Giant Grass Can Meet US Biofuels Goal Using Less Land Than Corn Or Switchgrass

Giant Grass Can Meet US Biofuels Goal Using Less Land Than Corn Or Switchgrass

www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2008) — In the largest field trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have determined that the giant perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus outperforms current biofuels sources – by a lot.

Using Miscanthus as a feedstock for ethanol production in the U.S. could significantly reduce the acreage dedicated to biofuels while meeting government biofuels production goals, the researchers report.

Using corn or switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 20 percent of gasoline use – a current White House goal – would take 25 percent of current U.S. cropland out of food production, the researchers report. Getting the same amount of ethanol from Miscanthus would require only 9.3 percent of current agricultural acreage.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 4-8-2008 by grover]

It kind of makes you wonder why the push for the use of corn when even cane sugar produces higher yields with fewer steps... not to mention something like this...

.... I deeply suspect Monsantos and ADM have a hand in the reasons why.

www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

i'll get excited when it's phased in, around 2020 or so.

seriously, why corn, well, i guess that's backwards. first, the think tanks wondered how to initiate a price rallye, then they identified biofuels. next was the choice of crop - nothing too efficient of course.

tbh, any waste product should be used for fuel before planting dedicated fuel crops and even then, one-size-fits-all does not work very well in too many locations, does it? we keep hearing of using switchgrass for fuel, but the issue isn't so much a viable fuel source it's politricks, which currently revolve around corn. and food shortages.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 2008.8.5 by Long Lance]

That's still 10% of the arable land. Whilst i welcome this brilliant new research, it still shows that we are using land that could be used for food. There are approximately 6.7 billiong people on this earth, many starving, and the population is increasing by roughly 300,000 each year. If we give land over to biofuels then we'll be left with a starving population once the breaking point is reached.

Biofuels out, thats what i say.

Interesting development.

I was listening to a radio show the other day, a economical station, discussing the use of bio-feuls.

Most people in the discussion (Mostly succesfull buisnessmen, ofc) were hesitant of the use of Bio-feuls.

Mostly because it just feels wrong to put a year worth of food for a small village into your car and burn it, as one of the people stated. I must say I agreed with him. Though ofcourse Oil isnt a much better alternative seeing how dirty that buisness is, when it comes down to a moral disiscion it just "feels" more wrong.

Personally I don't support bio fuel, there is a lack of food in the world already, and those acres are much better spent for that.

Hydrogen-powered cars seems alot more feasable to me in the end.

There is a company somewhere around here that makes fuel from kudsu, a vine that grows like a foot a day. They said it could me made for around 2.00 a gallon. Sorry right now I only have dialup, but I know wcybtv.com showed the story a few months ago, so if you do a search you should be able to find it, or it might be on you tube.

IMO even if you change the crop from a food crop to one that is inedible the farmers would still use the land for the fuel crop. The good thing about kudsu, is it grows quite well in forests, and hilly places that farmers normally don't use anyway. Thus this way they could raise a food crop on the farmable land, and grow kudsu elsewhere on their property, thus giving the oportunity to make more money by being able to grow both crops.

Brazil uses Sugar Cane ....

the USA has been corraled to use corn for the bio-fuel source...

its a matter of what source can be the best/efficient supply for bio-fuel
the USA cannot generate large Sugar Cane farms with our climate/rainfall,
Brazil is 'blessed'... the USA is not --its that simple !

maybe the God-of-our-Fathers is 'closing up the Heavens' (a euphanism)
for all the corruptness and such 'we' have been perpetuating on the world.

What about hemp?

It's not just great as far as weight-fuel goes, but there is about three million other wasteful, polluting things that it would replace in the process.

Originally posted by grover


It kind of makes you wonder why the push for the use of corn ...

.... I deeply suspect Monsantos and ADM have a hand in the reasons why.

for sure, their lobbyists have convinced Congress and have a several billion$ program already set in policy.


i just wonder why the Natural Gas proponents, including that Texas Billionaire getting media attention lately, did not lobby harder...

the
USA has enough natural gas to become 95% self reliant (or so the spin goes),
instead of imported oil for the gasoline refineries the USA could have made a national priority of retrofit the present day gasoline fuel infrastructure with natural gas or liquified natural gas vehicles.


These congress persons and their staffs get primo pay to sift through propositions like ethanol-from-corn, to see if its feasible...
and the obvious didn't smack them in the head?
i.e. corn is inefficient as a source,
grain crops need excessive water,
diverting basic food crops to fuel shrinks the supply of grain as a staple.


duuuh

TPTB are not really interested in producing enough biofuels to drastically reduce the cost of oil, nor do they really care about the environment. In fact, I'd wager a bet that they don't even REALLY care about whether there is enough food to go around, nor whether the average folks can afford to buy it.

If they did care, they'd consider bamboo.

Bamboo has a myriad of uses:

Bamboo absorbs more carbon dioxide and produces 30% more oxygen than an equal area that is planted with trees.

Bamboo leaves consist of up to 15% protein, which make it excellent food for animals (I've also heard of people eating it).

According to this website, bamboo would make an equally good biofuel as any other wood product.

What makes bamboo stand out the most is it's incredible growth rate (some species grow AT ALMOST 2 INCHES PER HOUR). We could grow all we needed and more.

The best part is that it will grow where other crops will not, on non-arable land. In fact, it will grow just about anywhere. So we wouldn't have to take up precious farmland to grow supplements for our fuel!

I should point out a small problem with judsu and other bamboo related plants. They spread rather easily and are horribly invasive. The city on London here in the UK is having some problems. Some local resident (no one knows who) got a sample of this plant and it's taken over. It breaks up concrete, strangle natural species and basically causes a hell of a lot of trouble. It's rhizones can penetrate solid steel plate, concrete and brickwork.

Be very careful with invasive species.

The problem with using corn is that first you have to convert its starches to sugars first before you can then process it into ethanol... when you use sugar cane or even sugar beets that step is all but eliminated.

There was a National Geographic recently that focused on the whole process and it was quite interesting... of the processes studied... ethanol from corn, sugar cane and bio mass the least efficent was from corn and the most efficent was from bio mass.... and considering how wasteful Americans as a rule are... it would make sense to use bio mass...

... and given the fact that corn is the least efficent process with the most steps one has to wonder why it is the one being pushed in this country.

I'm still leaning away from biofuel.

The issue of crop land versus biofuel land is a tricky balance to overcome.

However, other alternative fuel sources (solar, wave, and hydrogen) can be manufactured in unusable areas of land, and off shore, meaning it doesn't have to interfere with current crop output, nor living/commercial sectors.

The biofuel solution albeit might be a temporary solution, to ween us off direct oil dependency, but we still need to chose a long term permanent solution.

With the invention of direct solar to hydrogen cells that MIT is researching, hydrogen might just end up being that solution.
On the other hand, battery technology is also advancing so rapidly that the permanent solution may also end up being electric vehicles.

It's a race for efficiency at the moment. Whoever wins, gets their place in the worlds transportation market.

But gasoline is quickly becoming a non-viable option. Every day we are shown reasons to get away from oil based fuels. Not just from the environmental aspect, but also financial, and in the risk of resource warfare in the future. (Of which I'm certain we are already entering at the moment.)

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
I should point out a small problem with judsu and other bamboo related plants. They spread rather easily and are horribly invasive. The city on London here in the UK is having some problems. Some local resident (no one knows who) got a sample of this plant and it's taken over. It breaks up concrete, strangle natural species and basically causes a hell of a lot of trouble. It's rhizones can penetrate solid steel plate, concrete and brickwork.

Be very careful with invasive species.

You are correct. That is the main drawback to bamboo. Sorry I failed to mention that in my post. My wife's parents planted a few bamboo in their back yard a few years back, and now it grows everywhere in their yard, just popping up randomly. It's terrible on their lawnmower blades.

Good eye.

Yes those species are invasive but if it is being harvested for fuel and cut back every so often to sell perhaps it could be controlled better. But you are right it is defintely invasive and hard to kill once it begins anywheres.

Right now I am struggling with a hummingbird vine, it is a difficult plant to kill also and keeps popping up, I keep cutting it back and so far it has not taken over the yard, but since I have been sick and I have been inside more it is happily moving everywheres.

Those Lady Bird Johnson roses, we call them that because it was planted during her beautifucation of the highway program, they bloom once a year, beautiful white roses, but the seeds blow and they have now taken up residence on every farm I know of, and also on the roads and in yards. I have them growing wild in my yard and we live thirty miles from a major highway where they were first planted. Most people snurl their noses when saying her name, it's nothing political, it those darn roses. LOL

Originally posted by endless_observer
You are correct. That is the main drawback to bamboo. Sorry I failed to mention that in my post. My wife's parents planted a few bamboo in their back yard a few years back, and now it grows everywhere in their yard, just popping up randomly. It's terrible on their lawnmower blades.

Good eye.

The reason it pops up everywhere is because they propogate themselves mainly by rhizones. These are like modified roots which go underneath the ground and create a new parent plant once they get far enough from the original. Bamboo rhizones are awful, i remember down my local allotment a guy started growing some in pots. The rhizones actually grew out of the pots and it took us a hell of a lot of work to get rid of it. We basically dug up 3 feet of soil in a 25 foot square area. It took most of the people from the allotment to do it.