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Grass makes better ethanol than corn does (2008)
- euroderf 3y agohttps://archive.is/sWTQJ https://archive.is/sWTQJ
- unglaublich 3y agoStop using fertile land to produce fuels for energy hungry cars and energy for industry. Use fertile land for FOOD. Then, use all the rest of the land for energy production: roofs, parking lots, infertile land.
- irjustin 3y agoQuestion, don't we have enough food production[0]? Basic search says we're doing well enough in that regard. [0] https://news.thin-ink.net/p/we-produce-enough-food-to-feed-15#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20world%20produces%20150,1.5x%20the%20global%20population https://news.thin-ink.net/p/we-produce-enough-food-to-feed-1....
- mcv 3y agoWe could easily feed everybody. We just choose not to. And we could feed even more if we just ate less beef.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoOne reason is a lot of food grown is used as animal feed. It's a lot more efficient to take soy beans and process them into tofu and other foods, like they do in Japan, than to use it as cattle feed (which is where most soy goes) It's also an issue of distribution and local production, eg countries making food for export rather than to feed their own population. Like in Honduras the people grow strawberries and cattle for export rather than beans and corn for local use.
- bequanna 3y agoI hear you. I live in the Midwest and see endless monoculture fields dedicated to mostly corn and soybeans. It’s very disappointing. I think the tough part is finding crops fit for human consumption that actually grow in these areas and can be farmed efficiently at scale. Soy is not a great example IMO because it is difficult for humans to digest without fermentation.
- Synaesthesia 3y agoSoy has so many uses, in Japan they find 101 uses for it. In fact I like it just as it is, soaked and boiled and cooked in a curry.
- vsareto 3y agoThe US throws out tons of food so we probably need less here, actually
- cubefox 3y agoNuclear power plants use of land is almost zero compared to wind farms and solar parks.
- radicalbyte 3y agoIt's good that we started building an insane number of said plants 20 years ago. I'm a fan of nuclear but it just takes too long to deploy compared to wind/solar and that is an absolute killer for ROI (and the climate). We should be building out but only as a secondary/support not as the main source of energy.
- cubefox 3y agoThe slow building times are more due to regulatory overreach. Wind/solar are more expensive overall, as Germany shows.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago>I'm a fan of nuclear but it just takes too long to deploy compared to wind/solar and that is an absolute killer for ROI (and the climate). Unless you build it like Koreans.
- pvaldes 3y agoBut if something goes wrong they will grab this areas and several Km around, for thousands of years, banning people to live there.
- cubefox 3y agoIn Fukushima most of the area is safe now: https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/fukushima-exclusion-zone-tour-is-it-safe-to-visit-41130 https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/fukushima-exclusion-zone-... So the only large permanent contamination seems to have happened in Chernobyl.
- lavela 3y agoIf you take mining and the fact that solar power can be installed on top of existing infrastructure into account, the comparison of land use is still in favor of nuclear, but definitely not "almost zero".
- throw3823423 3y agoIf your goal is maximizing acreage for farming, a pretty good idea would be to get rid of land dedicated to our number one crop: grass that gets mowed. We spend over 40 millions of acres in lawns, as farms get replaced with subdivisions that are well over 50% lawn, and most of the rest is asphalt. Your typical American metro area is very low density, but not because it has a lot of land dedicated to farming, or old growth woods, but because we dedicate so much space to very low density development that erases whatever was in that land in the first place. The trees are not local, the plants aren't local, and neither is the concrete.
- Llamamoe 3y agoMaybe there could be a business idea in AI-powered semi-automated(remote oversight) lawnmowing that pays for itself by collecting the grass for ethanol production.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agowhat is "better ethanol"? seems like grass can be used more efficiently than corn for making ethanol is what it means.
- thegridre 3y agoSwitchgrass is a natural solar panel that converts sunlight into chemical energy. It has many benefits, like improving soil quality, storing carbon, and reducing emissions. It can also be burned with coal in existing plants, which is convenient. Switchgrass is a promising biofuel that can help us transition away from fossil fuels. It has a lot of potential to grow in various conditions and produce high yields with low inputs. It also has a positive environmental impact by sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gases. Switchgrass is not without its challenges, but they are not insurmountable. It needs more research and development to make it more efficient and cost-effective. It also needs more support from farmers, scientists, and policymakers who are working to make it a viable option. I think switchgrass is a great idea, and I’m excited to see how it evolves in the future.
- anon291 3y agoCorn is a grass so without saying which species of grass do this, the title is useless.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoSwitchgrass farming would be no-till farming, and on net would probably increase (and stabilize) the carbon content locked in soils. Another respect in which it would be much better than corn for ethanol. The exact effect appears to depend on soil quality, e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-00916-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-00916-y
- michaelcampbell 3y agoYes, but the corn growers lobby makes more "donations" to politicians than the grass growers lobby does.
- dmbche 3y agoThis video is an interesting look at this whole issue:(Engineering Explained - America Was Wrong About Ethanol) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU Especially his summary, where corn creates 20 percent less GHG than gasoline and ''breaks even'' after 28 years, while switchgrass creates 94% less GHG and breaks even in it's first year.
- jvanderbot 3y agoSwitchgrass farmers don't vote enough. The whole ethanol thing was just to prop up corn prices and production during election runs.
- PaulHoule 3y agoHow practical is it really? They’ve been talking about ethanol from cellulosic biomass since at least the 1970s but progress seems about as fast as fast breeder reactors.
- bluGill 3y agoThe idea looks sound, but cellulose is hard to break down. If it wasn't bacteria would have figure it out long ago (before the dinosaurs ago)
- xyzzyz 3y agoNo, that’s not right. Cellulose decomposition is easy. You are probably thinking about lignin decomposition, which is typically done by fungi, not bacteria.
- soperj 3y agoThere's a number of animals called Ruminants that do it regularly no?
- bigbillheck 3y ago
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- bumby 3y agoIsn't part of the idea that corn makes more sense to subsidize because it multi-use? I.e., it can be food and fuel? >"This is an energy crop that can be grown on marginal land," This seems like the lede and comparison to corn is missing point and opening itself up to counterpoints that detract from the value of using grass on land that would otherwise probably only be used for grazing.
- dragontamer 3y agoThe land-conversion from forest or grassland into farmland is a surprisingly large effect on the environment. Making Ethanol from natural grasses and keeping the land natural is one of the best things we can do for the environment, as well as creating an alternative means of capturing solar energy. You know... if we can get it to be commercially successful. If we can't sell the darn thing, then it'd never happen. But the theory is sound and enough prototypes have been created that we know how this works.
- bumby 3y agoHow much current grassland is used for grazing? Works there be any potential pushback from, say, cattle ranchers who would be otherwise using the land or is there a plentiful amount of otherwise land unused for agriculture?
- dragontamer 3y ago> there a plentiful amount of otherwise land unused for agriculture? More like land that "shouldn't" be converted into agricultural lands (or ranches for that matter) I'm not sure if "grazing" is an issue, because the argument is what should we be encouraging our private farmers to be doing. (While "Grazing" questions tend to be a question on public lands IIRC) If you own 100 acres of wilderness, you can cut down all the trees and replace the grass with corn... or maybe you can leave the natural grass and harvest it instead. Natural grass grows wildly, its perfectly suited for the wild environment to grow quickly. Learning how to take advantage of the natural state of American land is a good idea. The question at hand is "is this a _profitable_ idea?" and that remains to be seen. I know they've been working on various chemistry, biofuels, etc. etc. to try to take advantage of natural grasses for a few decades now.
- phtrivier 3y agoThe article is from 2008. What happened in the 15 next years on this front ? Is any biofuel actually produced this way ? How many cars can use it ? Or is the submission a troll on modeling ?
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biofuels/ethanol-supply.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/biofuels/ethanol-supply.... https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=27&t=4 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=27&t=4 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=90&t=4 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=90&t=4 https://apnews.com/article/ethanol-e15-gasoline-midwest-epa-40550ba65a308617fdc490dcf9e57ad9 https://apnews.com/article/ethanol-e15-gasoline-midwest-epa-... Coincidently, increasing EV sales threatens ethanol production, so there are calls for increasing ethanol in fuels to compensate. Subsidies typically don't die quietly, unfortunately.
- jerrysievert 3y ago> Coincidently, increasing EV sales threatens ethanol production, so there are calls for increasing ethanol in fuels to compensate. I already have to search out "clear" gas to gain back the 25% mpg loss I receive when I use ethanol (currently 15% I believe in Oregon?). I fear what adding more will do. if I don't use clear gas, I have to run my car a lot more often, which is also not good.
- Nullabillity 3y ago25-30% is roughly the difference I see between E10 and E85. I'd be very surprised if E0 and E10 had the same difference in mileage.
- sidewndr46 3y agoI accidentally got ethanol free gas one time and was baffled at the sky high fuel economy I was getting for that whole tank.
- soperj 3y ago
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- mewse-hn 3y ago"It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides so.. nobody can ferment it but it gives a higher ethanol yield than corn.. how does that work
- Magnap 3y agoThe issue is not so much that it's cellulosic as that it's lignocellulosic; we have a pretty good grasp these days on cellulose (and hemicellulose, but we can handle that too so I'll skip over it). Lignin is (oversimplifying, but not by too much) what makes the difference between soft paper pulp and hard woodchips. The lignin crosslinks the (hemi)cellulose and makes it much harder to access for the enzymes we'd use to break down the cellulose, while itself being very difficult to break down (it's thought that the whole reason we have coal is due to how long it took for fungi to evolve the enzymes needed to break down lignin effectively in order to degrade wood). You need a bunch of equipment and/or biochemical processing to break down lignocellulosic plant matter into something that can be efficiently fermented (keyword: "lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment"), so while thay may be available at a lab scale, it's not necessarily possible on an industrial scale (yet). As one example, there's a method called "steam explosion" where you apply very hot (around 160-260 °C) and high-pressure (tens of atmospheres) steam to the biomass, then release the pressure relatively fast. The hot steam causes chemical reactions like hydrolysis, and the pressure release breaks down the material physically as the steam expands. Imagine the sort of equipment you'd need to do that on an industrial scale. Nowhere out of reach for modern chemical engineering, but someone has to build it. Now, as you might imagine from how relatively non-woody switchgrass is, it doesn't have a ton of lignin compared to trying to ferment woodchips, but it still has enough to be problematic, and in fact there's research being done on how to reduce its lignin content, such as by genetic engineering.
- zdragnar 3y agoFermenting on a tiny scale in a lab is fundamentally different than fermenting on a commercial production scale. Basic calculations of energy density + small experiments support the assertion, but without a working larger scale production that can consistently yield ethanol (i.e. preventing the bacteria responsible from being displaced by wild strains, yeast or other fungi, ensuring batches run to completion, etc) it's nothing but a prediction.
- bluGill 3y agoCorn is a type of grass. So is sugarcane. (The article is about switchgrass, not generic grass) I know attempts have been made to use more than just the corn seed into ethanol. The big disadvantage is that you take away a lot of nutrients from the soil forever. Sulphur for example doesn't go back, and so the more of the plant you take away, the more you have to add back as fertilizer .
- sidewndr46 3y agoIf only there were at thick black viscous substance rich in sulfur that was present in the Earth's crust we could harvest easily, then extract the sulfur, & then use to create fertilizer.
- pstuart 3y agoseems like the waste from digesters could be returned back as fertilizer.
- legulere 3y agoI don’t know switchgrass, but with miscanthus another perennial grass, at some point the nutrients mostly get taken back to the roots and what you harvest has a very low mineral content.
- myshpa 3y agoCorn-Based Ethanol May Be Worse For the Climate Than Gasoline, a New Study Finds (2022) Long touted as a renewable fuel emitting 20 percent fewer greenhouse gasses than gasoline, ethanols’ emissions may be 24 percent higher. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16022022/corn-ethanol-gasoline-climate-change/ https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16022022/corn-ethanol-gas... https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2101084119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2101084119
- raverbashing 3y agoHere's the secret: don't make it from corn. At least not until you manage to convert the whole plant to Ethanol, stalk and all (I mean it's not a secret, more than the US being overly invested on corn)
- sproketboy 3y ago[dead]
- credit_guy 3y agoIn reality ethanol is not used as a renewable fuel, although it is touted as such. It is simply used to increase the octane rating of gasoline. Without ethanol we'd need lead. Or some stuff that would be worse. Or, we'd put up with the lower octane rating, and so less efficient engines, and fewer mpg, and more CO2 emissions.
- olliej 3y agoI was at least 20 before I realized the 87, 95, etc weren't release years (I think at least in part because I only became aware of them when NZ banned leaded gas in 96, and at the same time "unleaded 95" became something being advertised as the advertisers started advertising fuel grades like super)
- bombcar 3y agoUnleaded 98 SE was the best gas.
- rdevsrex 3y agoWho didn't already get that ethanol was about corn subsidies and not the environment?
- hammock 3y agoProbably a lot of people the same way many don't get what so many other climate change initiatives are about
- Gordonjcp 3y agoMeanwhile as part of the process of making plastics, we're flaring off enough propane and butane to run millions of cars.
- ilyt 3y agoLPG is reasonably popular in some places.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoI run both my Range Rovers on it, which in the grubbier parts of cities where you get a lot of diesel buses and taxis means that strictly speaking it's not just a "Low Emission Vehicle", it's a *Negative* Emission Vehicle.
- dmbche 3y agoI'm trying to understand - why is it negative emissions? I'm unfamiliar with LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), it's a byproduct of something else? It just seems like it's produced like gas normaly is, it's just cleaner by 30ish%. Could you tell me more or direct me somewhere? Edit: https://newatlas.com/materials/catalyst-mixed-plastic-waste-propane-recycle/ https://newatlas.com/materials/catalyst-mixed-plastic-waste-... I think this is it
- rrlevy 3y agoI still find it crazy that we are capturing solar energy on plants, growing them, and then burning them to get energy to move our cars… It seems so much more intuitive to just capture solar to electricity and use an electric car…
- anon291 3y agoWell we can store corn and oil and can't really store electricity.
- rrlevy 3y agoBTW, I live in Brazil where ethanol from sugarcane is widespread
- anenefan 3y agoYes, I assume in regions with an ideal climate, sugar cane crops average around 50 tonnes/acre or roughly 125 t/Ha. [Note ^1 - average over all in Brazil this year is 70.5t/Ha] Using this lower average, if the yield averages around 14 ccs (roughly 1/7 sugar) the 70.5 tonnes translates to about 10 tonnes of sugar. Going the ethanol route under ideal conditions would derive around half that weight as ethanol, but ethanol is relatively easy to handle as a fuel source since the petro industry already has much of the infrastructure in place, as well as letting older engines that don't have much use remain in service. (I suspect that older pre fuel injection engines would be fine with 80% ethanol, 20% water.) However since electric cars are now not the stuff of science fiction, it maybe makes more sense to investigate and use sugar to power a fuel cell instead. [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/742523/sugar-cane-yield-brazil/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/742523/sugar-cane-yield-...
- dmbche 3y agoIt's a lot less work per Kwh to harvest the energy that plants store than what would be needed to make and maintain solar panels to make the same amount - I assume
- adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- eyelidlessness 3y agoI’m having a pedantically tough time with this headline. It’s like saying “pork makes better lard than ham”, or “grain makes better whiskey than rye”. Maybe that’s true, the superset might have better properties for the purpose than the subset? But it’s a really strange distinction to make.
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- pkphilip 3y agoWould this work with regular lawn grass? if so, you could think of having huge amount of this raw material for ethanol production worldwide.
- tylerag 3y agoI used to mow lawns. We would dump the clippings into a pasture to feed the cows. They absolutely loved it, and would come running when they heard our truck. The rancher told us to stop after one of them died of a weird illness. There's a a lot of nasty shit people spray on their lawns to make them look nice and green.
- rootusrootus 3y agoJust nitrogen for the green part. The nasty chemicals are for weed and pest control.
- photochemsyn 3y agoJust take the CO2 from the atmosphere, concentrate it to a 100% pure CO2 stream, then generate a 100% H2 stream from water, blow off one O to make CO (carbon monoxide), now we're into well-characterized Fisher-Tropsch and Sabattier processes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction Why on earth would you devote a scrap of quality agricultural land to ethanol production? You might as well just compost lost crops, get better production later. Seriously, biofuels are like raising seals in pens so you can kill them and get lamp oil from their blubber, it's just stupid.
- jabl 3y agoYes. Another variation on this scheme (which AFAIK the Porsche synthetic fuel plant in Chile is doing) is producing methane from atmospheric CO2 and H2 from electrolysis, then converting methane to methanol (how most methanol is produced today, albeit from fossil methane (natural gas)), and finally converting methanol to gasoline with the methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process. But in the context of corn ethanol in the USA, none of this has anything to do with the environment or sane economics, it's all just an agricultural subsidy scheme.
- baseline-shift 3y agoThat article was 15 years ago, back in 2008. If it was a better alternative, we'd have seen it by now.
- activiation 3y agoMaybe it's because corn is subsidized.
- RajT88 3y agoYou are correct that there's no better alternative. But that's not according to emissions or energy density. It's about Politics. Politically, there's no better alternative to corn ethanol.
- sircastor 3y agoI recall among the early 2000s the right wing push to slow down adoption of electric vehicles with President Bush giving some sort of pro-ethanol push in front of some switchgrass. It seemed bizarre to me that corn kept on being pushed when a non-food option was available. But obviously none of this was ever about what “made sense”
- aaronbrethorst 3y agoCorn-based Ethanol is used to curry favor with Iowans who hold (for Republicans) the first in the nation presidential primary contest (actually a caucus, but it’s the first voting event on the primary calendar). It was also the first in the nation voting event for Democrats until the IA Democratic Party thoroughly botched the 2020 caucuses.
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoYes but corn makes better campaign donations than grass does.
- hannob 3y agoIf you want something that is more up-to-date and covers this topic, here's a good podcast: https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-going-on-with-biofuels https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-going-on-with-biofuels Most important fact: All these promised second generation biofuels technologies, from which switchgrass was one, didn't happen.
- red-iron-pine 3y agowhy didn't they happen? im not in a place to listen to a podcast