Study: Cellulosic Ethanol Better For Environment -- And Health

sciencedaily.com:

The study finds that cellulosic ethanol has fewer negative effects on human health because it emits smaller amounts of fine particulate matter, an especially harmful component of air pollution. Earlier work showed that cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation biofuels also emit lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study will be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February and will be posted online next week.

Read the whole story: sciencedaily.com

Comments

[frantaylor]

07:00 PM on 02/03/2009

Burning carbon is burning carbon, no matter how you dress it up.

[doctorkosan]

05:13 PM on 02/03/2009

I covered the "numbers" in the above blog. There is enough biomass to convert and replace gasoline. And the projected cost of second generation advanced fuel manufacturing facilities will be competitive with oil. Further with oil global supply and demand, its price will, in the long run, increase.

And we will not have to fight oil wars to subsidize the production of renewable fuels and they will not add to greenhouse gases.

What we need is a US energy policy that is seriously targeted to replace gasoline and diesel fossil fuels.

[DRaymond]

04:48 PM on 02/03/2009

And the big deal with cellulosic ethanol is that you are able to use the parts of the corn plant (stalks leaves, cobs) that are curently considered nearly worthless. So instead of competing with human food needs the ethanol production could essentially subsidize farmer's profits on the food production!

[frantaylor]

06:56 PM on 02/03/2009

That stuff usually gets plowed under and used as fertilizer, it's far from worthless.

[doctorkosan]

12:17 PM on 02/03/2009

A recent USDA study shows 1.4 billion tons per year of available renewable biomass (forest and crop). There are biomass to fuel conversion technologies that have been demonstrated at a conversion rate of over 110 gallons of biofuel produced per ton of biomass. All the USA available biomass converted at that rate would make 150 billion gallons per year of gasoline equivalents. And that equals the USA annual usage of gasoline.
So - yes we can convert to all renewable fuels to replace gasoline in the USA. It will take investment and will but technically it is doable.

[LALC]

11:48 AM on 02/03/2009

MUCH better than corn which requires loads of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides & all the other "cides"!
Thus ton of chemicals to grow a product not all that efficient - thereby polluting rivers, lakes, aquifers....

Switchgrass is native & perennial, tolerant of various soils, rainfall, locations, etc. It doesn't need to be replanted year after year (sort of like a lawn). A much more sustainable ethanol source & enviro friendly. Did read though that it requires more fossil fuels to produce than ethanol! But then, how much fossil fuel does it take to produce chemicals to grow corn?

[LALC]

11:50 AM on 02/03/2009

Also it does produce about 2x as much ethanol/acre.

[Jim Pivonka]

01:22 PM on 02/03/2009

The conversion of corn to ethanol is not in competition with corn's use as a food product - it is a new use for a byproduct of the corn used to feed cattle. The distillers grain produced by ethanol production plants is a higher quality, more efficient feed for cattle than the unprocessed corn would be.

Most corn is used as animal feed, most of that goes to cattle. Cattle do not - physiologically cannot - utilize the starch in corn as food. Extracting the starch and converting it to fuel does not reduce the amout of feed available to the cattle - they get all of the nutritive value they would have gotten from corn from the distillers grain. The cost of the starch used in the production of ethanol is reduced by sale of the distillers grain.

The effect on food prices of this is not through the impact of land values on the absolute utility and value of the corn crop. A new use for a previously waste corn byproduct makes the land used to raise the corn more valuable, that affects agricultural land values generally. It also *increases* the availability of corn for cattle feed - and reduces the cost of beef.

[Jim Pivonka]

01:52 PM on 02/03/2009

EDIT: In the last paragraph, the "not" in the first sentence should be stricken and the sentence edited to read: "The effect on food prices of this *is* through the impact on land values of the increase in the absolute utility and value of the corn crop."

[LALC]

03:37 PM on 02/03/2009

So you think if corn ethanol production takes off large scale, there won't be an increase growing corn? Doesn't make sense since you'll need loads more plant material. Cattle can only eat so much food. (And many animals can't utilize excesses amts of corn starch, people included).

You haven't mentioned switchgrass at all!

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

11:11 AM on 02/03/2009

Does anybody have any actual numbers of just how much of our liquid fuels bill we could reasonably expect to replace with CE? Or is this just another daydream that we are supposed to whoop with joy over because it comes with the label 'alternative energy,like the fraud of corn ethanol"?
In short is this another 1% solution claiming to be the savior of the world?
I'll believe otherwise when I see some real numbers, not just another breathless press release.

[Jim Pivonka]

12:59 PM on 02/03/2009

The idea of "real numbers" is not useful when discussing estimates of future conditions, as you are well aware. You should be concerned with "credible estimates", in the context you have implied. And with numbers based on past experience, and how those support reasonable projections of future conditions. You should be concerned with "transportation fuel" not liquid fuel; methane is used in liquid form in transport applications, but is not strictly liquid fuel.

The numbers are readily available. Google [brazil ethanol use percentage] to check that nation's experience in using ethanol as a liquid fuel.

Projections of "reasonably expected" future useage depend upon cost relationships between ethanol and other forms of transportation fuel. Many studies exist of the cost factors which determine the subsitution of ethanol for petroleum based transport fuels. Variation and uncertainty in petroleum and gasoline price inhibits the rate of capital investment in production of ethanol. Moderately high and stable oil prices would be desirable to stabilize that environment and encourage investment.

The rate at which the cost of ethanol production is driven down by development of new technology and raw material input crops affects projections of the end cost of ethanol, and its rate of substitution for gasoliine. The ability to substitute ethanol for petroleum to a degree which creates a permanent demand side cap on the relative price of gasoline and of petroleum feedstock is not in doubt.