Looking Beyond Corn and Sugarcane For Cost-Effective Biofuels

carmendrahl writes "The abundance of shale gas in the U.S. is expected to lower the cost of petrochemicals for fuel and other applications, making it harder for plant-based, renewable feedstocks to compete in terms of price. In the search for cost-competitive crops, companies are testing plants other than traditional biofuel sources such as corn and sugarcane. In this video, you can see how a company is test-growing a relative of sugarcane, which is expected to yield 5 times the ethanol per acre compared to corn."

Comments

Nature's solar panel

[schneidafunk]

So when do solar panels become effective enough to replace growing a plant to harness the sun's energy?

Re:Nature's solar panel

[RazzleFrog]

It's less the effectiveness than the cost and regional limitations.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

Would corn and sugarcane compete a bit better if we removed their subsidies, price supports, tariffs, etc.?

Re:Nature's solar panel

[alen]

how does your solar panel work on cloudy days, rainy days, snow days and at night?

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

It's not just energy conversion that needs to compete, it's storage and transport.

For a solar panel to compete, you would need some efficient way to turn electricity into liquid hydrocarbons - or you would need tremendously improved battery/capacitor technology. You would also need to replace the existing infrastructure for moving around liquid fuels.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[ShanghaiBill]

how does your solar panel work on cloudy days, rainy days, snow days and at night?

In sunny places, electricity demand is strongly correlated with hot, sunny days when the AC is running. Solar is not good for base load, but that really isn't an issue as it currently generates less than 0.2% of the electric power. This is something to worry about when it gets to about 10%. If that ever happens, we can deal with it by energy storage, long distance transmission, and/or load shifting.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[iotaborg]

Actually it isn't that terrible on cloudy/rainy days. We have a solar panel installed on our house in the pacific northwest of the US, which is 100% cloud/rain in the winter months. Energy generated is 100-300 kWh per month in the winter, 500-700 kWh per month in the sunny summers. Obviously nothing in the nights. Excess production in the summer pays for the shortfall in the winter (paid by utility company), so it works out.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So when do solar panels become effective enough to replace growing a plant to harness the sun's energy?

I suspect that the break-even point varies depending on what you want to do. If you want electricity, photovoltaics get a substantial boost (plants may still turn out to be cheaper, for sufficiently large installations, if you can grow a zillion acres of generic combustables with minimal human intervention and then shovel them into a slightly converted coal plant or something; but the poor efficiency of the conversion from thermal energy to electrical energy will hobble you, and it will cripple you in small-scale installs). If you want a hydrocarbon-fuel substitute, the ability of organisms to synthesize all kinds of neat organic compounds is going to be quite a trick to replicate, even if you have unlimited electricity.

Also depends on location: given suitably robust solar cell packages(ideally with some fancy catalytic autocleaning coating), you could convert surface area on large structures into PV sites with just an occasional visit by the installers-with-climbing-gear. You wouldn't want to try crops under those conditions. A desert area, with plenty of sun but next to no water, would also be decent PV territory but bad planting ground. A large patch of arable land would have the opposite conditions(though it might also have competing food producers; but luckily, while it's illegal to use poor people for biofuel, it's legal to use food for biofuel and let poor people starve.)

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole issue of sugar to ethanol suffers from several false economies including the usefulness in this case of water from the Colorado river which is not exactly surplus, and from the energy to distill and etc. Damage to the soil is a problem as is the whole issue of fertilizers etc. The USA is barking up the wrong tree with ethanol. It is a bad bad idea.
In the issue of a parent post regards competing with solar vs plants. Plants are at best thermally 1.5 to 2 percent efficient of sunlight. Solar cells are currently about 21%. The whole issue revolves around trading energy for which we currently have no effective use for energy that we can use. Biomass doesn't work well in cars so we only see it as a plus in the equation assuming we in our segmented economy fail to look at the total lifecycle costs.
Solar is already competitive and on price with standard generation means by fossil fuels.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[jellomizer]

Fossil Fuels have some key advantages.
1. Portability. You can take it, put it in container and ship it anywhere, or store it when you need it.
2. High Energy. You can get a good bang for 1 kilo of Fuel. Vs. batteries, or other forms of portable energy
3. Low tech maintenance. Fixing a problem in a fossil fuel engine is much easier then fixing a power turbine or a solar sell, we can use alternate parts if needed to.
4. Out of Sight or of Mind. Large Windmills covering the landscape, acres of solar panels, large dams... A lot of big infrastructure projects

It isn't that we couldn't go, however you need to know the tradeoffs and find ways of dealing with them.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[denis-The-menace]

Watchout!
In the US, that kind of talk is blasphemy.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

Food Stamps!

Re:Nature's solar panel

[alen]

so how much of the energy is lost in the transmission and storage? how many toxic chemicals do you need for all these batteries?

Re:Nature's solar panel

[JasterBobaMereel]

Hydrogen Fuel Cells/Modern Batteries

Portability - HFC's are Better than Petrol/Gas, Batteries are not
High Energy - HFC's Better than Petrol/Gas, Batteries are gaining
Low Tech - One moving part in an engine, as opposed to modern fossil fuel engines which are hugely complex
Out of Sight - Depends where they are put, like fossil plants they can be put out of the way but often are not ....

Re:Nature's solar panel

[SuricouRaven]

But with two critical flaws:
- Expensive. Making hydrogen from water costs a fortune, and making it from fossil fuels defeats the objective.
- Difficult to store. Doing so safely (As in 'Can survive traffic accidents without cratering the road') requires exotic and even more expensive alloys.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

HFCs may be compact and easy to transport. Hydrogen fuel, however, is not.

As for low-tech, while an IC engine may have dozens of moving parts they're generally easy to repair with hand tools; a fuel cell with its one part is essentially impossible to repair. ICs also don't need as much in the way of expensive catalysts to work.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[chill]

You're confusing energy with fuel.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[mlts]

One advantage of solar power is that it is distributed, which helps with redundancy on the grid.

Plus, there are multiple ways of using solar power. Grid tie is one way. However, with the fact sometimes it is more expensive to pay a utility company to string a wire to a remote property than it is to set up an off-grid solar panel array, charge controllers, battery bank, and inverters, it isn't too far-fetched for people to just go with a bunch of panels and not bother with the electric grid whatsoever.

Solar is getting cheaper, mainly because China now has the critical mass of technology and willpower to stand behind it. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing each cell having a small MPPT controller so partial shading's impact is minimized, and perhaps even having the charge controllers or inverters built into each panel, so adding more usable watts might just consist of dropping another row of panels, plugging two power cables and a CANBUS cable, and letting the electronics do the rest. China wants this technology because it means that they don't have to deploy as many coal plants, thus less pollution.

Solar is coming to a point where it is less of a matter of "why", but a matter of "why not"?

To boot, solar panels have a long life. In 20-30 years, where most energy plants need to have a complete overhaul, solar panels might need to be washed every so often. An investment now may seem foolish, but given a steady return over the years, it may be wise over the long run. This is something that Germany understands, and is allowing them to wean completely off of both nuclear energy and Russian gas.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[jekewa]

Sadly the AC is right. Sad because of the AC, not the right.

The issue with the US (and any other nation with cars and therefore a fuel problem) is that the solution being sought is to keep the vehicles we have running, or make vehicles of the future run the same way. There's some benefit to this, to be sure, considering the infrastructure, expertise, and experience around vehicles as we know them today. It seems like a shoo-in to find an alternative fuel that would let everyone use the cars just like they have today.

A better solution is to find a better vehicle. As the AC suggests, solar could provide that answer. The vehicles themselves (surfaced with panels) and roadways (surfaced, covered, or lined) and rooftops (nearby or...well, all of them) could be leveraged to provide the electricity to power electric vehicles (and homes and stores and lights and whatnot). Other "clean" and "safe" sources like hydro or wind or (far away) nuclear could be used to supplement as needed. A properly re-invisioned vehicle would be light enough to use electric motors and batteries for long-enough travel to essentially replace the fuel-powered vehicles we use now.

The trouble with that transition is that not enough people want to drive an electric Smart car in a world of Chevy Suburbans and Hummers. We've got a mindset of what "car" means that needs to change first. if SUV was the rare exception, the smaller, compact-to-mid-size electric vehicle could get a foothold. This mindset needs to be transitioned in large groups to be successful; places like Belize and Bermuda and really any tropical island could do this more easily than the US; well, if it weren't for the money to get the vehicles and infrastructure started...

If we're looking to replace petroleum, and no one can come up with Mr Fusion (which I'll concede didn't power the car, just the flux capacitor), other solutions need to be found that are lateral impacts. Line freeways with saw grass, which is a better bio-fuel than corn, and harvest the grass when the freeway borders are trimmed. Otherwise, maybe stop making chips and soda out of corn, and turn all of that into fuel...that might help reduce the weight the vehicle needs to move, too...

Re:Nature's solar panel

[msobkow]

That's kind of the whole point of biofuels as well. They have the portability and the high energy, acting as "batteries" for solar energy collected.

But biodiesel is a far more efficient biofuel than ethanol is. The US and the rest of the world need to spend more investing in biodiesel.

Oh yeah. Americans don't like diesel engines for some reason. Too bad the fascination with gasoline and ethanol override economics and good sense.

Hell, even Henry Ford was a supporter and developer of biodiesel.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries aren't really a viable energy storage option on those scales, and typically it comes down to pumping water up hill or by pumping air into a sealed mine. The efficiencies on transmission are currently over 90%, over 95% in modern area, although the storage would be much worse, but possibly as high as 80%.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Belial6]

I had high hopes that fuel cells would become viable, not for cars, but for homes. If photovoltaic got good enough, and fuel cells got cheap, we wouldn't need the electric company. A refrigerator sized device on the back of my house with panels on the roof would be awesome. Use the panels to run the house and fill the tanks during the day, and then use the hydrogen to last through the night. The is no reason you couldn't charge an electric car off of a system like this either.

Unfortunately, it appears that fuel cells will never be the norm due to the materials needed to make them. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a breakthrough though.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Nadaka]

Transmission losses on copper wire over a few thousand km is between 5% and 10%, AKA relatively insignificant.

You need 0 toxic chemicals for the molten salt heat reservoirs used by large solar thermal installations. Such heat reservoirs can hold enough energy to spin turbines for days.

You need 0 toxic chemicals for electricity to be used to crack water and store hydrogen. Which can then be used to heat the same water that the solar thermal boiler normally would, and run the same turbines. This isn't particularly energy efficient, but its good for long term storage, and you don't have anything better to do with excess energy the grid can't normally absorb on off peak times because there is no fuel cost associated with that excess energy.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Nadaka]

Hydrogen fuel is much lighter than air. An exploding hydrogen storage unit won't crater the road. it will most likely produce a jet of flame that rises rapidly into the sky. Its unlikely to even cause significant burning to the vehicle.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[pr0fessor]

I have a brother that works at a car lot his biggest complaint is the large truck/suv worshiping crowd. Mostly young couples with no kids and an urban lifestyle but still want a F150 to get groceries. Many of them cannot afford the payments on a new truck/suv and won't consider a car they end up buying 10yr old trucks with no warranty and little to no value on a trade in after they have paid them off.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Tokolosh]

Flux capacitor retrofits are already common: http://kalecoauto.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=21

No need to stay in the hydrocarbon age.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

they end up buying 10yr old trucks with no warranty and little to no value on a trade in after they have paid them off.

That is why lots of people can't really afford a good vehicle. I have been the last owner of every vehicle I have ever bought and just kept fixing them until they have the catastrophic failure or were hit as it is the cheapest thing to do. I will admit I own an SUV but I haven't driven it since I got my current daily driver after I blew the tyranny in my previous daily driver. Before that the last time I drove my SUV was about 2 months ago when I helped my sister move into her new house. I do drive it sparingly but then I am always hauling stuff, going hunting or going fishing with it and taking it down questionable roads that require high clearance, 4WD or both. Then again it isn't a nice shiny new SUV but a beat up Jeep Cherokee where the only options added was posi on both axles.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

For a solar panel to compete [...] you would need tremendously improved battery/capacitor technology. You would also need to replace the existing infrastructure for moving around liquid fuels.

Current batteries are more than good enough. A car full of Li-Ion batteries can get better range than a conventional ICE car, and charging is getting very fast now, so charging might be faster than your current stops to eat.

We have a replacement for the oil infrastructure, it's called the electrical grid, and it goes directly to almost everyone's homes, so we'll need far fewer electrical charging stations than we currently have of gas station, and they can just be electrical boxes in existing parking spaces at malls, airports, and other freeway-adjacent rest stops.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You forget the energy released from the rapidly expanding gas like popping a balloon but at 5000psi or what ever those tanks run at. Yes I know that these fears are overstated and I personally don't buy them but it is the general population and regulators that need convincing. Also my understanding of fuel cells is that one of their major drawbacks is poisoning of the cell by impure hydrogen. If this is something that will be refillable or is to be maintained by the average person the cells will need to be able to tolerate higher levels of impurities because there are still people that regularly plug fuel filters or get water in their fuel lines. With existing hydrocarbon fuels this is easily corrected (replace the filter or drain the tank and lines and refill with fresh fuel) but I am not sure it will be a cheap or easy repair for a poisoned fuel cell.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

As for low-tech, while an IC engine may have dozens of moving parts they're generally easy to repair with hand tools; a fuel cell with its one part is essentially impossible to repair.

A fuel cell also practically never NEEDS to be repaired, because it isn't under the stresses of an ICE. You might as well complain that you can't repair your car battery...

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

I had high hopes that fuel cells would become viable, not for cars, but for homes. If photovoltaic got good enough, and fuel cells got cheap, we wouldn't need the electric company.

Why do you want fuel cells, when batteries are more efficient at the purpose you described? For stationary use, the weight of cheap batteries shouldn't be an issue, and neither is the slow charging time with 24-hour cycle times.

Non-hydrogen fuel cells are interesting as a replacement for traditional conversion of fossil fuels to electricity, with better efficiency than Carnot. But natural gas / gasoline / etc. fuel cells haven't been forthcoming. Methanol fuel cells are becoming popular with forklifts, but ones that can directly use fossil fuels without conversion will offer a huge leap in efficiency, and significantly lower consumption of those fuels.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Dare nMc]

> Transmission losses on copper wire over a few thousand km is between 5% and 10%, AKA relatively insignificant.

And the loss from transporting liquids is 0. but that is the insignificant part for both. 20% of the cost of my electricity is generation, IE 80% of the cost is getting it to my house. And we still haven't gotten it into and out of a battery for transportation. With Natural gas, to my house, it is more like 20% of the cost is transportation. For fuel picked up on the road (where I need it) the transportation cost from the refinery is more like 10% of the cost.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah. Americans don't like diesel engines for some reason.

Because once upon a time, junior, diesel engines were noisy, dirty, stank like Satan's asshole, and were a pain in the ass to start in cold weather. Engineering has helped solve most of those problems, but a couple generations of Americans grew up equating diesel with smelly, dirty, noisy engines that were a pain in the ass to start in the cold northern climates - so they didn't sell.

Diesel could make inroads now because engineering has fixed most of the problems that turned people off from diesel years back, but now it's losing out to the gas-electric hybrids because everybody's convinced that any car without a battery is impossibly backwards and hostile to the environment - and that MUST be true, HuffPo, DKos, and NPR have told us so!

Re:Nature's solar panel

[pr0fessor]

I have no problem driving a 15k-20k economy car with a warranty. Then again I don't hunt, fish, or have a boat so not really a problem. I think a big truck or suv would actually be a pain considering. {I can squeeze my little car into parking places an F150 just won't go}

Not that I wouldn't mind having a small truck and a boat for it to hall...

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Belial6]

The promise of fuel cells was that they would be much longer lasting than batteries as well as cleaner.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[mattack2]

One advantage of solar power is that it is distributed, which helps with redundancy on the grid.

Though isn't it true that a large proportion of solar installs (I want to say 'most' but I have no stats) are grid tied? So when the grid goes down, so does your power?

That's certainly the way I'll do it, so that I don't have the even greater cost of batteries.

I think you can have a solar system that is grid tied that can temporarily be pulled off-grid, but then you either ALSO need backup batteries or only get power when the sun is shining... and it obviously greatly adds to the expense (not even including the batteries).

Re:Nature's solar panel

[SuricouRaven]

There are only two ways to store hydrogen: Pressurised, and using the exotic foamy method. I don't know how the exotic foamy method works, but I understand it involves very expensive alloys of very rare metals. And pressurised will explode, twice. First when the high-pressure tank ruptures, and again if the resulting cloud of hydrogen ignites in the confined space of the vehicle.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[SuricouRaven]

Worse than that. It's not just impure hydrogen that kills them - it's impure oxygen too. Nitrogen in the air is harmless, but carbon monoxide will trash a PEM cell. And if you are driving on a road next to old petrol-burners, there is going to be plenty of that around.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[intangible]

For homes, I think in-ground mag-lev flywheels would be a lot better solution than trying to generate and store hydrogen reliably.
Something like this: http://www.power-thru.com/

Re:Nature's solar panel

[camperdave]

blew the tyranny .

Ah! The ruthless dictator that is the beater.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[mattack2]

Well, solid oxide fuel cells don't have the "materials needed to build them" problem, but you're still using natural gas as the fuel.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[msobkow]

Thank you.

At 49 it's been a long time since anyone called me "junior." *LOL*

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Dare nMc]

thats why cost efficient is more important than just efficiency. going to cost you $.20 for electric even if generation was free, if it has to be transported over the power grid. Were getting close to needing to focus on transportation more than generation, this is why bio fuels are so interesting, since the cost of transportation is so much less. It is also why solar panels are so interesting, they can be placed at the end of the grid.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[danceswithtrees]

Reminds me of a recent piece in the NYTimes about wells in the midwest being used for center pivot irrigation-- you know the circles of green you see from airplanes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/high-plains-aquifer-dwindles-hurting-farmers.html?pagewanted=1

And when the groundwater runs out, it is gone for good. Refilling the aquifer would require hundreds, if not thousands, of years of rains.

There is only so long earth can sustain an exponentially growing human population.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Anonymous Coward]

And the loss from transporting liquids is 0

No, it isn't. Fuel tankers burn fuel to transport it from A to B. Your car uses more fuel to drive to the petrol station. The petrol station uses electricity to run the lights in the building, and the cash register. Fuel evaporates away into the atmosphere every time you pump it between containers. Fuel tanks in the ground at the various stations between the oil well and your car's engine leak.
 
It's impossible to say what the actual transmission losses are in the existing petrochemical distribution network - they are to many and varied. But it's certainly not 0.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

Current batteries are more than good enough.

Then I did not make myself clear. I'm not talking about batteries' suitability for most commuters. Currently, transportation depends on vast amounts of stored fuel. A ship crossing the ocean cannot rely on batteries. Tractor trailers doing an overnight haul cannot rely on batteries. And batteries are certainly not capable of storing enough energy to supply the electrical grid overnight when the sun isn't shining.

There are some other solar technologies (not solar panels) that might work to store energy for the electrical grid. Solar furnaces that melt salts for later steam generation is one such tech, though I'm not sure how it competes on price with bio-fuels. I know that trash-to-energy and biomass electric plants currently are feasible and operating, but solar/molten salt plants are more rare - the last time I read up on it there were three small ones planned and none in operation.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

A ship crossing the ocean cannot rely on batteries.

They could, actually... Batteries and solar panels. Weight is a non-issue for large ships, and they have a lot of space available. They probably won't in the near future, but the technology is getting there in a big hurry.

Tractor trailers doing an overnight haul cannot rely on batteries.

No they can't, but long-distance transport is more efficient via freight trains, and they can be powered by overhead electric lines quite well. Short-haul trucks that are battery powered already exist. As do forklifts, and lots of other heavy machinery. And even if tractor trailers are the hold-out, converting everything else to solar/battery power will dramatically drop the price of fossil fuels.

And batteries are certainly not capable of storing enough energy to supply the electrical grid overnight when the sun isn't shining.

No, but you wouldn't use them for that. For grid-level purposes, you'd use pumped hydro storage. It's already installed in mind-boggling capacities. Besides, "overnight" in the US is off-peak time, where far less power capacity is needed. If we have enough solar installed to support daytime loads, we'd just basically shut off hydro during the day, and go full hydro at night (along with whatever wind capacity is available), and not sweat energy storage.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That is why I have a nice daily driver. I like small cars and I really like how they handle but I really don't like driving my Jeep because it handles like a truck. I also like being able to park in a compact cars only spot and have plenty of space. I do use the Jeep it for truck things which is why I got it and I put less than 5000 miles on it a year so it is really cheap to own. I really couldn't just go rent a vehicle to do some things as taking it "off road" void your contract and you have to pay for all the damage and I always come back from hunting with new scratches in the paint, new dents, or some broken piece of trim. I don't have a boat but I go to really remote areas where an official road means there aren't trees with trunks larger than 3" in diameter growing in the dirt trail, or the river you have to ford is only a little more than a foot deep at the crossing in the dry part of the year. The other problem is I drive a lot and when you get well past a quarter million miles it doesn't matter what the original warranty was it is long expired when the vehicle has the catastrophic failure.

My issue was with people being concerned with resale or trade in value, the only resale value I get is what the junkyard will give me for it when they show up with a tow truck to haul it off. If we take my previous 16 year old car that had 275,000 miles on it when the transmission failed it was a good low cost vehicle. Up until that point the only non standard work I had done on it was replacing a coil pack as the rest was just regular maintenance and repairs (hoses, belts, plugs, filters, fluids, some suspension parts, brakes, etc). I paid $10k for it owned it 6 years, put 175,000 miles on it, and beat that vehicle pretty hard, I did truck things with a sports sedan and got in trouble a number of times (this is why I also have a 4WD vehicle now) as well as drag racing it. When the automatic transmission went (weak spot in vehicles with automatics) the car was only worth $2000 if it had a working tranny but the repair would have been at least $6000 so it wasn't worth it but the junk yard hauled the vehicle off and gave me $350 for it.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I haven't studied fuel cells all that much to know the details but thanks for the info. I knew there were issue with poisoning from impurities on the fuel side but wasn't aware of poisoning from the oxidizer side as well. I usually just ignore them as they seem like a way to get people to dump a lot of money into your pet project because it involves clean hydrogen. They seem like they are at best a stopgap between hydrocarbon based transportation and electric based transportation but full electrics are progressing much faster. People seem to always forget that while hydrogen is clean when oxidized creating it is a bitch (lots of energy needed for either electrolysis or creating from natural gas) and storing it in a compact form is also a bitch (high pressure container that doesn't suffer from embrittlement).

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Medievalist]

how does your solar panel work on cloudy days, rainy days, snow days and at night?

Works absolutely great, from the batteries it filled during sunlit hours.

How does your coal plant work when the coal's run out, the delivery truck has failed to supply coal, the coal miners are on strike, or the gennies thrown a main bearing?

C'mon, just give it up, energy storage is a solved problem. You're beating a dead troll.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[HornWumpus]

You pay $6K for a transmission and installation? Seriously?

Installing a used tranny is not that hard. 1 person, 1 day, in and out, in the driveway. For ether a transverse front drive or a front engine rear drive.

Granting I'd junk one with a slush box, but I would have never bought it in the first place.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Medievalist]

You'll use up a whole lot more water fracking to keep the price of gas low than you would using the water renewably to grow plants.

But you're right, ethanol is a bad idea. We should be doing biogas and biodiesel instead; it's incredibly trivial to make natural gas and companies are already making diesel and fake-gasoline from plants that you can use in your conventional vehicle today.

Ethanol is a greasy handout to certain already-wealthy constituencies.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

Weight is a non-issue for large ships, and they have a lot of space available.

Cost is the issue.

long-distance transport is more efficient via freight trains

Those are not solar powered, unless...

and they can be powered by overhead electric lines quite well.

Again the issue is one of cost.

For grid-level purposes, you'd use pumped hydro storage.

You might, if you had ready access to water and a nice elevation change. The problem is, that also makes your location ideal for building a dam and using hydro power - which is of course where most hydro storage takes place. You could transmit the power from the solar plant during the day to the hydro plant, but then you deal with enormous line losses on top of the 15-30% losses from pumping all of that water. I don't think this compares favorably with bio-fuel electrical generation costs, which do not have any capital or operating expense associated with electrical storage.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[SuricouRaven]

I can find a lot of information about CO contamination in the hydrogen causing trouble (A serious issue as hydrogen is made from hydrocarbons, and it's very hard to get them completly CO-free) - apparently the maximum allowable on the fuel side is 1ppm. Finding information on the oxygen side is harder, as it hasn't been as serious a concern - air generally contains little carbon monoxide, unless you happen to be in the middle of a busy road. Still, a couple of papers seem to confirm (I'm far out of my league here) that it can happen in PEM cells.

The problem would be solved on the fuel side by electrolysis as a production process, but the energy needs are so high it wouldn't currently be cost effective - and even if it were, you'd need to build the generation facility right next to power station.

That could work very well with renewables though, as production could be switched from off to full in seconds. Wind picks up, make hydrogen. Wind goes down, shut down the hydrogen plant to direct power to housing instead.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[drinkypoo]

Fuel cells wear out, and they're made of expensive metals in high-energy processes and recycling them is also a high-energy process.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

then you deal with enormous line losses on top of the 15-30% losses from pumping all of that water

Enormous line losses?!? Last I checked, grid losses average 7%. Your solar site and pumped-hydro site presumably aren't overloading their lines.

And 15% loss for power storage is a great, minuscule loss.

I don't think this compares favorably with bio-fuel electrical generation costs

WTH are you talking about? Even after you count all the energy lost to fertilizing, planting, managing, and harvesting that land, then you suffer MASSIVE losses converting it into a biofuel, and then you've got huge energy costs to ship it, and finally you're presumably going to burn it in a power plant, which means you might get 55% conversion efficiency out of it. That's on top of the plants being an order of magnitude less efficient at converting solar power into energy in the first place.

There's no comparison, and I don't see how you can twist the logic around to even claim biofuel isn't vastly worse.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

Enormous line losses?!? Last I checked, grid losses average 7%.

All of these percentages add up! 7% line loss plus 15% storage loss means that solar panels need to be 22% more efficient than they would otherwise to compete with bio-fuels. It also means higher capital costs, since bio-fuels would not need storage at all. Having a giant storage reservoir also increases the ecological footprint of solar, reducing one of the main benefits. Anyway, you are cherry picking the low-end of the ranges. A long-distance line from a sunny, dry area that is great for solar to a wet, hilly area that is great for hydro would mostly be pretty long distance and would have higher-than-average line losses. Alternately, finding a reservoir closer to the solar location would mean more evaporation from the reservoir, putting you closer to the 30% efficiency loss in storage. And of course you could put solar in the wet, hilly area, but that is likely to have less favorable sun and so solar generation would suffer.

There's no comparison, and I don't see how you can twist the logic around to even claim biofuel isn't vastly worse.

My logic is thus:
Biofuel is cheaper to store.
Biofuel requires almost zero infrastructure change.
For electrical generation, you have similar capital costs per kilowatt hour.
For electrical generation, you need additional capital costs for solar in order to provide power at night.

Both technologies are improving, and I'm not pooh-poohing the future of solar power - I'm just making the point that the equation isn't as simple as efficiency of the solar panels themselves... storage and transportation are just as important.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[volmtech]

Farmers do not "owe" anyone something to eat just because their product is eatable. They produce a product to sell for a profit. Food production has become politicized because a country needs food security. Most farmers depend on market forces and if things go wrong you can go bankrupt (ask me how I know). The ability to bank money away to get you through lean times is necessary. Government run farms where food is produced with thought to profit have been tried. How did that turn out?

Re:Nature's solar panel

[HornWumpus]

Self-righteous AC. Doesn't even know the history of the Oldsmobile diesel V8. That POS sent diesels back 10 years in America.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Farmers do not "owe" anyone something to eat just because their product is eatable. They produce a product to sell for a profit.

Certainly, I agree. However, farmers are also not owed subsidies/fuel-blend mandates that make otherwise economically nonsensical biofuel production profitable, or any of the various other market distortions we load the farm bill with every time it comes around to keep corn fed senators happy.

If we were talking about a (at this point largely hypothetical, at least in an American context) biofuel crop that was actually profitable(on its own, not because taxpayers have the pleasure of helping pretend that it is), I would have no objections. As it is, though, growing biofuels is, in large part, a procedure for harvesting subsidies, not an actual good idea. Not as dramatic as a good Stalinist collectivization; but actually pretty close to being farms that are run without thought to profit according to what the state will pay extra for.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Blaskowicz]

One advantage of solar power is that it is distributed, which helps with redundancy on the grid.

Sorry, being a power source with variable or intermittent output, with much of variability (weather events) depending on the geographical location, I would say it does bad things to your power grid not good things. Though it's probably a lot better than wind.
You need to add grid upgrades, storage, backup gazeous gas plants, smart grids etc. so the "distributed" or "decentralized" benefits are nil, unless you're particularly concerned with down time / failure of major power plants.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

All of these percentages add up!

Only when you're completely and totally disregarding the manifold losses incurred with your ridiculous biofuel scheme in the same breath. The only possible place biofuels ever made sense was in vehicles, since batteries were expensive, heavy and not sufficiently capable, but even there, it never really worked out because the inefficiency was so horrendous, and the costs were always higher, and more polluting.

Now that batteries are capable enough and starting to take over, biofuels have been nearly forgotten by everyone with two neurons to rub together, and for good reason.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[RazorSharp]

Diesels aren't that uncommon. VW and Mercedes both sell a decent amount of them in the States. It's popular for big trucks that need a lot of torque to haul stuff. Semi-trucks almost all run on diesel.

Until recently, there have been drawbacks to using diesel to fuel normal sedans. They were loud, dirty, and slow. VW and Mercedes have both invested a lot of R&D into eliminating these problems and have been working on them for decades. Like Mazda with the rotary engine, they made the necessary investments in the past that allow them to put incredible diesels on the road today. I find it hard to believe another company could catch up to VW when it comes to diesels without investing more than such a venture would be worth. Even though Ford, GM, and Dodge have all produced diesels throughout the years, their focus was maximizing torque for big loud trucks. Their diesel engines epitomize everything VW has sought to eliminate: loud, dirty, with a focus on maximizing power rather than maximizing efficiency.

Also, let's not fool ourselves into believing biofuels are an ideal replacement for gasoline. As far as the environment goes, it's like switching from cigarettes to light cigarettes. An added drawback is that biofuels are renewable, which means that if there would be less incentive to replace it with something better in the future, even if the technology was there. Our solution to gasoline shouldn't be 'gasoline-light.'

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

Now that batteries are capable enough and starting to take over, biofuels have been nearly forgotten by everyone with two neurons to rub together, and for good reason.

I think that's more an effect of fossil fuels becoming so inexpensive again. I certainly don't see an explosion of solar any more than I see an explosion of biofuels. Biomass alone makes up only 1.4% of US electricity. That seems small until you compare it to solar, which accounts for 10x less than that, and that number includes non-photovoltaic. For cars, neither biofuels nor electricity make any economic sense right now, but E85 is only about $1 more than gas on a per-energy basis currently. Since the capital costs of E85 are far lower than electric cars, it would still be cheaper to buy a Versa and run it on E85 than a Leaf running on electricity for the vast majority of drivers. I realize E85 is not necessarily pure biofuel, but I'm using it for illustrative purposes since the cost is easy to find. Biodiesel is not easy to find, which is probably not a good sign for it's cost-effectiveness!

The instant electric makes sense, I'll have a charging station in the garage :)

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

I think that's more an effect of fossil fuels becoming so inexpensive again.

No, the EU dropped biodiesel flat because it was accelerating the deforestation of the rain forest for biofuel farmland.

And oil certainly isn't inexpensive. Natural gas has gotten cheaper, but nearly all biofuels were never intended as a replacement for that... always just oil.

I certainly don't see an explosion of solar any more than I see an explosion of biofuels.

Observational bias. The BLM had to put a moratorium on the horde of solar installation requests in California, because they couldn't handle the environmental reviews of all them quickly enough.

The projection is that renewables will make up at least 1/3rd of all electrical power generation in CA by 2020, and the majority of that will be from solar.

For cars, neither biofuels nor electricity make any economic sense right now

Plug-in hybrids seem to make profound economic sense right now. Further up the scale, the Chevy Volt is a practical option in the luxury category.

Most of the all-electric vehicles are more economical over their lifetime than conventional vehicles (which is the definition of making economic sense), if you can live within their limitations.

But as I said in the first place... The technology is just about there, and prices are falling quickly. We just need to wait a little bit longer. Just plot the line from the EV1 to the Leaf, and project the date that electric vehicles will be as cheap upfront as conventional cars. Biofuels, OTOH, won't ever have those kinds of economies of scale driving down prices.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

And oil certainly isn't inexpensive.

Well, it's cheaper to use in a car than electricity is.

The projection is that renewables will make up at least 1/3rd of all electrical power generation in CA by 2020, and the majority of that will be from solar.

That would be great, but again that is the future. Solar will need to progress, and biofuels would need to NOT progress for solar to overtake them.

Plug-in hybrids seem to make profound economic sense right now.

Absolutely not. Run the numbers, any way you would like to. I've done the math. If hybrid pay back period were measured in less than 100,000+ miles or a dozen years, there'd be one sitting in my driveway. The Volt is NOT a luxury car, even though it is in BMW price range. Not only is it not even remotely up to BMW specs aesthetically (fit and finish, engine and road noise, etc), the thing drives like a tank in comparison. Tesla is a much better example of a luxury competitor, and it's price is not even that crazy for what it is. But then, the expensive battery makes up a much smaller percentage of cost in a $70,000 automobile than it does in what should be a $25,000 automobile. Tesla also makes almost no profit, so it is not really "competing" with Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus - but give 'em time... at the very least they will change the game.

The technology is just about there, and prices are falling quickly. We just need to wait a little bit longer.

I agree. It's not there yet, but the future is bright. Just remember that solar is chasing a moving target.

Just plot the line from the EV1 to the Leaf

Aren't they almost the same price with almost the same range? There's no question that the Leaf is a bigger and better car and that there are 15 years of inflation between them, but battery technology is startlingly slow to improve. I had the pleasure of trying an EV1, and it was a punchy little thing that would hold it's own today, even if it had the misfortune to appear on the market when gas was less than a dollar per gallon. Drawing your line would have electric cars improving at about the same rate as inflation. Slow and steady wins the race.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[ElizabethGreene]

"So when do solar panels become effective enough to replace growing a plant to harness the sun's energy?"

When they grow on trees.

Plant based ethanol serves two purposes, energy collection and storage. The current cost per kilowatt of solar energy and storage technology isn't in the same order of magnitude vs. ethanol.

Back to the OP, there was a book from the 70's called "Alcohol, it's a gas." A crapton* of this research has already been done. Yeah industry for taking a look at it!

* Not an SI unit.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Reziac]

There are two problems with using the desert:

1) Solar installations result in scorched-earth conditions. What was formerly habitat for a variety of plants and animals (contrary to popular fiction, deserts are far from lifeless) is now unlivable, and creates secondary dust storms wind.

2) Desert conditions tend to be far from the market destination, and transmission lines are both expensive to build and somewhat wasteful of the product.

There's a better solution right at our fingertips: Use those millions of acres of flat roofs already built in sunny cities, atop every mall and apartment building. From there it can tie right into the local grid, and it need not damage any other ecosystem. Plus it puts the construction jobs where they're already most needed (and most easily filled).

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Reziac]

I believe the one in Lancaster Calilifornia uses hot oil rather than molten salt, but the principle is the same. Supposedly it's operational, tho I'm not sure anything useful is coming out of it. They spend a great deal of effort doing wind maintenance on the fence.

The collector tower is a hazard to your vision on sunny days.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[evilviper]

That would be great, but again that is the future. Solar will need to progress, and biofuels would need to NOT progress for solar to overtake them.

That's incredibly idiotic... You're proving you haven't the slightest conception of the subject you're acting like an expert on.

NOTHING happens in less than a decade. These solar plants are being built RIGHT NOW. Even if fusion was perfected TOMORROW, these solar plants would all still be built.

And I must also point out your claim of biofuel overtaking solar is similarly brain-damaged to an incredible degree. It's a bit like speculating about a snail overtaking a sports car. You clearly know absolutely nothing on the subject, and your obsession with biofuel is some kind of magical fantasy land you conjured up, and have no conception of the costs or limitations.

If hybrid pay back period were measured in less than 100,000+ miles or a dozen years

It is. You're just foolishly spouting more baseless nonsense.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/05/cheaper-hybrid-payback-time-goverment-website-/1

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Reziac]

What's your setup? I'm two states east and it'd be useful info. :)

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Reziac]

Grid extension in MT is from $25k to $75k per mile, according to the local electric companies. Dunno what it'd be elsewhere but that's probably a good ballpark.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Bob the Super Hamste]

No I didn't pay $6k for a transmission and install, that is what is would have cost and given the vehicle it wasn't out of line from my guess. This was for a daily driver so I couldn't just do it my self at my convenience given how large of a job it is and my lack of free time (it probably would have taken the better part of a month since I would have to order a rebuilt transmission and wait for it to get shipped). I have replaced engines and transmission in vehicles in a single day and it isn't that hard but that was before I had kids and other responsibilities. Also finding a tranny of known rebuild quality is an issue for those ZF transmission and one would about $3500 for that car since a junkyard ones is almost unheard of at this point (a fairly rare vehicle). Add in the rather soft exhaust that needed to be dropped to get the old tranny out and the new one in, that would have probably needed to be replaced and now parts and labor for the job start rapidly approaching that $6000 mark. Even a cheap rebuilt tranny for that car was $2000 for just the transmission.

I never want a vehicle with a automatic but when I got that car all I could find that met my requirements (4 doors and rear wheel drive and basically mechanically perfect) in my price range were vehicles with automatics and I didn't have a vehicle I could drive until I found an ideal car. This last time around that wasn't the case but still trying to find a 4 door, RWD car, with a manual, that is mechanically perfect is difficult but I had time since I had another vehicle to drive while I looked for a few weeks.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[Crosshair84]

Diesels don't sell in the US because EPA emissions regulations discriminate against them heavily. Too expensive to bring them to market vs gasoline engines, thus only a few diesel vehicles on the market.

Re:Nature's solar panel

[MightyYar]

And I must also point out your claim of biofuel overtaking solar is similarly brain-damaged to an incredible degree.

I made no such claim. Biofuels are already ahead of solar, so it would be weird for me to say that they will "overtake" solar. I agree that solar (even solar panels) will eventually overtake biofuels for electricity generation, but it will be a long time before electricity wins on transportation.

your obsession with biofuel

I have no such obsession. I look up numbers on Google. I don't use biofuel in my car - it is too expensive. My heat is natural gas. I might or might not use biofuel electricity, I have no idea. I do know there is a trash-to-steam plant nearby, so perhaps I do use some. You seem to think that I am advocating biofuels, which I am not.

You moved the bar from plug-in hybrids, which could conceivably be powered by solar, to regular gasoline powered hybrids. I don't think you meant to shift the conversation there. Notice that the luxury cars are the ones with 0-year payback periods, since the battery pack is a small percentage of the price tag of a luxury car - same reason that a Tesla can look so attractive compared to a Mercedes, BMW, or Lexus. Sadly, I'm not in the market for a luxury car. That site lists the payback period for a Malibu for my 8000 miles per year at 16.7 years. A Fusion at 6.9 years. An Insight at 9.3 years. A Civic at 8.4 years. A Sonata at 7.5 years. I have a Camry, which they list at 10.9 years.

Ethanol-fueled

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethanol-fueled, motherfuckers!

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:Ethanol-fueled

[noh8rz10]

Somebody modded this down, but it made me chuckle.

But what about corn prices?

[jandrese]

If we switch to grasses for our biofuel how are we going to artificially prop up the price of corn? ADM has not lobbied congress for years to suddenly have us switch to some other crop.

Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[Kohath]

But corn ethanol is already the perfect way to enrich campaign donors in Iowa and the other farm states. Why should the guys getting rich off corn ethanol agree to share the government loot with other biofuel producers?

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the guys getting rich off corn ethanol agree to share the government loot with other biofuel producers?

More importantly, WTF is this corn subsidy doing for anybody?

The US bitches to their trade partners about subsidies, and then selectively applies their own and ignores that fact.

You have an entire industry being propped up to produce a relatively low-value crop. Stop subsidizing them at all.

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[Kohath]

More importantly, WTF is this corn subsidy doing for anybody?

Green jobs man. If politicians can't transfer money from the people who earned it to their cronies and financial backers, the terrorists win.

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[ShanghaiBill]

But corn ethanol is already the perfect way to enrich campaign donors in Iowa and the other farm states.

Before we can reform farming, we need to move the first presidential caucuses out of Iowa.

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

This WWII emergency wartime subsidy that's still going on isn't about enriching the 4,700 farmers who grow 90% of the food!

It's about helping poor people not starve by subsidizing them so they can afford the inflated prices caused by direct price supports.

Why do you want poor people to starve? Let's hold the vote! (It passes.)

(Quietly Congress slinks away and accepts donations from those farmers.)

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[mbkennel]

| More importantly, WTF is this corn subsidy doing for anybody?

AC, Archer-Daniels-Midland.

ADM, Anonymous Coward.

Re:Other people want to wet their beaks now?

[cayenne8]

Before we can reform farming, we need to move the first presidential caucuses out of Iowa.

That's something I don't understand either.

In this day in age, to make things fair between the states, shouldn't we have either a random drawing or round robin type situation to have the initial polls and caucuses rotate between the different states as to the order they go?

Seems it would keep the pols on their toes more, and we wouldn't have the same group of folks each go around, set the tone of the campaign. Is Iowa representative of the nation at large? I'd say not.

So, to make it fair, each election cycle, they should move the order of the states around that starts off the election season process.

Re:Sugar Beet

[alen]

tell that to the red staters who can only grow corn in the USA passing legislation to only support corn

Re:Sugar Beet

[Hatta]

Beet beet, sugar beet
Beet, sugar beet
Sugar beet beeeet!

Video link in summary

[noh8rz10]

I hate video. Too real-time. Like TV news, I can read the majority of nyt.com in the space of the evening news. I assume the video is about switchgrass, can anybody confirm?

Re:Video link in summary

[noh8rz10]

It's not that my attention span is short, it's that I can absorb info like a fire hose, while real time video is a trickle. I can type faster than conversation speed as well. Given the mods on my original comment, I think many people agree with me!

Re:Video link in summary

[mattack2]

Wow, you must read REALLY quickly. A newspaper article is usually MUCH longer/more detailed than what is contained in a TV news segment. (I say that, even though I 'consume' the nightly news every day. It's a good way to get a summary of the day's stories. Though I usually listen to the audio podcast at 2x or sometimes watch the video podcast at 2x.... and record the show as a backup since they frequently cut out any vaguely pop culture related segments from the podcast.)

Re:Video link in summary

[noh8rz10]

tbh i skim a lot, headlines and first couple paragraphs. all the important stuff is front weighted, and I can dive in if I want to learn more. I think this is what most people do.

Re:Video link in summary

[Zalbik]

I can type faster than conversation speed as well.

Really?!? People can easily understand conversation up to 150 - 160 words per minute.

For comparison, the world champion of typing speeds obtained an average rate of 150 wpm in 2005.

So if you are outputting information, speech tends to win hands down.

However if you are receiving information, people can read at 250-300 wpm....

Which is why I also hate video posts. That and:
1) Basically impossible to skim
2) Harder to "re-read" items that may require a second viewing
3) Harder to reference / quote specific points in the video
4) Accents and/or poor audio setups can make video difficult to understand
5) Bandwidth limitations (e.g. mobile devices)
6) Ugly people

Re:Video link in summary

[mattack2]

I guess I do that sometimes, but in general, I'm the opposite. Even though I watch TV news as I said, on the weekends/holidays, I read the paper (yes, paper) for 2-3 hours each day.

Re:Video link in summary

[pepty]

I try to avoid "informative" videos as well. In general it takes less time to read the relevant info than it takes to watch the ad at the beginning of the video. It also usually takes less time to find a more in depth and useful version someplace else on the web than it would take to watch the logos, credits, and all the introductory fluff at the beginning of said video.

Re:Video link in summary

[Oligonicella]

"I can type faster than conversation speed as well."

Bullshit. Conversational speed is easily in excess of two hundred words a minute. You do not type two hundred words a minute.

Small economics

[EmperorOfCanada]

People blah blah about the economics of this vs that and then write off the more expensive techology. But what interests me are the actual costs. Often the economics can be very interesting on a local scale. For instance, if you were a small organic farmer could you plant some of this stuff in the scrubby back 20 and then with a little bio-fuel setup in the barn make your own fuel? Often people like farmers have cash flow problems and taking fuel out of the equation could be a big help. This might be a case where the farmer would work at this in the winter producing a summer's worth of fuel and it is grown on worthless land. For the farmer it takes his winter time and makes it valuable and takes worthless land and makes it valuable. It is doubtful that the farmer cares that crude oil is cheaper in that he doesn't have that under the back 40.

Then you go third world where access to cash is an even bigger problem so again removing fuel from the expenses would be a huge help.

A good variation of this would be that many Texas farmers have abandoned oil wells on their land. The farmer stakes a claim to the wells and then using wind or solar pumps a few barrels a day. These wells are dead as far as the big companies are concerned but for the farmers can add up to a pretty good living. So according to macro economics as viewed by the oil company accountants these wells are worthless; when the farmers show that they clearly aren't.

So I often read about technology X not being better than oil when you add up all the costs but often those costs don't apply.

Re:Small economics

[Anonymous Coward]

With an oil pump (*if* the farmer can cheaply get the mineral rights for it, which is a big if), this whole scenario makes sense. That's because, generally speaking, oil is always worth it. Oil is such a dense and easily-accessible energy source (accounting for untold thousands or millions of years of solar input) that if you can get it flowing odds are you're net positive. An old well that's not flowing *much* may not be worth it to a large oil company, but could be substantial for a small farmer. I get that.

However, the biofuel stuff hasn't worked out at *any scale, ever*. It's not just that you can do something else more economically-viable with the land (if subsidies weren't present to prop it up...), it's that it quite literally costs more in real energy terms to grow and process the biofuel plant than the fuel you get out of the process. When you add up the real energy costs of the fertilizer, the manufacture and transport of the fertilizer, the fuels to run the machines to till the earth, plant the crops, harvest the crops, running the machines and chemical processes by which the biofuel is extracted, etc... you come out net-negative.

To put that in a simpler form: suppose you're even given all the necessary machinery (for farming and fuel refining) for free (which is bullshit, because we should include an energy cost for some fraction of the manufacturing effort, but anyways). And you start with a giant 10,000 gallon silo full of fuel with which to run your equipment and create feritilizer and all that jazz, and whatever fuel you create from the crops goes back into the tank after processing is done. If you run this operation in isolation for years (which assumes no equipment breakdown/replacement, again overly-idealistic), your silo of fuel just keeps getting smaller and smaller until you run out of energy and give up.

Biofuels are simply not worth it. Not with the crops and methods we have today, anyways. Until then, confine the experiments to the lab instead of fucking around with our economy and our fuel blends at the pumps!

Re:Small economics

[jones_supa]

The enzyme profile of human is not very good digesting corn.

Re:Small economics

[gl4ss]

..which is why you need to prepare it with mentioned methods for eating.

there's this documentary about these two guys who start a corn field for a year, it's pretty much just about the whole subsidy and how unhealthy the syrup is.

well, one of the scenes is the guys taking corn straight from the field and saying blechh and using that to portray how the modern corn isn't even good for eating.. well doh, don't need to even live near where corn grows to know that it ain't good for eating straight from the plant.

Re:Small economics

[gtbritishskull]

Ethanol from sugarcane has an 8:1 energy balance (8 units of energy out for every 1 unit of energy put in). Ethanol from corn was below or less than 1:1, but I think it now has a (barely) positive energy balance due to advances in technology and economies of scale. I think I read that biodiesel was between 2 and 3, but I am sure that depends on what plant you are getting the oil from.

Re:Small economics

[Wrath0fb0b]

The reason for this disconnect is that macroeconomics also factors in a strong premium for reliability and availability (and de-risking). A trucking company needs to guarantee its customers that it can consistently deliver the goods within a fixed window and hence requires its fuel supply to be likewise guaranteed. The same applies in IT -- business critical service require that the storage backend works 100% to deliver their promises, so even though a home-built storage server can do the same job as $10k (+$500/TB) professional storage solution, but there are many more unknown risks, support risk and a huge premium paid to deliver a reliable solution.

If a farmer wants to grow a bit of extra bio-fuel or pump a dying well, he is cushioned by the fact that if it doesn't work, he can still go to town and get what he needs. But the macro view here is that this is much less valuable than a reliable mass-scale system that can make stronger (but not perfect) availability guarantees.

Also, as a side-note, I'd wonder what the effective wage that a farmer that runs his own wells is paying himself for his own labor in setting it up and tending to it. This might end up being like owning a restaurant where it's only nominally profitable because the owners put in a huge amount of their own time and pay themselves only minimum wage. If they had to hire someone with the appropriate expertise to manage the restaurant, they would not be able to pay the prevailing wage and still make a profit. At some level, I suppose, there is a marginal non-fungibility of labor on your own farm/restaurant as there is on the open market, much in the way that engineers invest thousands of dollars in their own time on pet projects when a market solution would be nominally more efficient.

Re:Small economics

[evilviper]

For instance, if you were a small organic farmer could you plant some of this stuff in the scrubby back 20 and then with a little bio-fuel setup in the barn make your own fuel?

That seems highly unlikely.

If this stuff (sugarcane) will grow, then some type of food crops will surely grow, too. You'll have a lot of money and effort invested in keeping it free of bugs, diseases and being overgrown by weeds.

Modern farmers generally irrigate their crops, and pumping all that water won't be cheap, and sugarcane is hardly drought-tolerant.

And finally, farmers generally have to rent heavy equipment to harvest their crops, and now they'll need special mechanical harvesters they may not be able to find, or will be expensive to rent.

Re:Small economics

[HornWumpus]

The only way they were able to show Ethanol from corn being less then 1 was by ignoring all the other things made from the corn.

For example after all the sugars are dissolved and fermented the remaining grain is good, high protein, animal feed. This was ignored to make corn look bad.

Re:Small economics

[EmperorOfCanada]

The labor costs of many farmers is exactly their problem. During harvest they can't get enough labor and in February they have tonnes to spare by virtue of being far from cities, factories, etc. This is why one has to be careful when comparing costs. It might be more expensive than oil if you calculate in hourly wages. But for some farmers the alternative hourly wage is zero.

The other thing is that in my experience farmers (and even better hillbillies) can be awesome innovators. One hillbilly that I met had converted his Volvo from Automatic to standard because A the automatic was shot, and B he preferred standard. Do you know how much work and innovation it takes to make that switch? The frame of the car is literally designed for one or the other. Plus the standard transmission was from some non volvo product. The thing ran very well and it lasted for years. So I would love to see technologies like this put into that guy's hands. I suspect that efficiency levels would climb or the cost of installation would be lower than expected.

Re:Small economics

[Reziac]

So what does it come to if all that is taken into account?

The figure I've heard was 5 gallons of diesel in, 4 gallons of corn ethanol out.

Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[mlts]

My question: Is ground for growing food crops affected by this? If farmers all grow switchgrass/hemp/$whatever and make more money selling that for fuel, then it will spike food prices, which can cause major problems down the line (people can put up with a lot of injustice, but if they are starving, all bets are off.)

Ethically, I can't support a fuel that takes food out of people's mouths, even though ethanol has a number of decent advantages.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[dcw3]

Glad I read this before I posted....I have the same concern.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[H0p313ss]

My question: Is ground for growing food crops affected by this? If farmers all grow switchgrass/hemp/$whatever and make more money selling that for fuel, then it will spike food prices, which can cause major problems down the line (people can put up with a lot of injustice, but if they are starving, all bets are off.)

Ethically, I can't support a fuel that takes food out of people's mouths, even though ethanol has a number of decent advantages.

Excellent question, this is already subject to debate.

There are three major areas of concern here, food vs. fuel, CO2 emissions/footprint and the ecological cost of production.

In my opinion CO2 emissions is the elephant in the room for biofuels. Extensive production and consumption of biofuels may ween us off fossil fuels but it does nothing to address just how stupid it is for us to be modifying the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

Note that the process of biofuel production does not exist in a vacuum, like any other agricultural activity it has a direct ecological impact furthermore the vast majority of current agricultural practice involves burning fuels (tractors and other farm equipment) and the use of inorganic commercial fertilizer which also has a wide variety of impacts such as the seepage of phosphates in runoff leading to downstream agae blooms.

IMHO, the development of biofuels is just robbing Peter to pay Paul. While other alternative power sources are less efficient, more costly or less power dense the vast majority of systems that are currently in production, (wind, water, solar) are both profitable and significantly better for the environment.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[nedlohs]

And if it spikes food prices then the farmers will not be making more growing stuff to sell for fuel. So the problem fixes itself.

Of course it sucks for the transition period especially for those who can't afford the spiked food prices and starve to death. Hopefully one of those huge corporations that run the farming industry will have an economist on staff to point the basics of supply and demand from high school economics to them so they can make more money by sticking with growing food.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[Rhacman]

I see a lot of issues with biofuels, but I'm less concerned with this issue. If some biofuel crop presents a more economical use of a farmers land than his other options then it also makes it slightly more attractive for that farmer to cultivate the land rather than sell it to some developer. Should food become more scarce then the balance may tip to that same farmer choosing to grow a food crop on that same plot of land. Once you turn the land into the suburbs, chances are you won't be seeing it grow crops ever again. The bigger concern I have is that no matter what you are growing, it requires irrigation, nutrients, and possibly other things like pesticides / herbicides. This issue is compounded if the demand for these biofuel crops encourages the leveling of more forested areas to create more farmland.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[H0p313ss]

The great thing about CO2 emissions for plant-derived biofuels is that they won't modify the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Think about it for a moment: what you're doing is extracting carbon from the atmosphere, turning it into complex hydrocarbons using energy from the sun, and then burning it to release that energy. Any CO2 released was *already in the atmosphere* to begin with, so biofuels net zero greenhouse emissions (to first order at least, maybe there's some weird combustion products or whatever). Hard to get much lower than that.

Well, yes and no. Biofuel will only be carbon neutral if all the production, transportation and fertilization was done with biofuels as well. A great goal, but I don't think it's been realized anywhere yet.

And of course, that still leaves the whole fuel vs. food issue open. Now if we could manage to come up a biofuel production process that includes the net fixation of atmospheric CO2 (net reduced or zero carbon footprint), with close to zero ecological impact that is not using precious agricultural land then I'd be all over it. But at the moment it's a bit of a pipe dream.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[Belial6]

You don't have to worry about the CO2 emissions. One of the benefits of bio-fuel is that the carbon in the plants was taken out of the air. With bio-fuels you only add as much CO2 to the air as you take out.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[H0p313ss]

You don't have to worry about the CO2 emissions. One of the benefits of bio-fuel is that the carbon in the plants was taken out of the air. With bio-fuels you only add as much CO2 to the air as you take out.

Only if the means of production is also carbon neutral. Fertilizer, machinery, transportion etc.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[Belial6]

Granted. Although in theory, if the bio-fuel worked (which includes being cheaper than petrol, the machinery and transportation would be using the bio-fuel to grow the crops. I don't know about the fertilizer. Just that being able to make fuel out of crops wouldn't mean that petroleum would stop being used in fertilizer, so that may be a small concern.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[H0p313ss]

Just that being able to make fuel out of crops wouldn't mean that petroleum would stop being used in fertilizer, so that may be a small concern.

In terms of efficiency, it's insane to turn petroleum into fertilizer to grow crops to great a biofuel, you might as well just burn the damn fuel in the first place.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[camperdave]

It's doubly insane because plants need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and petroleum is made of carbon and hydrogen. There are no plant nutrients in petroleum, so trying to convert oil to fertilizer is pointless.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[hebertrich]

We need to stop using food as fuel period. We starve populations by doing this. It's a madness that has to stop.In the long term only electricity can truly save us from disaster. Whether it's coming from nuclear , solar , geothermal , hydro .. all that can be said is that electrics are the practical solution. But eh .. we have corporate whores in Washington that are elected by big oil money , it will never happen unless corporate funding is cut off of politics and lobby groups taken out of the corridors of power. To advance any , we need deep changes that both Dems and Reps will refuse to make because they are in the pockets of big money. A govern,ment of the People by corporations for corporations , modern slavery , is what they represent and work for.
Get the whores out of Washington and vote for anyone but dems and reps. They do not deserve your trust nor the jobs.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[HornWumpus]

Almost all fertilizer is made from/with natural gas. Price of oil is about as relevant as the price of tea in China.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[HornWumpus]

There is a lot of unused arable land in the world. The fact that many nations can't get it together to farm it is a political problem. As soon as they install a reasonably uncorrupted capitalist system they'll be fine.

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[HornWumpus]

You are a true innumerate aren't you?

Re:Do these take up areas that food crops grow?

[camperdave]

Natural gas != petroleum. Petroleum == crude oil.

Re:Sugar Beet

[mcgrew]

Beets are perfect for fuel. Nasty vegetable! Yech! When I see beets I say "beat it, beet."

Now, buttered corn, yum. Corn fed beef? Even better! Corn is for eating, beets are best used as fuel.

immediately if cost was not a factor

[peter303]

The best plants are convert 1.5% of incoming sunlight when factoring length of growing cycle and planting density. Cheap solar panels are five times more efficient. More expensive solar technologies and/or concentrators gets into double digits.

However when you include the costs of the entire system- the startup capital, intermediate fuel type and distribution- the current cost-efficiency of both become more comparable.

Re:immediately if cost was not a factor

[Solandri]

best plants are convert 1.5% of incoming sunlight when factoring length of growing cycle and planting density.

Energy harvested per area covered isn't the proper metric here, at least not until we start running out of land area where we can put plants or solar panels.

The proper metric is energy harvested per dollar spent to produce the harvester. And plants self-replicate and grow all by themselves, making that cost close to zero or even negative (people want weeds cleared). Right now the cost of the plants matter because we're concentrating on just a few crops with high sugar yield (which corn is not, which is why corn ethanol is such a bad idea)*. But if there's a breakthrough in cellulostic ethanol (cellulose is just sugar molecules glued together into long chains), it's basically game over for PV solar. No need to build expensive solar panels when we can convert the dead plant matter we already throw away into fuel.

* The reason we even have a corn ethanol program is because there were food shortages during the Great Depression. In response, the government started subsidizing farms to ensure there was always an oversupply of food. That leaves us with an excess amount of corn every year. What to do with that excess corn has always been a problem. Some was sent overseas as foreign aid. Some is converted to meat, by using it as cattle feed. Early on some chemists figured out a way to make high fructose corn syrup out of it. And in the 1970s around the time of the Arab oil embargo someone thought, "What if we converted it to ethanol and used it in place of gasoline?" So corn ethanol is a great idea for getting rid of the excess corn we have. But it's a colossally stupid idea to grow corn solely for the purpose of converting it into ethanol. If you want to do that, sugar cane is the best choice, but it doesn't grow well outside of Hawaii and Florida. For most of the U.S., sugar beets are far superior to corn if you're going to make ethanol.

Re:immediately if cost was not a factor

[tragedy]

That article seems to talk about phytoplankton which is not presently considered to be a plant as I understand it.

Re:Why food?

[nospam007]

"A lot of people don't understand that carbohydrates are one of the densest forms of energy [wikipedia.org] on the face of the earth, losing only to fossil fuels, pure hydrogen and nuclear power.

For my Smart Diesel, I just use whatever vegetable oil is cheapest from my oil-mill.

Re:Sugar Beet

[MightyYar]

I don't think sugar cane can be grown in sugar beet country and vice versa, so the two are complimentary. In addition, harvest times are totally different between sugar beets and sugar cane.

Grow food on good soil, damn it

[csubi]

And make the fuel grade ethanol / whatever using GM algae. That would just as "green" and "renewable" without sacrificing land where one could produce vegetables and fruits already so bloody expensive.

Two for one?

[BlackSupra]

Can we measure two benefits?

1) Create Biofuel

2) Clean the environment

Example 1: Cattails remove toxins & pollution from wetlands, stormwater. http://www.scer.rpi.edu/bwe/?p=369

Example 2: Sunflowers decontaminate radioactive soil. http://www.ecaa.ntu.edu.tw/weifang/cea/sunflowers.htm

Example 3: Algae blooms http://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/211130501/the-algae-is-coming-but-its-impact-is-felt-far-from-water

5x better - wooow!

[lkcl]

... so 5x better than corn.... that means it's still 20x worse than oil, meaning that it's still an environmentally *hostile* source of fuel compared to oil. when will people understand and accept that the way to use less fuel is to build vehicles that use... less fuel??

Re:5x better - wooow!

[mspohr]

I think the goal here is to have something which recycles CO2 from the environment rather than releasing more CO2 into our already overheated climate. From this standpoint gas and oil are a complete fail and most anything else is better.

Re:Sugar Beet

[ShanghaiBill]

Corn and sugarcane got nothing on the sugar beet.

Acre for acre, sugar beets get more subsidies than corn, if you include the protective tariffs on sugar imports. There is no way that beets can compete with cane in a free market.

shouldn't be bio

[Goldsmith]

RuBisCO as a carbon capture catalyst is less efficient than current inorganic catalysts and fundamentally prevents the complete scale up of biofuels. There are economic reasons to start with biofuel as an alternative to fossil fuels (anyone can make the raw materials for biofuel), but at some point we're either going to have to be ok with drastically altering the genetics of plants or we'll have to move to a more traditional chemical manufacturing model.

Wouldn't it be easier to adapt palm oil trees?

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Unless something has changed, palm oil still has the best net energy return compared to any other organic fuel source. If we're not going to eat the stuff, GM palm oil trees may be the way to go here.

Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.

From a net energy/price standpoint, biofuels still can't compete with petroleum, though that will change as petroleum gets more expensive and yields less net energy over time, however, the ecological effects of trying to replace the 160 exajoules of energy provided by oil each year would be an unmitigated disaster.

Nice idea, but we're still going to have to reduce our energy consumption worldwide, long before the end of this century.

Re:Wouldn't it be easier to adapt palm oil trees?

[wonkey_monkey]

Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.

I'd imagine the materials, installation and maintenance costs are a bit lower.

Re:Wouldn't it be easier to adapt palm oil trees?

[evilviper]

plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.

Batteries are rather efficient at storing electricity, as is pumped-hydro for grid-scale needs. Grid transmission losses are in the single-digit percentages, which is better than you'd ever hope to get from loading-up liquid fuel on a tanker trunk. And finally, electric motors are nearly 100% efficient at converting electricity into momentum, where internal combustion engines get a measly 30% if we're being kind. And as you said, you must also factor in the inefficiency of the plants consuming water, arable soil, and space, when PV or solar-thermal would be far more efficient.

Electric vehicles are a superior option in every way. The only thing holding them back at this point is the price of batteries, and we've seen that those really are dropping pretty fast.

Re:Wouldn't it be easier to adapt palm oil trees?

[drinkypoo]

Algae is still the only plant from which it makes sense to make biofuels on any large scale because it only needs water, and the water does not have to be clean or even desalinated and the degree of salination is unimportant. Further, there is no need to bioengineer a better algae because nature has already made many different kinds of algae and if you just stir a shallow pond it will fill up with the most efficient kind of algae for your local climate vis-a-vis maximizing oil production per unit of time. The advantage over solar panels is that they produce the feedstock for highly portable fuels which are 1:1 replacements for fuels we are already transporting and using in quantity, namely biodiesel, green diesel, and butanol. And even better, you can use the system to capture the CO2 from a combustion-based power plant. The USDOE proved the validity of this system at Sandia NREL in the 1980s. We have the technology right now to eliminate the CO2 burden of chemical fuels and we're not bothering to use it.

Re:Sugar Beet

[ackthpt]

Corn and sugarcane got nothing on the sugar beet.

Yeah, but the only way the sugar beet may be harvested is by coating the roads of the midwest with mud during the rainy part of Autumn.

"slide, Casey, slide!"
"my name isn't bdee-bdee-bdee Casey, it's ... bdee-bdee-bdee Mud."

Re: Why food?

[smaddox]

Pure hydrogen? At what pressure? Definitely not at atmospheric pressure.

They're just thinking of this?

[whitroth]

Years ago, people were talking about switchgrass. Or how about kudzu? What's wrong with WEEDS that will grow anywhere... oh, that's right, those nice folks in the petrochemical industry can't sell you fertilizers for that....

                  mark "or maybe hemp?"

Re:They're just thinking of this?

[HornWumpus]

Those people and you a glossing over the complications of making fuel from cellulose.

Biodiesel, not ethanol

[erroneus]

The energy density of ethanol is just not high enough and the alcohol isn't particularly friendly to plastic material often used in auto parts.

They are just trying too hard to push their endless uses for government (tax payer) subsidized corn. I'm surprised they haven't found a ridiculous and wasteful way to make paper out of corn yet.

There are a whole lot better things they can do to improve matters. Among them are to focus as much on efficiency as they do on sources. I want DC wiring for my light fixtures. LED bulbs can be pretty good but they all have their own AC to DC converters and that's not so great. Just put light fixture circuis on their own breakers and replace those breakers with AC to DC power converters and now you have good light with very little waste.

Sorghum

[MrWin2kMan]

Here in Maricopa, AZ we host the only ethanol plant in the state of Arizona, and one of the local crops used (grown by Ak-Chin Farms, one of the Indian Reservations that surrounds Maricopa) is sorghum, the same plant you can get molasses from. Much more bang for the buck than corn or sawgrass.

Ethanol is not what it's claimed to be

[whizbang77045]

A local dealer sells ethanol-free gasoline, while others sell gas stated to have as much as 10% ethanol. When I run my truck on ethanol free gas, the milage jumps by 10%, when compared to gas with 10% ethanol. It doesn't sound to be as though the ethanol does much, other than generate more polution, because I'm burning more gas.

P.S.. Because I'm burning more gas, it costs more.

Re:Ethanol is not what it's claimed to be

[seven of five]

Ethanol has less energy per unit volume than gasoline so yes, your mileage goes down.

Re:Ethanol is not what it's claimed to be

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Sounds like you have a poorly running truck look into getting it tuned up and probably replace the O2 sensors, and/or clean or replace your MAP/MAF sensor. Yes you should lose some mileage when running on 10% ethanol but not anything close to 10%. Looking at only energy density ethanol has about 2/3 the energy per unit volume as gasoline does so a fuel with a 10% ethanol blend (E10) would have about 96.7% the energy of non-oxygenated gasoline (non-oxy). Given that E10 formulated to have very similar burn properties to non-oxy at the same octane rating I would expect to see a drop but typically in the 3-4% range. I live in a state where most fuel is E10 so when I find non-oxy fuel I will use it and I do see a mileage gain but typically in the 3-4% range as I described above. This has been turn on a number of occasions over many years with 5 different vehicles of varying build quality, engines sizes, and mileages. Then again I keep my stuff properly tuned and maintained. I have found that my mileage is far more variable depending on how I drive the vehicle than on the fuel choice. Granted I get really good mileage on non-oxy when I am driving to get good gas mileage but even that is only a few percent better than driving that same way on E10. I also get really shitty mileage when I go out racing with that car regardless of what fuel I am using.

Re:Ethanol is not what it's claimed to be

[Bob the Super Hamste]

It will go down but it shouldn't decrease that much. It sounds like someone has a poorly running vehicle that has problems maintaining proper fuel trim and the excess oxygen in the E10 fuel is really confusing they system. Time to clean or replace the MAP/MAF sensor, change the O2 sensor(s), and do a tune up with new plugs and wires, maybe check for vacuum leaks as well. There may be other things wrong but those things usually affect how a vehicle reacts to E10 vs Non-Oxy fuel the most. That is where I would start unless his truck is so old it has a carburetor in it which case the simple solution would be to adjust the carb for one fuel type and then only put in that fuel type.

Re:Ethanol is not what it's claimed to be

[Reziac]

I have a really efficient truck (as judged by its gas mileage vs the average for that engine; most people get 6-8mpg, I get 12mpg) but it also experiences a 10-20% drop in MPG on ethanol blends. And I have to buy mid-grade instead of regular, because with regular-ethanol-blend, it lacks the power to do the heavy work I use it for. Instead of cruising easily up hills when loaded, I have to all but floor it, which sure makes the difference obvious even if I didn't notice it in my wallet.

Re:Sugar Beet

[ShanghaiBill]

There is no way that beets can compete with cane in a free market.

That's OK, because there isn't a free market on the planet, and never has been.

A free market has a large number of sellers, a large number of buyers, low barriers to entry, and full information. There are plenty of real markets that meet those criteria, including farm commodity markets in most countries. Of course, if you are pedantic ass, you will insist that the number of buyers and sellers must be infinite to qualify as "free" and therefore nothing is free and any sort of subsidy or corruption is fully justified. Whatever.

Algae is better than food sources

[iinventstuff]

We should really explore using non-food sources (e.g., algae) as biofuel bases. We need food to stay inexpensive and gas not to increase in price, because we're using more expensive food sources. Here's a good Q&A about algae as a source of bio fuel (http://algae.ucsd.edu/potential/algae-qanda.html).

Re:Sugar Beet

[biobogonics]

Corn and sugarcane got nothing on the sugar beet.

As a Michigan native, I have always thought that sugar came from beets. This part of the state is the heart of sugar beet country. Growing more beets would solve several problems at once. It's time to plow under most of Detroit and plant beets. This would reclaim more of the city for productive use, create a tax base and possibly produce bio-fuels. At the same time, we can lower unemployment and empty the jails by teaching young people to farm. Imagine the historical irony of undoing the "great migration".

Screw Ethenol, use Butanol

[Anonymous Coward]

way better than ethonal. If has an air:fuel ratio close enough to petrol that you can mix it in any ratio and not need to mod the engine.
 
  Butanol fuel

Re:Sugar Beet

[Hatta]

I think beets get a bad name due to everyone using canned beets. I haven't prepared fresh beets myself, but I've had beet coleslaw made from fresh beets that was fantastic. Julienned beets, red cabbage, shallots, oil & vinegar, IIRC. Really pretty too.

Obligatory Michael Jackson

[dkleinsc]

When I see beets I say "beat it, beet."

They told us don't you ever try to make new fuel
Don't want a lower price, you better like your gruel
The law is on their side, and their policies are cruel
So beet it, just beet it!

Re:Sugar Beet

[rycamor]

Yes, there's a world of difference between fresh beets and the canned garbage you buy. And there is another world of difference between 5-day-old beets you get in the produce section and beets you just picked from your own garden. Fresh beet juice isn't half bad, also.

Beets are easy to grow, and since they are in the brassica family (along with broccoli, collards, kale, etc..) the leaves are quite healthy for you (yes, broccoli leaves are good eating), and good in a salad, or cooked form. I didn't find out any of this until I started growing my own garden.

Why grow raw materials?

[LaLLi]

I don't understand the need to grow food to be converted to ethanol. It seems stupid and a waste. ST1 is a Finnish energy producer that converts bio waste to ethanol. IMHO they get the bulk of their material from factories like bread makers. They also gather bio waste from city residents. I'm not completely sure what they do with the waste from ethanol production. http://www.st1.fi/puhtaampaa-siksi-halvempaa

Rubber plants?

[rover42]

In the 80s, I met a PhD biochemist who had worked on making synthetic rubber from petroleum products. He said going the other way -- from the latex in rubber tree sap to something that could substitute for gasoline -- looked feasible. All the science was known and in principle the process would be straightforward, but neither the engineering nor the economic/political problems involved had been solved. Is anyone looking at this sort of thing today? What about oil-producing plants, such as oil palms?

Re:Sugar Beet

[Entropius]

Nor has anyone ever achieved immortality, so let's close down all the hospitals?

Re:Sugar Beet

[cayenne8]

As a Michigan native, I have always thought that sugar came from beets. This part of the state is the heart of sugar beet country. Growing more beets would solve several problems at once. It's time to plow under most of Detroit and plant beets. This would reclaim more of the city for productive use, create a tax base and possibly produce bio-fuels. At the same time, we can lower unemployment and empty the jails by teaching young people to farm. Imagine the historical irony of undoing the "great migration".

Hey, be careful....talking that way about Detroit is borderline to getting you accused of being a racist.

;)

Re:Sugar Beet

[Talderas]

Bulldoze Detroit after we get a good movie from it using Fallout IP.

Re:Biofuel is a stupid solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We need a solution that can remove waste CO2 from the air and turn it back into fuel."

That's what biofuels are you idiot. Sugar Cane removes CO2 from the air, photosynthesizes it into sugar, which is then fermented to produce fuel.

Also, your idiotic post is based on the false premise that we have "used up" fossil fuels that "took millions of years to create," even though neither case is true. Not only are we not out of fossil fuels, but crude oil is still being produced in the depths today.

Re:Need to solve the biggest bottleneck first.

[EmagGeek]

Clever tricks? You mean the "clever trick" of eliminating the need to store it AT ALL by simply sending produced energy where the demand is at a given time?

The horror.

Re:Sugar Beet

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I use to like beets until my mother was cooking them once and forgot about them on the stove. They slowly simmered until all the water was gone and then started smouldering. That was one of the worst smells in my life, it still smelled like beets but burned and overpowering. Even since I can't stand the smell of them and when I smell them I want to go puke.

Re:Sugar Beet

[Joey Vegetables]

Big parts of Detroit are already reverting to urban gardens and farms. It's not racist. It's just good sense, given the current situation (lots of abandoned land, lots of unemployed people, and, for those people, well over 90% of them Black, not a lot of other good options for fresh food). The "Great Migration" likewise is already being reversed, albeit gradually. Black people are moving from the inner-city to suburbs, and from metro areas in the North and East to others in the South and West, increasing diversity almost everywhere, which I see as a good thing. More immigration, which is an absolute necessity and inevitability given current demographics (otherwise, not even half as many taxpayers as are needed to pay for the Baby Boomers' retirement), will eventually repopulate those cities, or those portions of cities, that potentially can support gainful employment of any kind.

Maybe someone can explain

[canadiannomad]

Why are we not pushing hard towards bacteria based production of biofuels instead of these huge complex pants? Seems to be that bacteria given the right conditions could convert a lot more CO2 into O2, eat a lot more waste, and produce a lot more complex fuels then corn, sugarcane, or other big plants...

Heck I think a few are going this direction, but to me it is the only way it makes sense at all..
Engineered Bacteria Make Fuel from Sunlight
Electrofuels: Charged Microbes May "Poop Out" a Gasoline Alternative

I like the idea of going all solar, and for individual houses, I can understand it, but for oil (you know, grease), plastics(you know, for our 3D printers), and even yes energy storage for some vehicles we are going to keep needing large quantities of hydrocarbons for a long time to come. Add to that the need to scrub our air of CO2 and other pollutants, and we have a great symbiosis.

Re:Sugar Beet

[Anonymous Coward]

Try roasting or grilling fresh beets; when they're finished (tender, not mush), dice them & toss them with a little bit of olive oil, vinegar, and dijon mustard, then top that with some crumbled blue cheese and toasted walnuts or pecans.

I just blew your mind.

Re:Why food?

[canadiannomad]

Made me think:

Why don't we harvest the results of liposuction.... Make the fat nations of the world thinner, let people eat all they want, and generate fuels from their blubber.
Horrible I know. Sorry.

On the other hand, it might just work in this infinite consumption society.... O_o

Re:Sugar Beet

[Charliemopps]

lol, because no democrats signed the farm bill right? Isn't that supposed to be the most bipartisan pork barrel in American politics? If you think the democrats give any more of a rats ass about the environment than the republicans do you're a damned fool. They tell you what you want to hear, and then do whatever their corporate sponsors paid them to do. Nothing's going to change if you keep voting for either of the 2 parties in power. Nothing.

Re:Sugar Beet

[hebertrich]

Totally correct. As long as it's one of the 2 parties that get voted in things will remain the same. They are both corporate whores lying in our faces.
I am not mincing my words : they are liars , two faced and dishonest from the first to the last. Surveillance on citizens will get worse , Corps will pay less and less taxes , healthcare will stay as unaffordable as it is today if not get worse , in few words : we'll keep getting screwed left and right coming and going .
So much for nice speeches. They are worth nothing. Politicians have to give their word : of course they have to give their word , no one would ever buy something worthless as a politician's word. LOL Time for a true alternative to the big 2 . Time to elect and give a chance to real patriotic Americans a chance to govern.
Up to now , Dems and Reps have proven to be just more of the same corporate whores that bend over for a dollar. We need a revolution and throw the bums out of the office.The American People deserve better than be run by corporations and be slaves to big money.

Soylent Green ...

[PPH]

... 98 octane.

Rebuttal

[multimediavt]

Fossil Fuels have some key advantages. 1. Portability. You can take it, put it in container and ship it anywhere, or store it when you need it. 2. High Energy. You can get a good bang for 1 kilo of Fuel. Vs. batteries, or other forms of portable energy 3. Low tech maintenance. Fixing a problem in a fossil fuel engine is much easier then fixing a power turbine or a solar sell, we can use alternate parts if needed to. 4. Out of Sight or of Mind. Large Windmills covering the landscape, acres of solar panels, large dams... A lot of big infrastructure projects

It isn't that we couldn't go, however you need to know the tradeoffs and find ways of dealing with them.

Just a wee rebuttal to your comments:

1. Since when are solar cells non-portable? Small wind turbines you would use for your individual home are not that non-portable either. You just need to take the tower down after removing the turbine and unhooking everything. Can be moved.

2. Energy density is higher in fossil fuels when compared to current alternative technology, yes, but if we don't research new ones we will never make that better.

3. Huh? If internal combustion engines are so easy to fix why do we need specialized mechanics? And power turbines aren't internal combustion engines, hmmm? And it's solar CELL, not "sell".

4. Yeah and those oil wells, refineries and gas stations are sooooo attractive and environmentally friendly, puh-lease.

We know what the trade-offs are and they are no longer acceptable as the cost to continuous fossil fuel use may be the death of our biosphere at our own hands. That is unacceptable, even criminal.

Stop using food as fuel, for one...

[multimediavt]

I am all for alternative fuels, but using a food source to ALSO be a fuel source is stooooooo-pid. Have you seen what happened to the price of corn since using it for ethanol took off? Great for Monsanto and ADM, but not for people that eat corn. Sugarcane is a horrible crop for the environment, let alone the impact using it for ethanol has on sugar prices for human consumption.

Re:Biofuel is a stupid solution.

[iggymanz]

We haven't "used up" or "burned through" anything, we sadly have centuries of supply of fossil fuels.

There is no need for artificial photosynthesis, can use real photosynthesis. Real plants that can grow very densely on scrub land such as switchgrass.

Yes, big corporations will do this, that's how most technology is done. Big corporations provide your vehicles, your computers, your food, etc.

Re:Sugar Beet

[HornWumpus]

Still better then stillborn cabbages aka Brussel sprouts.

Re:Beans! They're good for your Heart!

[HornWumpus]

You likely will enjoy the 'fittings' used to hook you up to the engine.

Spin-o-rama!

[Maury Markowitz]

" see how a company is test-growing a relative of sugarcane, which is expected to yield 5 times the ethanol per acre compared to corn."

So, in other words, the same yield as sugarcane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance

They're growing a relative to sugarcane that produces Ethanol like sugarcane? Stop the presses!

Easy Target

[hazydave]

Corn is used for Ethanol because the corn lobby is huge and managed to get subsidies for it. Nothing wrong with Ethanol as a renewable fuel, but corn to Ethanol is only marginally more energy efficient than tar sands to gasoline (if you're still using the starch for animal feed -- over 50% of all US corn is for meat production -- the efficiency rises considerably, but that's not always done). So this should be a slam-dunk. Sugar cane is about 6x as efficient, but so far, my house in South Jersey is still surrounded by corn.

Re:Sugar Beet

[rycamor]

Thanks--gonna try this.