Bio-fuels .... good or bad? 16

[jmw]

Does anyone have any idea of the impact of bio-fuels? pros and cons?
We are no longer talking about recycling used chip fat here, but purposeful production.
Even as Bio-fuels begin to atract attention we hear about grain and meat prices rising, as we should expect when there is competition to turn our wheat into either bread or fuel.
We also have concerns about our environment. Indonesia is said to be prepared to plant more palms for the palm oil and that means more destruction of the forrests (more burning and smoke?) and loss of habitat to the already endangered (how seriously?) Orang Outang.
This report suggests Brazilian sugar cane as a source.

http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/24013816/BPCL-looks-to-tie-up-with-Petr.html

We all know that we are already losing rain forest at an alarming rate so how bad will this be? 600 acres doesn't sound like a whole lot of land but:
[ul][li] how much bio-fuel will it produce?[/li]
[li]Should bio-fuel be organic? (seriously, the impact of chemicals etc isn't just on foods but on the local ecosystems... )[/li]
[li]How much land would be required to produce enough bio-fuel to replace petrol/diesel?[/li]
[li]If we replace petrol/diesel with bio-fuel, how cost effective is secondary refining [/li]
[li]what are the impacts on the oil industry? Does crude get more expensive or less?[/li]
[li]what are the economic impacts of such changes on refining and thus on society?[/li]
[li]What are the questions we should be asking?[/li][/ul]


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[KENAT]

Saw an article on the news last night, or maybe this morning can't recal about Jatropha as a bio diesal crop.

The report said that it has energy per acre levels higher than soy which they said was already better than corn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatropha

There are obviously some issues with it still, and I'm still sceptical about widespread bio fuel generally but if we're determined to do it may as well try and do it well so this looks interesting.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[evelrod]

Interesting little clip in the paper this morning about the severe shortage of corn predicted for the coming year because of all the flooding. One little part was the statement as fact that it takes about 2 1/2 bu of corn to make one gal of ethanol...Fine. I don't know how accurate that is but with corn trading ~$7.00/bu I won't ever be able to afford ethanol as a motor fuel and I'm not much for shine. ;-)

Rod

 

[KENAT]

On the bright side though, there were some reports that some farmers will grow soy bean instead as it can be planted later.

So, combined with the information on the news clip I mentioned that soy is more energy dense per acre than corn then the price of diesal should plummet, right?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[civilperson]

Lots of propaganda in the above posts with few if any facts containing universal truths. Looking at Brazil and the biofuel industry there seems to prove the economics and technology of biofuel. Booming economy with over 35% of transportation fuels from plants.

 

[LCruiser]

civilperson -

One problem with Brazil is that they are destroying rainforest at a rate greater than any other *continent*. Since it's coming more and more to light that land use changes are having big regional climate effects, there's no telling what's going to come of that. Since they are destroying so much transpiratable vegetation, they may not end up with enough rain to make their sugar cane grow...

 

[KENAT]

The Brazil example came up before, I thought on this thread but must have been one of the other similar. As LCruiser points out, there are plenty of other issues that I'm not convinced that Brazil is the Gold standard of how to produce lots of bio fuel with out unintended consequences.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[patdaly]

Rod, currently the yield is around 2.8 Gal/ Bushel of Corn.

Corn is not the answer, but it is a stepping stone.

 

[LCruiser]

A stepping stone to increasing our taxes, not to mention third world starvation.

 

[cranky108]

Question, if corn is not the answer, and ethonol might be, what impacts would there be to changing to sugar cane or sugar beets?

What if we used other low BTU bio-fuels and bulked them up with coal to form propane? It is currently being used as a motor fuel now and is some what plausable.

 

[btrueblood]

The third world was starving long before the US became a major exporter of grain. As a US taxpayer, I prefer my money (tax subsidies for farming) coming back to me (in cheap ethanol) rather than going to feed people who 1. don't appreciate my help one whit (anybody see any planeloads of help from overseas going to the poor Iowa farmers working to sandbag their houses?), 2. don't have the developed economy necessary to warrant/support smaller families and so become more populous due to lower food costs, and 3. whose native farmers become poorer and less productive because cheap Yankee corn is competing with what they could have grown themselves.

Yes, a better solution is no subsidies at all, for any type of farming...but every legislator that has tried to do away with them has suffered for it. And, you and I would scream if we suddenly had to pay the real cost of our food, including variable/unpredictable increases due to droughts, floods, etc. Subsidies stabilize those variations by ensuring (usually) over-production for domestic uses.

 

[KENAT]

cranky, that questions been partially asked before.

Sugar cane needs certain climate to thrive, most of the US doesn't have that climate. I believe it may also be fairly demanding on the soil, not sure if more or less than corn.

I've asked the beets question before and never got a satisfactory answer as I recall, my own limited research didn't turn up much. Simplistically, give that beets are the preffered option for making sugar in temperate climbs you'd expect they'd be good for ethanol too. Part of it I'm sure is that in the US people already grow a lot of corn, there are corn subsidies etc - it's an established 'industry' on a very large scale.

If serious about ethanol how about lifting sanctions on CUBA to get access to their cane? Though they may have found new customers by now.

Given that the Diesel cycle is more efficient, and that soy beans supposedly get more BTU per acre for bio fuel I wonder if bio diesel is the way to go rather than ethanol. I believe less issues with distribution, modification of vehicles etc too but could be wrong. Then Jatropha is potentially even more area energy dense, plus drought tolerant so maybe that needs more research.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[KENAT]

Oh yeah, how about devoting some of the land spent growing things like tea, coffee, chocolate, tobacco and similar 'non critical food crops' to bio fuel production? Not sure how you'd do it (maybe tax those items somehow) but as a way to free up more agricultural land to get biofuel grown does it have any merit?

Still fundamentally I think biofuel is problematic due to the competitiong with food crops and quetionable efficiency.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[cranky108]

If we want to import sugar, we don't need to lift our restrictions on Cuba. We simply need to allow imports more than the current farm bill allows.
But that's politics, which I'm deffently not an expert, although I have my thoughts.

Also importing surgar from other countries will rise the price of food in the third world, which is what we are seeing with corn. However I would think sugar would be a better crop for making ethonol.

If we change to oil crops for biofuel won't we again be rising food prices for the third world.

I somewhat agree the third world isen't our child.
But KENAT has a point that it would be better if we paid tobacco farmers to grow soumthing useful, rather than paying them to not grow anything.
And I can somewhat say the samething about the goverment programs in the midwest to take farm land out of production.

 

[evelrod]

Still fundamentally I think biofuel is problematic due to the competitiong with food crops and quetionable efficiency.

As I agree, mentioned previously, I think that any bio fuel that impinges on food production is doomed to failure. In the U.S., desert areas of the southwest once were considered for the cultivation of the ubiquitous creasote plant. That was some twenty odd years ago. Anybody reasearching that possiblity lately?

Rod

 

[LCruiser]

If you want to talk about cost effectiveness, go here:

http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/hemp.html

 

[ewh]

Thanks for the link, LCruiser. I have asked those questions many times myself.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[patdaly]

Actually, we need to plant trees........ Diesel trees that is.

Too bad the only place they could currently survive ( at least in the US ) is parts of Florida.

But the Amazon could easily become the next big oil producing area.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copaifera_langsdorfii

 

[evelrod]

Sorry, Pat, with the arable land in Brazil being used for food and sugar cane...With thousands of acres of rain forest being destroyed for further cultivation of same...Where would you suggest we plant enough 'diesel trees' to supply even the smallest part of our fuel needs?

LCruiser...
While hemp is by far the best choice, IMO, for our immediate energy needs, the arcane notion that industrial hemp is the same as marijuana (a result of the cotton lobby and Dupont v. Henry Ford in the 1930's)...can we really expect our most evangelical society to accept hemp as a fuel alternative (as well as many, many other manufactured goods replacing 'oil') any time in the near future?

The state of the U.S. economy is in trouble...I think we can agree on that. The reasons are many and varied. All I can suggest is a careful comparison of the economy of 97/98 with 07/08 with an eye to the future. We have most probably two candidates to choose from for President this year, neither of which "can balance a check book"!

Rod

 

[jmw]

Algae:
It triples in volume every day, is a year round, not annual producer and its yields can be as high as 15,000 gallons per acres.
Corn yields are around 80 gallons and soy yields are approximately 40 gallons of biodiesel per acre (according to AAGC.)
AAGC is the American Algae Growers Corporation.

http://www.americanalgae.com/index_files/Page331.html

Sounds good.
Why do I get that "no such thing as a free lunch" feeling?
Am I just jaded? Why isn't all our money going into algae instead of wind farms?


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[electricpete]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

Algae fuel, also called algal fuel, oilgae[1] or third generation biofuel, is a biofuel from algae. Compared with second generation biofuels, algae are high-yield high-cost (30 times more energy per acre than terrestrial crops) feedstocks to produce biofuels.

Apparently the "high-yield" (per acre) part is valid, but the downside are the costs (not acreage) required produce it.


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