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Biofuels From Corn Can Create More Greenhouse Gases Than Gasoline
New submitter Chipmunk100 (3619141) writes "Using corn crop residue to make ethanol and other biofuels reduces soil carbon and can generate more greenhouse gases than gasoline, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. The findings by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln team of researchers cast doubt on whether corn residue can be used to meet federal mandates to ramp up ethanol production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
It is brain-dead stupid!
How much of the total plant bio-mass are you processing to start with when you are dealing with corn? 2%? 3%? (That is until you get to
the actual fuel, which is much less than that.) When you do Biofuels from farming monoculture the proper way (if such a thing is possible at all), like from sugar-cane, where maybe 30-50% of the biomass is the part to be processed into biofuel, you may be getting some improvement over oil status-quo. With algae you maybe can achieve 100% of the biomass to start processing, sounds even nicer.
But from Corn? It is so stupid, it does not even deserve a proper adjective. It is even stupid to waste time making "studies" on it.
Trying to do it is only about corn super-production, hype, and abuse of government subsidies to plant corn, all mixed with a large, big
dose of the reverse of common sense.
-><- no
If oil companies are willing to pay off scientists, start entire shill foundations, websites and TV shows... why would this carry any weight?
As one sided as it might sound, I approach any article or discovery that would improve the oil industries' image or standing with the utmost distrust.
You hate the oil industry but you'll trust the corn lobby?
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Surely it's still carbon neutral[?]
We use tons of petrochemicals to grow corn.
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It's taking a lot of the carbon from the soil instead of the air... so no. Also, consider all the gasoline used to plant/harvest/transport it. Ethanol is a corn-state boondoggle. It drives up corn prices and brings in massive revenue to the midwest. Ethanol support is critical for any politician that wants to win in states like Iowa. When you hear a 60yr old farmer start talking about "green energy" you know he grows corn.
Biofuels are about government subsidies and nothing more. All the talk about biofuels and the environment is just to trick the rubes.
Anyone who knows anything about Ethanol knows that the two best sources are sugar cane and switch grass. Switch grass should be the choice for North America as it can grow just about anywhere. Corn, on the other hand, takes up valuable farm land, requires more water, and has higher production costs. Ethanol from corn is a nothing but a scam perpetrated by the corn industry. Believe this study or not, but there are much better options than corn...
http://www.scientificamerican....
No it's not that simple. Plants require nutrients from the soil, which have to be replenished each year[1] partly by natural in-soil processes that break down residue from previous crops, but mostly from the application of synthetic fertilizer, which is synthesized using a process that burn natural gas. See the wikipedia article on the Haber Process.
Also there are fossil fuels used in the planting, cultivation, harvest, and irrigation of the crop.
If corn could fix its own nitrogen like legumes do, it might be a lot closer to carbon neutral.
[1] In many parts of the world, including the Brazillian rainforest, farmers are actively "mining" nutrients from the soil. The soil left from burning the rainforest is extremely rich in nutrients, allowing intensive farming for a few years. After a while, though, the soil is depleted of nutrients and organic matter and yields drop. Sadly many farms just burn down more forest. Some methods of farming, including zero-till, try to foster natural soil processes to produce more nitrogen in natural ways, reducing synthetic inputs.
The reason to push for ethanol is that corn ethanol could be a temporary bridge to cellulosic ethanol, which is much lower in GHGs. The science isn't there yet to do cellulosic at scale, but regs like the LCFS or EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard guarantee that there will be a long-term market, and make private industry more comfortable in investing in the technology.
Some times you do actually have to read the article, the article is not about making Ethanol from the sugars and starches in the grain portion of the corn plant like everybody is assuming, it's about making ethanol from the stalks, leaves and cobs normally left on the fields.
This is a bad idea because it removes organic matter from the soil and making it less fertile, more easily compacted and more prone to errotion. Fields in that condition require more fertilizer and increased tillage to maintain productivity.
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E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline, not the other way around. A 10% ethanol blend (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline) is called E10, not E90. Using E10 reduces your fuel economy by about 3–4%, and a 15% blend reduces your miles per tank by about 4–5%, assuming a modern, fuel-injected engine. I would expect the impact to be worse for an engine with a carburetor, but I don't know for certain. Either way, I'm pretty sure it's nowhere near 20% even with older engines.
Yes, if it were legal to sell E90, it would reduce your fuel economy by somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%. Of course, your car wouldn't start in the winter, and in most cars, parts of your fuel system would likely rust out pretty quickly, spewing fuel all over the hot engine, thus ending your life in a blaze of glory, so fuel economy would be the least of your problems....
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This is a bad idea because it removes organic matter from the soil and making it less fertile, more easily compacted and more prone to errotion. Fields in that condition require more fertilizer
Then we just add petroleum based fertilizers to the soil. Problem solved,
Even so, growing corn to make ethanol is just dumb. Methanol would be a much better choice, since it can be made from any biomass, not just starch or sugar. The only reason we use ethanol is as an excuse to grow so much corn, which is heavily subsidized. Also, methanol is CHEAP... about $1.50/gal.
An easy solution would be to enact a flex-fuel standard for automobiles, which would require that all new cars be fully flex-fuel capable: able to run on any mixture of gasoline, ethanol, methanol, or butanol. (In most cases, the "flex-fuel" cars on the market today can only use ethanol, not methanol.) To convert an existing car costs 500 bucks, but if it's built that way at the factory, it only adds about $100 to the cost of the vehicle.
Such a requirement would change the market. With millions of cars able to use it, gas station owners would start selling methanol on one or two pumps. This would effectively break the current monopoly that petroleum has on transportation fuel.
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Modern agriculture essentially converts oil into crops
"Modern agriculture" is based largely on annual crops, which deplete the soil and require massive inputs. Methanol can be made from perennial crops which can be harvested economically with little to no inputs.
And since perennials do not require tillage, there is very little environmental degradation. Indeed, if herbivores are incorporated in the farming scheme, the combination can actually increase the topsoil. Without tillage, such crops can be raised on lands which are currently considered marginal or unusable for conventional row-cropping. So methanol (unlike ethanol) would not compete with food crops at all.
How do you think methanol would be produced at industrial scale?
It already is produced at industrial scale. It's one of the most common "industrial" chemicals on the market. Unfortunately, a good chunk is currently produced from natural gas, but it is (and has been) made from various feedstocks for more than a century.
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