Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Biofuels could meet 1/3rd US energy demand.

- (for transportation).

Growth in biomass could put U.S. on road to energy independence

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory looked at this issue raised and released a report you can view at link provided.

Their conclusion was that the U.S. could meet AT LEAST 1/3 of the energy needs for transportation using bio-mass sources (not just ethanol but also Bio-diesel).


The report states this could be accomplished:

"with only relatively modest changes in land use and agricultural and forestry practices.".

The report also states that the benefits achieved would be:

__ increased energy security (to me this is important) and

__ reduction of Green House Gases. (ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline prduces less GHGs than gasoline (e.g.CO2).

REgarding the corn as an ethanol source. Yes, sugar cane, and sugar beets produce more sugars for fermentation into ethanol. Brazil uses sugar cane and is the worlds leading producer of ethanol. I don't know how feasible planting sugar cane in the midwest would be but certainly in the South-East this may be a consideration.

It's worth noting that the productivity of farmers has been going up significantlyover the last couple of decades. They have been producing more corn with LESS FERTILIZERS over the last 20 or so years. Techniques such as No-till and Low-till farming, among others, are being embraced which reduce wind and soil erosion as well as evaraporation losses (which reduces fertilizer and insecticide needs) and have lead to improved productivity. 2005 was a bumper crop year for Corn. The farmers produced so much corn the grain elevator operators topped off their elevators and started piling up tons of corn on the ground! Maybe someone with some knowledge of agri-science can further illuminate us on this issue.

Of course to expand more quickly the percentage of ethanol used, increased imports of ethanol from Brazil would seem to be a good idea. Unfortunately, we have a 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Seeing as how the demand for ethanol now far exceeds our current ability to produce it (ethanol plants are being built as fast as they can but it will take a few years to build enough capacity to meet the demand.) it would seem a change in this policy would be appropriate.

Personally, I feel in order to address the very imminent risk of an oil supply disruption of 5% to 10% (terrorist attacks in Saudia Arabia and anywhere else, IRAN, political variables in Venequela, political instability in NIgeria, 2006,-7,-8 hurricane seasons) importing more ethanol from Brazil would be a very good idea.

The problem is that the energy industry is dominated by risk aversive traditionalists - who really believe that the only way to synthesize alcohols (MeOH, EtOH) from organic sources is by using zeolite porous silica-alumina catalysts at "elevated temperatures" and "elevated pressures" - highly capital intensive - but it sorta kinda looks like catalytic cracking -- and is followed by distillation. The "security blankets" of petroleum oriented chemical engineers.

The alternative, as described in many books, such as (by way of example only) "Bioprocess Engineering: Basic Concepts" by Michael L. Shuler and Fikret Kargi is to use good old saccharomyces cerevisiae "Yeast" - familiar to bakers, brewers, vintners. Room temperature and atmospheric pressure. No need to boil it to distill off the alcohol -- membrane technology (phoresis, dialysis) should work equally well.

It's just a generational thing for risk aversive engineers in risk aversive industries.

(Would you believe that I'm 65?)

inputs (yeah!). IT seems like many people with a technical background are often drawn to the MORE complex and technically Challenging ways of approaching a problem. I guess it's like some mountain climbers. They dismiss the 'easy' way up a mountain for the more difficult. Doing it the easy way doesn't do much for their "Cred" for daring and technical mastery. Likewise, many go into the technical fields because of the challenge. Later (after leaving the competitive atmosphere of academia) when trying to find practical solutions to real world problems they regard with contempt the 'simple', 'lower-tech' (i.e. more elegant) approaches to a problem . "How can I prove my technical prowess by using an approach so obvious and 'simple'". Plus of course, the ego of man finds it a bit of a comedown to admit that nature (that is billions of years of contention between complexity and entropy) still has ways that still can trump all the clever devices of man.

Of course, in the real world the simplest way is what one must strive for - at least in a world of diminishing resources ... or of more challenging paramaters.

Regards your age, I have found, with no small dissappointment, that many 'younger' people, who one would expect to be ready to embrace (if not celebrate) the innovative or more imaginative 'take' on an issue, are so inclined to prefer the comfort of a dogmatic presumption and reject out-of-hand that which seems too 'unconventional' to their group-centric sensiblilities (Japanese expression "the Nail which sticks up will be pounded Down"). Are we going through a mini-dark age??? (probably not. One needs to avoid letting short term perterbations obtrude into a longer perspective on things.)


That's QUITE a book you mentioned (checked out summary on Amazon)!

Thanks for your comments!