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Cellulosic Ethanol ETA
I would like to develop a credible estimate of when cellulosic ethanol will be technologically and economically feasible. Do you nave any online resources, especially government funded research publications, which I could use to do this? My email address is GeorgeKeithWatson@gmail.com.
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Inappropriate?Mr Watson: This concern for cellulose energy and all biofuel crops misses the point on getting control of global warming. Too much carbon dioxide and other GHGs are already making a mess of the environment, and biofuels are simply recycling carbon dioxide without reducing the overload in the atmosphere. All biofuels have 50% or more of the trapped carbon go off as carbon dioxide during fermentation, and much energy has to be put in to distill the ethanol. The TIME, April 7 issue with the front cover lead article on the clean energy myth delved into part of this. Will relay some more to your e-mail address
Dr. James Singmaster -
Inappropriate?Considering that all of the carbon sequestered in the oil and natural gas that we are burning for energy originally came from the atmosphere, it is perhaps an overreaction to say that the environment is a mess because we're putting it back. Prehistoric plants are the source of fossile fuels, hence the name "fossil." Plants "breath in" CO2 , keeping the carbon in the form of sugars and cellulose, and "exhale" oxygen. The dead plant material piles up in the top soil, which then gets buried and under the pressure and heat underground transforms chemically and physically into oil and natural gas pockets.
The real problem facing the world is how to diversify our energy supplies in order to avoid international conflict over this essential resource of civilization. Cellulosic ethanol would supply a cheap source of energy which would last forever and be entirely producible domestically. I've studied the energy requirements of distillation, and they are a small fraction of the output from combustion of ethanol. This does not rule out solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, or any other economically feasible source of energy, but based on my research, cellulosic ethanol will be the most economical fuel choice for transportation for a number of decades once it is abundant and cheap.
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Cellulose breakdown and even lignin breakdown appear to have been reported recently with an internal enzyme now being bioengineered into corn DNA. But you are probably going to be losing another carbon or two in carbon dioxide for the energy to do it. So you end up with 3-4 maybe more carbon lost for every two in a molecule of ethanol. So I don't think that bioethanol is really very viable because too much of the carbon gets lost on the way to the ethanol more so with having having the cellulose and lignin broken down.
The distilling is only part of the energy input as there are energy costs planting, harvesting and preping at the distillery. And there is the nitrogen fertilizer runoff problem that has caused expanding dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. You can not grow corn without nitrogen fertilizer, which has considerable energy costs to make. Dr. David Pimentel at Cornell has many papers out on bioethanol foolishness, several of which indicate that total solar energy landing on the USA, if turned into harvestable plant crops for bioethanol, would only produce perhaps half our present fossil fuel requirements. Of course no food would be grown to achieve that although there would a lot of fermentation residue to feed cattle. Also once you get into massive monocropping, a plague of some kind gets optimum chances for a massive incursion as occurred with the fungus causing the Irish potato famine. Dr. J. Singmaster -
Inappropriate?I should have added to my last comment that corn takes huge amounts of water, and that may get into problems with water for human use in OK, KS, AK and TX. Perhaps 5-10 years ago, the big aquifer underneath the area was severely depleted with some small cities having strict water controls, although recent weather has probably replenished it.
Dr. J. Singmaster
