Ethanol from Hemp?

[HMS_Irruncible]

[QUOTE=Chronos]
Well, you still need some gasoline or the equivalent. The tractors and other farm machinery would need to run on some sort of volatile fuel, since you can’t really plug them into the electrical grid.
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Of course the initial creation of the ethanol production and distribution network would depend on current fuels, but once that’s in place and there is a reserve of ethanol, then you don’t need gasoline anymore. Farm equipment can run on methanol. (Of course this is contingent on a non-gasoline grid source)

That’s why I said that the best demonstration of corn ethanol’s viability (if it is indeed viable) would be a self-sufficient facility which did not import any oil, but did export fuel.

There’s no need to require an ethanol facility to be self-sufficient or even energy-positive. It just needs to not be grossly inefficient. As I’ve said, ethanol doesn’t have to be the primary source of energy, it is a means of transferring other sources of energy. You’re judging a secondary energy source by a standard that is only appropriate for a primary source like gasoline.

[Chronos]

There’s no need to require an ethanol facility to be self-sufficient or even energy-positive. It just needs to not be grossly inefficient. As I’ve said, ethanol doesn’t have to be the primary source of energy, it is a means of transferring other sources of energy. You’re judging a secondary energy source by a standard that is only appropriate for a primary source like gasoline.

That depends on what claim you’re trying to back up. If you’re considering ethanol as a secondary source, then yes, you’re correct. The same would also apply to, say, hydrogen. Production of hydrogen is guaranteed to be energy-negative, but it might still be worthwhile, since it converts the energy into a more convenient form. The catch is that, unlike hydrogen, ethanol could, in principle, be a primary source, and some folks claim that it already is. The best way to back up that claim would be a self-sufficient facility.

[Quercus]

As mentioned in a thread a few days ago, it’s not at all a settled question that ethanol is a net energy loser. The (as far as I know latest) study described at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/ethanol.html says basically that it depends on your assumptions: for instance, if you assume there’s value in the leftover product (used as animal feed), then ethanol becomes net energy positive (because you avoid using the extra fuel you’d otherwise need to grow more animal feed).

**Chronos **- As far as I know, every commercial ethanol facility is indeed a net energy gain, in the sense that the facility itself exports more energy in ethanol than it uses in non-ethanol fuel. In principle, with some efficient way to produce electricity from ethanol on a small scale, every plant could be run without any energy inputs except the corn (or whatever stock it uses). But that would be silly, because it’s way more efficient to produce electricty centrally. After all, oil refineries import electricity, too.

The question is whether growing the whole cycle – especially including growing the ethanol – uses up more energy than the plant nets. As I mentioned, it’s at least close. And remember, oil production isn’t energy free either, although I can’t quickly find any figures for energy cost of petro extraction and refining (Paging Una?)

[FRDE]

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Any part of the process could be described as ‘interesting’, or alternatively, none of it, for example, it’s interesting that yeast happens to excrete a volatile substance that can be used as combustible fuel.

‘Interesting’ isn’t an objective term
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Well, I was hinting at something.

The key part is photosynthesis, the rest of it is just juggling with trapped solar energy.

[Sage_Rat]

[QUOTE=justwannano]
So does that mean that if one liter of falling water will produce 1 juole of energy then our energy problems are over?
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Sort of. As your example shows, you need falling water. You can’t just take a bucket of water and power a car (at least not at the moment), while as you can build a dam and convert that to electricity for houses. So it’s not really an eligible replacement for oil.

Oil is feasible to get because the amount of oil it takes to pump oil is less than the amount of oil you do pump. For the cost of one liter of oil (one joule) you can, for instance, pump ten liters of oil. That’s why oil is profitable.

[Johanna]

[QUOTE=Blake]
Maize based ethanol plants use much more energy than they produce. They are net energy consumers.
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A big corporation called Archer Daniels Midland dominates the ethanol industry. ADM also has effective lobbyists in Washington who have gotten favorable subsidies for ethanol. ADM has deep pockets and gives millions to politicians of both parties. What ADM wants, ADM the fuck gets. The Cato Institute says “[E]very $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operations costs taxpayers $30.” Cite: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

Ethanol is a case of massive corporate welfare.

[Quercus]

[QUOTE=Johanna]
Ethanol is a case of massive corporate welfare.
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely true about ADM’s vast and evil influence. Do you think it’s larger than oil companies’ politicial influence?

[justwannano]

[QUOTE=Johanna]
A big corporation called Archer Daniels Midland dominates the ethanol industry. ADM also has effective lobbyists in Washington who have gotten favorable subsidies for ethanol. ADM has deep pockets and gives millions to politicians of both parties. What ADM wants, ADM the fuck gets. The Cato Institute says “[E]very $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operations costs taxpayers $30.” Cite: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

Ethanol is a case of massive corporate welfare.
[/QUOTE]

Ethanol is a case of massive corporate welfare.

Maybe some places.
The ethanol plants currently going up here in Iowa are privately owned . Illinois is following suit. I got a flyer in the mail the other day looking for investors for a plant near St Louis.

[Mangetout]

[QUOTE=FRDE]
Well, I was hinting at something.

The key part is photosynthesis, the rest of it is just juggling with trapped solar energy.
[/QUOTE]
That’s true; ultimately the absolute limiting factor in biofuels is the amount of solar energy falling on the fields in which the crops are grown - even if they were genetically engineered to be exceptionally efficient at storing solar energy in useable chemical bonds, there’s still a hard limit of somewhere around the high hundreds of watts per square metre in optimal conditions, at the equator.

[DanBlather]

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
The sugar could also be put to use for ethanol production though - I wonder how efficient that would be… (still not enough, I expect).
[/QUOTE]

The sugar from sugar cane is being used in Brazil to create ethanol. I was wondering why we are not looking at sugar beets as the source of that sugar since those grow better than cane in most of the US.

[Enola_Straight]

[QUOTE=Brain Wreck]
I just want to throw out a couple bits of information here:

1: People seem to be assuming that ethanol is an energy-negative proposition, but in fact that has not been decisively proven. In particular a DOE study suggests that ethanol is positive by a factor of 1.34

."
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Biodiesel is positive by a factor of 3.24.

[justwannano]

Dunno the processes for extraction but corn syrup is a sugar.

It may surprise many here but corn is a grass.

With the advances in genetics just give us a few years and they may find or create the near perfect alcohol producing plant.

The reason corn is the best bet right now to produce alcohol is that we know so much about it. Corn genetics is studied in ag schools. Most other plants would have to start at square one.

We now have a corn plant that produces more oil than its predecessors.

[Chronos]

That’s true; ultimately the absolute limiting factor in biofuels is the amount of solar energy falling on the fields in which the crops are grown - even if they were genetically engineered to be exceptionally efficient at storing solar energy in useable chemical bonds, there’s still a hard limit of somewhere around the high hundreds of watts per square metre in optimal conditions, at the equator.

True, but that’s pretty huge. If we could get anywhere near that kind of efficiency, we’d be on easy street.

We now have a corn plant that produces more oil than its predecessors.

Sure, nobody’s denying that progress is being made. The question is how quick is the progress, and is it enough?

[justwannano]

[QUOTE=Chronos]

Sure, nobody’s denying that progress is being made. The question is how quick is the progress, and is it enough?
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Gotta start somewhere.
Best to start with something thats already underway.
The first of the present day alcohol plants here in Iowa are only about 5 years old. Quite fast if you ask me.
Also bio diesel is being produced. Dunno about any plants that are near me but have some info on small scale (think individual farm sized) plants.
Also one big farmer near us used 100% biodiesel to plant and harvest last years crops. thats about 100,000 acres.
He also owns his own trucking company. Dunno if he is using soy to power the trucks.

[Mangetout]

[QUOTE=Chronos]
True, but that’s pretty huge. If we could get anywhere near that kind of efficiency, we’d be on easy street.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed - part of the problem is that plants don’t produce sugars, starches, cellulose, etc to be nice to us - they do it to survive - there will again be a limit to how far those processes can be subverted without starting to kill the plants (so maxiumum efficiency will probably be represented by a peak somewhere in the middle of the plant’s capability to produce useful chemicals)

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

[QUOTE=AskNott]
Mixed prairie grasses need to be planted once. They’re perennial. They’ll grow in poor soil. They grew wild here for centuries before we plowed it up to grow corn and wheat. There’s no need for herbicides, because weeds make good biomass, too. If bugs attack one kind of grass, the rest will survive. You need to make one pass in the late summer or early fall to harvest the tall grass.
[/QUOTE]
I fear you are over-estimating the productivity of prairie grasses.

They’re perennial, but so is alfalfa. You still need to plow it under & replant every few years, if you want to keep a good-producing field. (And rotating crops to another field is important too.) Otherwise your production drops each year.

They’ll grow in poor soil. So will lots of crops. But they won’t grow well. You will need to improve the soil (manure, mulch, wildfires, etc.) to produce a good crop. Wild grasses did fine when all they had to do was sustain themselves. But we want to harvest them regularly.

weeds make good biomass. Maybe, but not as good as the plants we want. To get the best harvest, we need to reduce the competition from weeds. (Weeds are generally more competitive than crops, because we have bred our plants to put more energy into producing crops than into reproducing themselves. Weeds put nearly all their energy into spreading.)

If bugs attack one kind of grass … then they’ll attack the others, too. While single-species parasites (corn borer, cotton weevil, etc.) are the most feared (because of how badly they damage that one crop), most bugs are quite happy to eat a variety of our plants.

You need to make one pass in the late summer or early fall to harvest. This would indicate a very poor production. Most hayfields get 3 cuttings in a year (that’s here in Minnesota, warmer areas get even more). One crop a year isn’t considered very productive for a grass crop.

Prairie grasses might work fine for the most marginal land – anything you get from there is a net gain. But for most of the arable land in this country, we can do much better with other crops.

[Johanna]

[QUOTE=Quercus]
Absolutely true about ADM’s vast and evil influence. Do you think it’s larger than oil companies’ politicial influence?
[/QUOTE]

Without knowing any specific figures, the impression I have of oil companies is that they have the biggest and evilest political influence of all, especially in the years 2000-present. So if the debate were about them, I’d be bustin on them.

[AskNott]

On most of your points, I bow to your wider knowledge. I do have a couple of quibbles, though.

[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
…
You need to make one pass in the late summer or early fall to harvest. This would indicate a very poor production. Most hayfields get 3 cuttings in a year (that’s here in Minnesota, warmer areas get even more). One crop a year isn’t considered very productive for a grass crop.

Prairie grasses might work fine for the most marginal land – anything you get from there is a net gain. But for most of the arable land in this country, we can do much better with other crops.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know how high wheat and alfalfa get if you don’t cut them three times a year (my guess is about knee high to a tall farmer.) If my guess is correct, there’s no point to letting wheat grow longer than it takes to get something to bale. I’ve seen a few demo plots of prairie grasses, and they got pretty tall. Is it three or four bales high? I don’t know. Every cutting uses petro-fuel, and that’s not getting any cheaper next year.

Even if you’re right about “fine for the most marginal land,” if every farmer planted prairie grass on his worst land, that’s a lot of biomass.

Aw, heck. Maybe I’m fulla organic fertilizer. My knowledge about this stuff is quite limited.

[justwannano]

[QUOTE=AskNott]
On most of your points, I bow to your wider knowledge. I do have a couple of quibbles, though.
I don’t know how high wheat and alfalfa get if you don’t cut them three times a year (my guess is about knee high to a tall farmer.) If my guess is correct, there’s no point to letting wheat grow longer than it takes to get something to bale. I’ve seen a few demo plots of prairie grasses, and they got pretty tall. Is it three or four bales high? I don’t know. Every cutting uses petro-fuel, and that’s not getting any cheaper next year.

Even if you’re right about “fine for the most marginal land,” if every farmer planted prairie grass on his worst land, that’s a lot of biomass.

Aw, heck. Maybe I’m fulla organic fertilizer. My knowledge about this stuff is quite limited.
[/QUOTE]

quote
. Every cutting uses petro-fuel, and that’s not getting any cheaper next year
quote

Not if you use biodiesel.

Heck they even make soy grease.

[Chronos]

weeds make good biomass. Maybe, but not as good as the plants we want. To get the best harvest, we need to reduce the competition from weeds. (Weeds are generally more competitive than crops, because we have bred our plants to put more energy into producing crops than into reproducing themselves. Weeds put nearly all their energy into spreading.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what we want from a plant grown for cellulosic ethanol is just a whole bunch of biomass, produced as quickly as possible, right? And isn’t that exactly what you get from a plant that puts nearly all its energy into spreading? It seems to me that the thing to do is to figure out what the dominant weed or weeds are for a particular area, and then grow that.