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."

Nature's solar panel

[schneidafunk]

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

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.

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: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.

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.

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 [wikipedia.org]

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.

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 [wikipedia.org] words per minute.

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

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

However if you are receiving information, people can read [wikipedia.org] 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