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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."
but can you use it as an excuse to invade?
How much energy does it take to create given a requirement of infinite sustainability? i.e. you have to replenish the soil in which the trees grow with fertilizer, etc.
Why aren't we pursuing hemp-based bio-diesel instead?
Because aerial surveillance can't tell the low-THC strains of C. sativa grown for hemp from the higher-THC strains grown for a psychoactive substance. Perhaps one of the U.S. states that has legalized pot on a state level (with President Obama's announced lack of enforcement priority) can experiment with a hemp industry.
Not to shatter your conspiratorial fantasy, but this research was actually funded by BP. A lot of big oil companies are investing in alternate energy these days as a hedge for when oil is no longer needed. They say, "We're not in the oil business, we're in the energy business."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
... article mentioned that if we took all the biomass from all of the farmland both producing and fallow and were able to convert it all directly to ethanol that it would STILL only account for 14% of the US energy budget.
(Ignoring for the moment whether the claim is accurate ...)
The idea is not to replace the whole energy needs of the country with biomass fuels. Smelting steel or refining aluminum with it, for instance, would be downright silly. Ditto running power plants: (Even if you wanted to use biomass there'd be no reason to waste part of its energy liquifying it - just burn it directly. But there are lots of cheaper alternatives.)
But there's a small-but-substantial fraction of the load for which liquid fuels is ideal: Vehicles. Liquid fuels provide enormous power-to-weight ratios, which is what you want there. Keeping a vehicle light pays dividends in fuel savings, as does providing energy using easy-to-handle liquid with high energy content.
The base process ferments cellulose into butanol, acetone, and ethanol. Even without this new post-processing hack, butanol is a drop-in replacement for gasoline, ethanol works in otto-cycle engines with a little tweaking and acetone with more tweaking. This new post-process turns the mix into something akin to fuel oil, which is a similar drop-in for diesel cycle engines. So it covers both major types of portable engines.
Even if you can't come up with enough fuel to run the whole economy, or even the whole transportation industry, from locally-grown biomass, there's a LOT of low-value byproducts grown in the process of growing crops. Turning it into high-value portable liquid fuel could make a substantial dent in oil requirements while improving the financial picture both for vehicle users and farmers.
Solar and wind aren't well suited for the enormous energy and energy-density needs of land vehicles (though we're getting closer with modern electric vehicles for limited ranges). But they can make a similar dent in the energy needs of stationary loads.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
You seem to have missed the production part (aka photosynthesis) were CO2 is consumed. Plants use CO2 from the air to grow, so even if you burn the plant afterwards, you'll end up with no extra CO2 in the atmosphere. At most you'll end up with the same amount you had before. Fossil fuel (oil, coal, natural gas) is different even because the carbon in it, was stored millions of years ago and has been absent from the atmosphere for this time.
Hydrogen while producing "cleaner" emissions at the combustion location, does not have any net advantage in CO2 over biofuel. There may be some difference in the production process, but I have no idea which fuel source comes up better in that category (once optimized).
It's offtopic, and all that, but... a friendly note to say that if you took some time to format your posts into paragraphs, it's much more likely that someone would read it.
A quick glance shows that you've put some time time and thought into your post, which everyone can appreciate. But at the present time, its composition looks a lot like the emails I get from my mother: one long stream of consciousness with no breaks or separation of thoughts/ideas.
Don't be hating, mods. Just trying to help a fellow out.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.