moreover, demanding that alternative energy sources make no use of current energy sources is as useful as demanding they turn the moon to green cheese - there is absolutely no economic benefit to cutting an alt-energy business off from the world's infrastructure, so nobody who's running such a business will do it. Insisting they should is no more than a way to ignore their results as "not counting".
If we do use bio-deisel or ethanol AND it yield more energy than what goes into it, then it will improve the CO2 situation. The reason is that you are now using hydrocarbons that were built from the CO2 in the air. OTH, oil in the ground was built from CO2 that was in the air LONG ago. Sadly, we have put millions of years worth of CO2 back into the air.
But are things all hunky doory? Not if you are using Ethanol. the bio-diesel is nothing but hydro-carbons, because it is the exact same thing that makes up oil; the break down of wall membranes. Ethanol (or even methanol), contains hydroxy group. Ethanol will form gluteraldahyde/formaldehyde as a side product, in much higher percentage than oil will.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'd love to see how'd you reacted if Slashdot did delete posts and all of your stupid offtopic ones were deleted as well. Everyone in their right mind hates racism, you don't have to prove yourself. Just ignore it and move on. I'm more concerned when I see racism in real life, than when some 12 year old posts NIGGER in all caps on slashdot because they think that they're funny. Just say to hell with them and move on, people have been doing it for years on this site.
Posting on Slashdot has been easy today! --Everybody else has said it first.
-FL
Popular Mechanics made mention of this about a year and a half ago: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2690341.html?page=2 Mention of cellulosic ethanol 11 months ago: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4237539.html?series=47 Biomass/switch grass over two years ago: http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/1633301.html?page=3 Biomass November 2006 in a discussion about alternative fuel hurdles: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4199381.html?page=3 There's a lot more. There is even this "Fuel of the future" PDF chart: http://media.popularmechanics.com/documents/Fuel_of_the_Future-e852.pdf I don't even subscribe...
*NP*
is not a food use, I suppose.
But, yeah, I'm not a fan of either beer or bourbon.
I once saw a field of barley being burned in Takino because the farmer found out after the grain was ripe that his harvester couldn't be adjusted to harvest it. (He had grown it that year because regulations kept him from growing rice.)
I about cried.
Well, the smoke was pretty bad, too, but it's really hard to get whole wheat or barley here in Japan. I like rice, but sometimes I need some other grains in my diet.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I don't know what to call ethanol but a really inefficient, indirect way to run on solar power. The only good thing about it is that our automobiles could run on it until we fix our shit - green energy, cut down on sprawl, livable and affordable urban neighborhoods, good public transport. However, it sounds more like an excuse for not really solving those problems. What, you thought the world was going to be full of more and bigger cars indefinitely?
If that was true, then why did President George W. Bush promote ethanol then? Got you! Sure, sure... grass makes gas... riiight. I'll bet they didn't inhale any either (like Clinton!) when they came up with this one. I've never heard of this magazine anyhow, Scientific American? As far as I'm concerned, they're neither.
That is not a fair comparison. You could get more energy from corn if you processed it in a cellulosic refinery too. The problem is that there aren't any. . .
Yeah, in the States, triclosan and stuff would be a concern.
Here in Japan, there are two separate sewage paths in most of the country, for soft sewage (sinks, shower, etc., mixes with the storm sewer outside (deep gutters!), and for hard sewage, i. e., the flush toilet. Some places have non-flush toilets, or have light-flush toilets, that drop into septic tanks, generally under the house. One house my wife and I looked at once in Kakogawa had a partial treatment plant on the septic tank -- stirred the sewage regularly to speed up the conversion. With the tanks, you'd have to have the septic truck come around every so often, and put a big vacuum house down the outside access and take it away.
Anyway, most Japanese people are very sensitive to sewage issues and don't wash industrial waste down either path. (Part of the reason is that there are often rice fields that use the storm sewers for irrigation in many neighborhoods, even in the cities, so it's easy to remember that what you wash down the drain could come back to haunt you.) Lake Biwa (which I really want to go see sometime) turned red some thirty years ago because of stuff in detergents, and citizens groups formed to push the detergent companies to make and sell bio-friendly detergents at reasonable prices, and to encourage the avoidance of the bad stuff. By the time they made laws, conformance was mostly not an issue any more.
Not everywhere in Japan has had such success with the environment, but there is a difference between Japan and the US. People don't tend to use old engine oil to kill ants and weeds here, either.
But, yeah, these are the sorts of problems that might have to be worked out to make common effluent useable for fuel crops.
The net co2 added to the atmosphere in a year is zero
No, it isn't. I've explained this before. I'm not going over it again. Not only are you oxidizing tomorrow's fossil fuel today, you're widening the dead zone in the gulf of Mexico.
One bowl of polenta each morning powers my bicycle all the way to work.
- addressing the actual issue: We are going to have to give up fossil fuels. This means that we will have to adopt a lifestyle that depends a lot less on cheap energy. And that means that we have to travel less, do much more ourselves (fewer electrical gadgets in our home, no ready made meals, etc), waste less, and there will have to be a lot fewer people on the planet.
Using biodiesel and ethanol is only a dummy, something to make people feel less depressed by the reality: it is not possible to maintain our present way of life with the huge number of people in the world. So what do we want: eradicate 90% of all people on the planet or live a much more basic lifestyle? Doing nothing serious will mean the first - through wars, epidemics, natural disasters and starvation.
The situation is not hopeless, but we are not going to get there by dreaming about ethanol, it will require huge changes in our societies. People like the neo-conservatives have known this for years and have been working hard to ensure that they are going to come out on top - you didn't think they cared about what was good for you, did you? The truth is that capitalism, with its demand for constant growth and consumerism, is reaching its limit. The almighty and holy marketplace cannot solve these problems - the marketforces are based on 'directed self-interest', and self-interest will never tell you to give away your own comfort to help others, certainly not if those others are half a world away.
Technology can at best help us break the fall and ensure that we, as a species, can get back on our feet if we are careful. The best thing we ordinary people can do, apart from saving energy and other obvious stuff, is to get politically active, and go out and work to get rid of this current, corrupt, political class that is mismanaging our country, and replace it with somebody who actually work for the good of the people.
First let me say I don't share many of my contemporaneous peer fear of eating genetically modified foodstuff. But the genetic modification we do right now is NOWHERE near cross pollination or breeding. Or you seriously have to explain me how we insert human/pig/fish gene using only pollination in a specie where this gene is not present. Bottom line is You can't. So for the *side effect* you can't compare to pollination either. There is a lot of paranoia going on for gene splicing, but there are a few good point hinted by some study (allergy to component not usually there in the original Genus/specie, resistance to herbicide or others effect passed over to other plants in the wild etc...).
The bottom line is that I am against the genetic-splicing paranoia I see in Europe (even in my own family), but downright exaggerating and comparing splicing with pollination make you look like an "apologist". Splicing is not only faster and more precise but also to introduce gene compeltely alien to the genus which would NEVER EVER have come into the plant by breeding and pollination.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The same goes for livestock. Having multi-purpose breeds on small farms allows you to be a bit more nimble. One I am very interested in is the Scottish Highland cattle. It is a good meat/leather producer, hardy and a good grazer, produces decent milk, and can be used for fiber and draft. Not quite as good at any of these as a dedicated breed (although the low-maintenance aspects are nearly unbeatable), but good enough and the ability to switch markets as needed makes up for a lot.
We should try and find something other than corn as a new fuel source and this is a good step towards that. If America were to have a crisis, like what happened in Ireland with the potato famine, we would be up shit creek without a paddle. We rely too much on corn based products as it is, becoming dependent on corn for fuel would be just as bad as how we rely on oil now.
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.---Scott Adams
A bad reason is the perceived importance of Iowa in the presidential primaries. Even GW "Big Oil" Bush is pro corn ethanol. No presidential nominee would dare say that we should cut back on corn subsidies. Ron Paul has. That is one of the reasons he was *shocked* he did as well as he did in Iowa.
That may be a stupid question, but how comes one can not use the grass-fuel to power the grass-fuel production ? As long as the required input energy is lower than the output, one just need to bootstrap the production with an additional source of energy, and then it could go on forever without it, no ?
I read the article, from their point of view it looks great. Would like to hear the downside of it too in a decent ./ thread. But it looks interesting.
Only one thing bothers me about that post though: some years ago the new idea was about hydrogen and fuel cell. Then when this became a mainstream idea (Bush talking about hydrogen economy in his speech), people started to turn away from hydrogen and specialist started to talk about biodiesel from algues. Then when biodiesel from algues became a popular topic, specialist turned away and invoke ethanol from biomass. Then again ethanol from corn seed was not so cool anymore and we are talking instead of cellulosic ethanol. And now guess what, cellulosic ethanol is not the last great idea, now it's butanol.
No problem to find new ideas or improve on existing ones, the problem is the pace of new ideas is faster than the implementation. Aren't we loosing a little focus here ? Shoudln't we act more too or are we always waiting for the next better thing. It reminds me of a friend who did not want to buy a computer now because they were about to start selling one wih a faster processor. Well you can wait all your life then.
just a thought,
a great contemporary argument for the free market.
Well, in Baltimore they want to build a new subway line. They state that the various studies will be done in 2015, and ground breaking by 2035. This plan has already been on the books for 25+ years.
??
I love America - but it saddens me to see that we are no longer a nation of do-ers. Jesus Christ people, just build the god-damn (road/freeway/builing/orbiter/bridge/whatever). Just f-ing do it!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
1) corn uses a lot of water
2) corn is a cultivation intense annual, switchgrass is perennial
3) corn is a tropical plant, requires a lot of heat (degree days) to produce grain
4) those who are discouraging livestock production are constantly looking for reasons to not grow corn
but i'll add anyway. David Tilman from U of MN has worked quite extensively with mono- and polycultures of plants/grass for purposes of productivity. his paper here talks about using switchgrass in combination with other plants to use degraded/poor ag. lands and still get better, even carbon negative, output than corn or soy beans for ethanol, without a lot of input. i don't know why this didn't get more press.
"To stop the terrorists."
I agree with a lot of that. I am firmly in the camp of open pollination seed and no patenting for that stuff, etc. I am in ag but am a contrarian to a lot of conventional farmers, I recognize how much the major distributors and packers game the system, Believe me, I know, my check is artificially small because of some of those gents and the way the system is setup now. But that takes nothing away from my observation as to "that is how the equipment deal" is set up now, we have the bulk of the huge farmers set up to grow specialized crops, and a lot of the equipment is not easily transferable to different crops, and it is quite spendy. We got a lot of farmers already up and running for corn and soybeans and canola/rapeseed, so that is what the first biofuel crops are going to be coming from primarily. Wishful thinking is not going to change this, and anyone is free to go and try and get into farming and do it otherwise, especially the new energy farming but it is expensive to start out. In other words, complaining on the internet is cheap, actually going out and doing different is hard, you have to be dedicated, hard working and quite handy with your finances. I am trying to do both, I have roundly dissed monsanto et all numerous times here and other forums.
If I wasn't where I am now, and was going to do it fresh, I'd do it in stages and first look to some land that falls into the "good enough" wind category for a commercial wind tower or 6, then get that up and running, so you got a good check constantly coming in (even sharing with your VC investors) that will cover land payments and your other equipment, then go on and do some more radical and modern farming, both food and energy. Having your own massive electricity for more or less cheap/free onsite is a nice bonus there.
This whole farms as the new energy OPEC is still in the very early wild wild west days, plenty of room for new thinking and guys with some sound and sustainable ideas to step in and make their mark I think.
Cross species gene transport absolutely does happen naturally. See the Wikipedia entry on horizontal gene transfer.
It really doesn't have too much bearing on your point, which I mostly agree with.
I recommend everyone interested in science to read What Remains to be Discovered by John Maddox, which talks about horizontal gene transfer, particularly by endogenous retroviruses. Of course, as the title indicates, it talks about lots more than that. Maddox was the editor in chief at Nature magazine for 30 years, and had glowing recommendations from Richard Feynmann and Richard Dawkins, among others.
What surface does it take to fuel a car for a year. 1 hectare? Will there be any space left for anything else in the country?
True, but the redeeming factor of soy is that it provides complete protein.
"Hemp Seed Protein"
Falcon"Hemp seeds have the most complete edible and usable protein in the vegetable kingdom."
Should there be a Law?
Maybe on slashdot it is thin, but I cover it on Technocrat.net,(along with a host of other alternative energy subjects). The latest reference article I put up just a few days ago and discussion here Otec
The planet's desalination process requires very little effort on our part to exploit. I don't believe we need all these distilleries or reverse osmosis contraptions to supply our fresh water needs. Not when it already falls from the sky for free. Manna from heaven that we let run down the storm drains.
If you're lucky to live where it rains a lot you may not have much trouble with fresh water. However even Georgia hasn't gotten as much rain as normal has it? Isn't there a lake there many depend on for freshwater drying up because of low rainfall?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ah but OTEC only works "within 20 of the equator"
Furthermore, OTEC doesn't have the same potential of dramatic ecosystem change that cultivated algae farms may have upon the ocean.
You don't need the oceans for algae farms, an algae farm can be established in the desert.
OTEC has a lot of potential for coastal markets which, coincidentally, are where we are seeing the most growth in demand for energy.
As stated above, TEC is only good near the equator which leaves out most of the planet.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Umm, I think buffalo ranching and switchgrass farming are mutually exclusive. You can't turn the switchgrass into fuel if the buffalo eat it. You can either do one or the other.
If you keep the head count on a given amount of land low buffalo and switchgrass can be mutually beneficial. Sure the buffalo will eat some of the switchgrass but the manure from the buffalo provides nutrients to the switchgrass.
FalconShould there be a Law?
No other segment of our society has been tasked with a doubling or tripling of their projected work load en masse like the farmers have now accepted to attempt.
This is wrong. If you don't think so wait ten to twenty more years then try to make an appointment with a doctor, many of whom are approaching retirement. This is a big problem right now in Africa, many African doctors, nurses, and other health care workers are moving to Europe, who accepts them with open arms because of the aging European population. This is causing a brain drain in Africa.
FalconShould there be a Law?
dont forget the benefits of not causing corn prices to skyrocket screwing the poor people we export corn to.
Stopping the export of corn may, and I think will, help the third world. Or at least stopping the subsidizing of corn will. Because US corn is subsidized farmers in third world nations, such as Mexico, can't compeat. A Mexican farmer will spend more to grow corn than what a Mexican will spend on buying imported corn putting the farmer out of work, and off his land.
FalconShould there be a Law?
All this is true, and they taste good! When the US government finally wises up and ends the stupid prohibition on the stuff, the country will be better off than continuing the stupid (and mostly ineffective) prohibition.
We do have an election coming up in the US. It would be great if the US population was smart enough to vote for a sane candidate, but that is a wild dream of mine.
You're voting for Ron Paul then aren't you? Not the only reason but one of the reasons Republicans left the Republican Party and started the Libertarian Party was over hemp. Then president Nixon had a presidential commission looking into whether hemp should be legalized. Nixon though said that no matter what his commission concluded he would never agree to let hemp be legalized, which is exactly what the commission decided.
FalconShould there be a Law?
But I do have a useless, small, heated, damp basement. Might this be usable for brewing beer?
Yea, space is a problem I have too. I may be able to get away with making 2 gallon batches but I think I'd really be pushing it to make 5 gallon batches. I too have a basement I might be able to use, however there's two problems with that. The first is that I live in an apartment and right now I may have trouble with others, it is a common area. Another problem is the space I could use I want to make into a photography darkroom.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A plant you can grow easily at home replacing hundred dollar a pill patent medicines and cutting into alcohol sales? Not under our current system, no way.
Actually when congress was debating making hemp, aka marijuana, illegal the AMA tried to keep it legal. A doctor from the AMA testified in congress about how useful hemp was in medicine.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea, it's paper made from hemp.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You are correct on the medical issues! I have also read one of the faster growth aspects to healthcare in the US is "medical tourism", going over seas for alternative therapies or surgeries, because it is either available there but not here and/or much cheaper.
US society could address this issue along with a host of other issues if they valued education/science/engineering as much as they do professional sports and movies. College education is absurdly expensive right now, for any field, let alone going all the way to a medical degree. You might *think* that subsidizing such educations might be considered a good idea, something society should "invest" in, but apparently not...
And too bad about africa and the brain drain, perhaps they should work on rational nationalism and pride in nation and so on first. Give them some inducements to stay as well, simple stuff, guaranteed free house and say no taxes for young people willing to stay and work after their degree. Something like that anyway.. I honestly don't understand why people don't want to try and work and make their own nations/areas better, it is an alien concept to me. I am just against the "me,me,me bottom line rules!" philosophy a lot of folks seem to have, like the accumulation of money is *the* most important thing in the whole world. I am an old square I guess, want to make what we have better, not willing to abandon ship so easily just to make a few bucks more some place else or by compromising ethics, etc.
If you take the price that corn sold for in the 1970s and adjusted for inflation, corn should be selling for above $10/bushel today. The prices of corn and other commodities have been kept low for years because there are more voters who eat food than there are who grow food.
And how high would the price of corn be if they didn't get billions of dollars a year in subsidies?. From 1995 to 2005 corn received $51.3 billion in subsidies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If true, isn't it odd we have outlawed an industry the Constitution itself was *written on*?
College education is absurdly expensive right now, for any field, let alone going all the way to a medical degree. You might *think* that subsidizing such educations might be considered a good idea, something society should "invest" in, but apparently not...
Actually education is one area I do believe in subsidizing, just not how things are now. How I'd do it would be using public services. The military is a good example, but even then I'd still change the way it works. The way it is now someone enlisting has to sign up for Veterans Educational Assistance Program (VEAP) and have money deducted from their pay while in the military. What I'd do is for every year a person serviced, they'd have one year of college paid for. A person could enlist and serve one year then they could attend college one year, serve 4 years and get their bachelor's degree. Simply apply this to many other areas. Go to policy academy and work as a police officer one year then have a year of college paid for. Same for firemen. Another person could work as a teacher's assistant then have a year paid for.
And too bad about africa and the brain drain, perhaps they should work on rational nationalism and pride in nation and so on first.
That would be very difficult as African nations are artificially created lines on maps. Take Algeria. Algeria has two main groups, Arabs and Berbers. However there are different ethnic groups of Berbers, each with it's own customs. Or Nigeria. Nigeria is oil rich but out of different ethnic groups only a couple control the government and reap the benefits of the oil. In Botswana the Kalahari Bushmen have been forced off their ancestral homeland so diamonds could be mined.
This is just a beginning of an explanation of the problems in Africa, much of which comes from colonialism.
I honestly don't understand why people don't want to try and work and make their own nations/areas better, it is an alien concept to me.
Some do stay but it can be a real struggle for others to stay.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yea, it's paper made from hemp.
Do you have a source for that? :-) I actually have an interest in traditional inks and writing, but cannot find any source for the material of the Constitution. As far as I know it was written on parchment (skin) like many legal documents of the time. I have a friend who makes paper the (really) old fashioned way out of linen rags in the style of Europe, but I know that hemp was a popular fiber here.
Perhaps I misspoke. When I answered I was thinking of the "Declaration of Independence". Thomas Jefferson wrote drafts of the DOI on hemp paper. Here's are links for that. However the Jefferson Monticello says more than likely the paper was made from flax or linen rags.
Richard Stallman has a document on his website that says the USA Constitution was written on hemp paper. Another link says the drafts of the Constitution were written on it. There's one simple way to tell what paper was used for both the DOI and the Constitution, simply test them. However I can easily imagine the government not wanting to test them because if they are written on hemp paper then that would stengthen the hands of those who want to legalize hemp.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I looked it up and you are correct -- I'm happy to see I was behind the times on my opinion of the AMA regarding cannabis use.
Hemp is a pretty big interest of mine. There are many things hemp can do used for, hemp is probably the most industrially useful plants there is. It can be used for clothing, fiber, food, fuel, medicine, and plastic among other uses. Throughout much of history hemp has been put to use by society. Heck even artists have used hemp. The canvas painters used to paint on comes from hemp, "canvas" comes from "cannabis". The only reason hemp was made illegal, by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, was because it posed a threat to some rich and powerful people. Plastic was originally made from plants with hemp being one of the sources for Bioplastic. The camera company Kodak made plastic, such as used for film, from plants. However in the mid '30s DuPont was granted a patent on making plastic from petroleum oil. Henry Ford built a vehicle on his Iron Mountain Estate not only with plastic made from hemp but was also powered by ethanol made from hemp. Hemp he grew on the estate. Using hemp to make fuel was a threat to Rockefeller of Standard Oil. Also in the mid '30s MIT published a study showing an acre of hemp made more pulp for paper than an acre of forest. Because he owned thousands of acres of forest he used for making paper, Newspaperman William Randolph Hearst saw hemp as a threat. What I find ironic about this is that the January 1938 issue of "Popular Mechanics" published an article calling hemp the "New Billion Dollar Crop", and Hearst's publishing company owns PM.
It was Harry J Anslinger, as head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who pushed to make hemp illegal. And Anslinger was the nephew-in-law of Andrew W. Mellon, who was the Treasury Secretary under Roosevelt as well as the Mellon from Mellon Bank. And DuPont's biggest financial backer, banker, was Mellon. So in the end hemp was made illegal strictly because some wealthy people saw it as a threat.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Subsidies are about keeping farmers working for cheap
Subsidies are about stuffing the pockets of corporations like Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, and Cargill. "Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare". "Largest farms and firms get subsidies; Cargill among beneficiaries, list shows". Notice how the ADM case study is from the Freemarket CATO Institute.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The fact that the agribusiness industry has to spend that much money and they barely have anything to show for it just shows how little influence they have. Corn-based ethanol subsidies are basically the only thing I can think of that they have ever done to help the corn market. Looking at one recent success and saying it means they are powerful is not a very good call.
Agribusinesses don't have much influence? Please explain all the farm subsidies especially corn subsidies then. Between 1995 and 2005 corn alone got more than $50 billion.
FalconShould there be a Law?
that's interesting and all, but locally, i remember paying $1 for 12 ears of sweet corn to cook. last year, it was about $1/ear - that's 100% increase in about 3 years. what's going on with my local farms? are they not subsidized?
No, small farmers don't get much in subsidies. Big agribusinesses like Archer Damiel Midland, ADM, and Cargill get the subsidies. The Libertarian Freemarket CATO institute has a policy analysis on "Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare". And: "Largest farms and firms get subsidies; Cargill among beneficiaries, list shows."
FalconShould there be a Law?
I don't think *anyone* is arguing that corn subsidies increase the price of corn. That is completely nonsensical.
Actually corn prices are higher, it's because of the subsidies make it seem as corn doesn't cost as much. Subsidies are really a hidden cost spread out so everyone who pays taxes pays, even those who don't eat corn.
FalconShould there be a Law?
>You use one gallon of gasoline or diesel to run a tractor to grow and harvest corn (and to produce fertiliser), and get 1,24 gallons
>of ethanol-based gasoline out, it is totally irrelevant how much energy you had to put into the production of the gallon of
>mineral-oil based gasoline you used.
Why does this it not matter how much is needed to produce mineral oil? The output requires input. I'm not saying ethanol is more efficient in any way, but that crude is not cost-free.
> Without having a citeable source to back this statement up, I am disputing your interpretation of the "24% efficiency"
Don't shoot the messenger - I'm just citing the summary.
> If you (or rather the farmers and refiners) would need four gallons of crude oil (or gasoline or diesel) to produce one gallon of
> ethanol, ethanol-based gasoline would have to either cost $8 per gallon at the pump, or be subsidized at $5 per gallon to sell at
> $3 at the pump.
My interpretation is that 24% efficiency relates to an absolute measure of return on input - this may be an invalid interpretation, but I can just as easily imagine that the subsidy is greater than that, currently. Patriotism and pork-barrelling means a lot of money. When you consider farmers in the US growing for food are getting subsidised to compete against food imports, what price competing against oil imports?
I know for sure there's huge subsidies in Australia for ethanol production, and the output is blended (typically 10%) to reduce the cost of petrol at the pump by a few cents a litre. Pure ethanol-based fuel would probably cost more. This also leaves out the question of bio-diesel, which by the prices (subsidised though they may be) is cheaper at the pump.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
You 'make' nitrogen with energy, using the Haber-Bosch process. When oil is the cheapest way to acquire energy (as used to be the case) people will make it with oil.
The cheapest way to make nitrogen is to drink and piss. Urea is high in nitrogen. A good way to see this in action, so to speak, is to piss in one spot on grass. Within a few days a brown spot will appear there, that brown spot is a nitrogen burn. If you garden mix 1 part urine with 10 parts water and use it to water your plants. They'll love you for it. Of course you can't do that if you want organics as organics prohibits it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oil, natural gas, and coal are all very different resources that are subject to very different constraints. Confusing them - intentionally or otherwise - is not at all helpful. In fact, it's often highly misleading - warning that oil production may be at risk and then (incorrectly) stating that fertilizer is made from oil is nothing but bait-and-switch, and it gives a flat-out wrong picture of the situation.
but the article says 540% for switchgrass
Corn is pretty bad for ethanol but because a lot of corn is grown and it also gets large subsidies the corn industry is pretty powerful. Sugarcane is better however it only grows in a few places in the US. I've heard it's grown in three states, I know it grows in Florida and Hawaii but I don't know the other state. However if the US really wanted to use sugarcane for ethanol, 90 miles from Florida there's Cuba and Cuba can produce as much cane as the US will take. But if somehow that's not enough Brazil also produces a lot of it. However though not as powerful as the corn industry the sugarcane industry still has some power. It's partially because of them that the US embargo against Cuba hasn't ended. It is also responsible for high tariffs on Brazilian sugar cane.
FalconShould there be a Law?
very interesting this mentioning of this patent, especially in the light of this news of today:
> GENEVA and ARMONK, NY--(Marketwire - January 14, 2008) - Leading members of the corporate community have come together in a first-of-its-kind effort to help the environment, unleashing dozens of innovative, environmentally responsible patents to the public domain.
source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=809733
- aaah, btw there is a highly interesting report by the OECD claiming that biofuels might be worse than oldschool fuels: http://www.cfr.org/publication/14293/oecd.html
just one more newsitem from today:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/7715
> The European Union is reexamining its biofuels policy after finding evidence that increased demand might be endangering rainforests and causing other nasty side effects.
:)
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
"Solar power isn't free enough free energy for you?"...ya, it is OK, I own half a dozen panels now myself, and would like to see everyone get enough to run at least one of their home computers through a decent sized home whole circuit UPS deal, but keep thinking we can do better than even that. A few years ago some guys were kicking around some experiments they were doing and having some success with using wrapped fencing-a place to build up the charge-, and some car parts, sparkplugs with a big gap and a normal coil, and getting some useful electricity into car batteries, but I have lost track on any more updates of those experiments. Basically the static charge built up enough until it could jump the gap, it pulsed into the batteries. *Very* preliminary work to be sure, but getting enough to go forward and see how it could be tweaked better/safer, etc.
;)
As to Tesla and whatnot...guess I'd have to see some hard proof if anyone on Slashdot is really equivalent-to or better-than Tesla over all in the thinking outside the box realm in order to have some standing to debunk him. He was convinced he could get usable power from some earth versus atmosphere potential, with some geomagnetic lines of force thrown into the stew there. That we can't do it yet effectively does not negate the fact that *he* thought it was quite possible. I tend to fall on the side of the megabranez with track records and good street cred. He wasn't normal genius level smart, he was *scary* genius level smart, like everyone else was sorta like a lemur or something
Grin, I have a book about Tesla's work, which includes an account of a fairly compact apparatus that powered a car that traveled about 100 mph, IIRC. No, I don't claim to be smart enough to do that, I just doubt the most extreme stories about him, like that one. OOTH, I do believe what I've read about him favoring AC for public power grids, while Thomas Alva Edison was saying something more like, nobody will ever have a need for anything beyond DC. It's not at all hard for me to believe that the guy with gov backing would have less efficient ideas, and make useful, but comparatively minor advances, given piles of funds and employees.
Anyway, I don't claim to be in Tesla's league. But I'm not sure he was, either. Being so much smarter than those around him leaves wide open the possibility that the small part from that story was not a power source at all, but just a connector or some mundane part in a circuit whose important parts the author never understood at all.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Change that "produce" to read 540 percent of the energy used to "cultivate & harvest" and the same statement is accurate, violating no laws of thermodynamics or conservation of energy. Switchgrass ethanol delivers more of the energy it takes from the sun, through harvesting and fermentation processes, than the most efficient [for fuel] genetically modified corn. Energy from the sun was left out of the "540 percent" figure, which is a comparison only to energy expended in the various stages of manufacturing. Since I'm not putting forth any effort, and neither are you, to keep the Sun going, I think it's fair to leave it out in that calculation.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..