Cellulosic ethanol is the holy grail of alternative fuel production because instead of using the valuable edible portion of the plant, it allows ethanol to be made from cheap and abundant crop wastes. This story was also carried on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday where they interviewed the principle researcher. According to her, this new GMO corn grows like regular corn and can be eaten or used as feed just like regular corn but when you grind up the stalks and leaves they release a digestive enzyme and convert themselves into sugars that can be used as feedstock for ethanol production.

that's great. now if they can only remove natural gas from the distillation process.

I am mildly surprised, I thought you don't believe we need an alternative source of fuel.

I am curious how much this decreases the cost of ethanol production.

I am not a fan of biofuels because they are 'carbon neutral' I am a fan because they come from the Midwest not the Middle East and anything we can do to render that part of the world more ignorable/irrelevant is a good thing in my book.

If it were up to me, energy independence would be a national priority and we would be doing all sorts of things to promote the development of home-grown biofuels, development of the Bakken oil field, production of synthetic petroleum feedstock and fuels from abundant domestic coal, nuclear power, etc.

People wont eat this GMO corn. There is too big of a (irrational) fear of GMO's in the general populace. It will have to be grown exclusively for fuel.

Most corn is GM'd anyway...So is soy.. People eat both.

Cows and pigs are not so fussy.

just had an idea. the US has been suffering lately from a trade deficit. but as far as i know, we've always produced a huge amount of agricultural products that we practically give away. our government even subsidizes it, which puts us further in the hole. maybe this isn't such a bad thing. cutting our food exports could bring some balance to the force.

Even if that were true, corn is probably not the only plant in which we can plant the cellolose-to-ethanol converting gene.

Grass, flowers, trees, rice, etc.

I am for that as well.

For me, one caveat is that we preserve our environment.

I know you don't believe we can destroy the environment, but I believe otherwise.

Without returning crop 'wastes' to the soil, organic matter is rather quickly depleted. Corn after corn requires tillage, which speeds up decomposition of what organic matter remains. Soil structure breaks down, microbe populations are destroyed, etc, etc. One can replace the K, S, P, etc with expensive synthetic fertilizers, but manure or domestic septage is a poor substitute for crop residue. Then their is the need for pesticides, herbicides, ... Glyphosate (i.e. Round-Up) tolerant weed species are already a reality.

The complexities of the issue can't really be captured in a science daily article.

Maybe elsewhere in the US people arent hippies like they are here. But I really think that the growing organic movement is a sign that people arent interested in GMO foods.

I myself have no problem with them, but others certainly do.

Corn stover is often collected and baled and used as cattle feed already so someone has already worked out the economics of taking it off the fields and using it elsewhere and using fertilizer to renew the soil.

The carbon that makes up the plant comes from the air not the soil and this is primarily what the ethanol is made of. If you want to recapture the minerals directly, spent distillery mash can be returned directly to the fields or fed to livestock and the manure used to fertilize the fields.

(1) Generally, to keep top-soil fertile, petroleum based ferrtilizers are used. This is the argument advanced by anti-ethanol folks, to push the idea that ethanol cannot alleviate our dependence on foreign oil. However, this argument should really be recast in terms of cost/efficiency.

The argument is specious. If the above technology works, it will go long way toward replacing oil with ethanol.

(2) Also, as I said above, I see no reason why this technology should be limited to corn. Why not use rice, wheat, grass, trees, flowers, etc.? For example, many Asian countries are primarily rice consumers.

If the whole world started using this technology, the demand for oil could drop significantly.

corn isn't the crop they talk about doing this with, really, it's something called switchgrass. and i guess maybe hemp if you're Canadian or Lakota.

as for the K, S, P, i suppose you'd have some kind of sludge from the distillation process that you could return to the field. all we really want from the process are C, H, and O. slag from ore refining even finds its way into fields as a fertilizer. might can figure something out that won't be too much of a drain.

What are K, S, and P? I am curious.

Earlier, you also mentioned natural gas from distillation process. What gas is that? Would it be possible to use it?

Very likely, your economic analysis of corn stover removal sets the environmental cost at zero. Not the case...

RE organic matter, this just doesn't play out. Corn after corn requires some form of tillage. Strip till can be adequate for a year or two, but then more extensive means are required. Tillage causes rapid loss of soil OM via aerobic decomposition. Only recently, with wide-spread use of no-till, have soil OM levels rebounded. One cannot expect to remove vast quantities of residue and maitain soil quality.

Then there is the subject of soil erosion. Residue left in the field is the only real means of managing this problem.

Are you aware of the economics of transporting vast quantites of manure? Lb for lb, nutrient density is quite low. It has seen greater use recently only b/c petrol based fertilizer has become so expensive.




Miscanthus, miscanthus, miscanthus

K = potassium, S = sulfur, P = phosphorous

Minerals would be removed with the protein fraction (like the calcium in your whey), which then goes on to be sold as livestock feed. Seed oils are also removed, so no sludge remains.

Cellulosic ethanol is feasible, just not from corn in the manner described here.

Brazilian sugar cane derived ethanol would outcompete American corn derived ethanol, if it were not for US gov't subsidy and import duties.

Scrub trees from pasture lands have recently been utilized in the northwest. Sorghum, switchgrass, miscanthus, etc, etc are all seeing limited use or are in development. The perenials are rather nice, since seed and diesel are one of the farmer's greatest expenses.

Doubt anyone here watches the wheat, corn, and soy markets, but given the recent highs, don't except to see grains as the primary source of ethanol in the long term.

well, that's certainly an option. another option is to not fractionate.

i'm not really a fan of any of it to be honest. they can't even get positive energy balance using something easy.

are you serious? you know how to make moonshine, right? you ferment your corn mash, but then you've got to cook it to get the alcohol out. that requires building a fire. the way you build a fire on an industrial scale is by burning something like methane, propane, natural gas (mostly methane, i think).

so, all this "green" ethanol you're pumping into your SUV now to absolve your sins against Gaia... well, it's made with fossil fuels. and it takes more fossil fuel to make that gallon of ethanol than the energy you get out of it. ethanol, as produced now, makes things worse. but farmers love it because they get government money. yeah!

I've not said its cost is zero but its not unusual for farmers to remove the stover and bale it and use it for feed, something they would not do if augmenting the soil with synthetic or natural fertilizer was more costly than leaving the material on the ground. And there is also no reason the spent mash could be sprayed back on the field to return most of micronutrients which would not be removed in the distillation process.

In Brazillian sugar cane ethanol production the bagasse is routinely collected and burned to power the distillation process and the economics still seem to work out.

Until one of the major oil companies commit to large scale production of these alternative fuels, not a thing will happen. The capital and resources needed make this only a dream for even Gates and others with massive wealth, including most companies.

I also know many of you barked "conspiracy theory" when i said that oil companies will kill to prevent alternative fuels from coming to the forefront. If you know the numbers involved and still think that it isnt the case, your an idiot. (no offense to anyone in particular, JMHO)

Whoever controls the worlds energy controls the world. I dont even want to fathom the length that these companies HAVE and WILL go to.

ADM had 2007 net sales of $44B and Cargill posted revenues of $88B in 2007. These are not small companies.

I have heard different numbers.

The number I heard is that it takes about 20% of energy yield of ethanol is needed to produce the ethanol.

Also, 1 gal of gas = 0.65 gal of ethanol.

So, based on my numbers, it doesn't seem that bad (or at least it has a potential).

It's interesting to note that Bill Gates has bought up HUGE amounts of Mid-Western farm land.

"The number I heard is that it takes about 20% of energy yield of ethanol is needed to produce the ethanol.

Also, 1 gal of gas = 0.65 gal of ethanol."

You have it backwards. Ethanol has less energy than a gallon of gasoline.

The stichiometric air fuel ratio for ethanol is around 8.8:1 or lower. Gasoline is 14.7:1. Gasoline has more potential heat energy per gal, however you burn more ethanol=increase in heat energy. Its 6 to 1 and a 1/2 dozen to the other. However, ethanol is more temperature stable and more forgiving when it comes to load and detonation, but does not atomize as well as gas, nor have the latent heat vaporization rates of methanol. You can still go fast with it though. It does have a higher motor octane, so more compression and timing can be ran. (more timing becuase of the slower burn rate/octane, not neccesarily a good thing.)

I raced IHRA alongside this fella (www.ihra.com/profile/funnycar/mark_thomas.html) for a while. While we ran a TopFueler, my heart will always be in Alcohol cars/promods and me and him had plenty of indepth discussions on tuning. Ethanol is much more forgiving on his tune-up, and has a shitload of benefits over Methanol, with just a few drawbacks. As you can see by his performance, the shit works.

It is a very viable fuel source if the beauracrats let it happen.

Some drawbacks. Eth is more corrosive on fuel lines and tanks. This means modifying gas stations and vehicles. You get less mileage, so your tank that gets you 300 miles now takes you 240.

Piston rings and cylinder walls in vehicles are designed to work with gas. A top lube must be ran to avoid scuffing/scalling of cylinder walls.

Because of the slower burn timing has to be changed or engine damage can result in certain engines. Seasonal additives for eth are few and far between, and can create more pollution than an efficient gas burning engine.

Ill think of more shit, but my cat just crapped on the kitchen table.

Butanol is probably an altogether better biofuel replacement for gasoline than ethanol or methanol. It has 90% of the energy/volume of gasoline, it has higher octane and can be used to replace up to 1/3 of gasoline in existing unmodified engines. It can be made in the same plants that produce ethanol from the same feedstocks or you can use ATB's algae to make it.



Good luck with that...

Indeed, you are right.

This is some really neat work.

Sorry if this has already been posted, I have to get back to work:

An economics prof once mentioned a few points about ethanol the ones I remember are

If the entire corn crop (can't recall if this was N.A. , US, or world) was converted into ethanol we would only satisfied 3% of the U.S. energy demand
This increases the food prices resulting in an increased world famine

The 3% point was before this new information so things have changed. The second is extremely logical, another prof mentioned how much prices have increase since this big push - they were quite high, but personally I think emerging economies like China/India were not being considered.

total energy demand isn't what's at stake here. most of our energy doesn't come from oil, it comes from coal, hyrdo, and nuclear to generate electricity. what is at stake is transportation fuel supply. and yes, it will take a lot of farmland no matter which crops are used. that means less of our output goes to world food supply, and the price of tortillas in mexico goes through the roof.

brazil seems to do ok with this stuff, but they use sugar cane, and most of our land is in the wrong climate to grow cane, certainly not on par with brazil.

Unfortunately I never questioned what she was referring to as total energy, If her use was the literal definition that would seriously discredit the argument. Or was she referring to total oil energy, which would also have flaws. It was brought up in a lecture about China's energy problems where her term for energy changed often. That is the problem with stats and economics, there is more to them than what meets the eye.

The point was to help facilitate other perspectives. For instance I believe this mentioned prof doesn't think ethanol is so great since the largest consumption of oil is Polypropylenes and not your car. Not to sure how true that is though.

not sure, but it is true that oil is the source of much of our plastics.

whenever i finish i have a 15 page research paper delving into the inadequacies of corn ethanol i am working on...ill post it up when completed

The reason corn was selected was based on politics, not practicality. Did you know we are planting less corn this year than last? Makes a lot of sense doesn't it? It means food prices will keep shooting up. Hold onto your wallets because no matter if a demo or repub gets in, you are going to be screwed big time.

Yes, it does make a lot of sense. Have you see the price for soybeans lately? Farmers couldn't care less about how much Americans pay for gas or bread. They need to make ends meet. Cash rents, input costs, land prices, etc have all increased at staggering rates.

Thankfully, a number of polymers derived from natural fibers are already seeing limited use or are in development. DuPont's Sorona is the first to come to mind.