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Scientists Create New Gasoline Substitute Out of Plants
destinyland writes "California scientists have just created a new biofuel using plants that burns just as well as a petroleum-based fuel. 'The discovery, published in the journal Nature, means corn, sugar cane, grasses and other fast-growing plants or trees, like eucalyptus, could be used to make the propellant, replacing oil,' writes the San Francisco Chronicle, and the researchers predict mass marketing of their product within 5 to 10 years. They created their fuel using a fermentation process that was first discovered in 1914, but which was then discontinued in 1965 when petroleum became the dominant source of fuel. The new fuel actually contains more energy per gallon than is currently contained in ethanol, and its potency can even be adjusted for summer or winter driving."
According to this site total global food production is 4.4 billion tonnes per year, so in a world of 7 billion people that's 629 kg per person per year, or 1.7 kg per day. The average (median) American eats 1.03 kg per day, and the 90th percentile eats 1.73 kg per day, according to the EPA.
About 2.4 billion tonnes is cereals (e.g. corn, rice, wheat).
So yeah, if we're producing enough to feed 7 billion 90th percentile Americans, I think it's safe to say it's a distribution problem not a supply problem.
That sounds like a load of bullshit to me. .... .. which is indicative of an estimate, not a fact
- How was the total US energy 'budget' calculated? Note the word 'budget' not 'usage'
Up to the industrial revolution, our main source of fuel used to be biomass: wood (charcoal). Keep in mind that this was when the population size and total energy use of western civilization were tiny by today's standards. Nevertheless, we managed to run out of wood.
Britain and Ireland were almost completely stripped of trees. Even today, the only trees you'll find older than the industrial revolution are in places that were some noble family's private hunting ground at the time. The eastern mediterranean was stripped of trees as far back as ancient times, and still hasn't recovered. In the low countries, after they ran out of wood, they started burning the soil (peat), turning their land into lakes, which they later had to drain to turn it back into land, which is why they now live below sea level. They did however make a fortune importing timber from the sparsely populated Baltic. Yes, wood had to come from as far as Russia and Finland, because western Europe had run out.
Believe it or not, burning biofuels was an environmental disaster, and switching to coal allowed forests and wildlife to recover.
Now, turning agricultural waste into fuel sounds like a good idea to me (that's what they do in Brazil with the leftovers from the sugar production), but when you're thinking of growing crops with the express purpose of making fuel, you have to consider the fact that modern, high-yield agriculture is effectively our way of using land to turn fossil fuel and sunlight into food. Tilling, sowing, fertilizing, pest control, harvesting, processing and transport together have to use substantially less energy than the fuel you are making will yield.
Clearly, land + fuel + sunlight -> food -> fuel -> energy is an inefficient process. Why not eliminate a couple of conversion steps from the process, and use solar cells to generate electricity? The process land + sunlight -> energy has fewer inefficient conversion steps.