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Subject:
Cellulose ethanol
Category: Science > Agriculture and Farming Asked by: marinibug-ga List Price: $20.00 |
Posted:
19 May 2006 17:37 PDT
Expires: 18 Jun 2006 17:37 PDT Question ID: 730570 |
Is there enough land to grow cellulose ethanol needed to supply the world's fleet of automobiles in the future? |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: Cellulose ethanol
From: markvmd-ga on 19 May 2006 21:26 PDT |
No, not even close. |
Subject:
Re: Cellulose ethanol
From: neilzero-ga on 20 May 2006 20:12 PDT |
Assuming markvmd is corect, we can produce perhaps 1% of the fuel for automobiles by agriculture, before we upset world food production seriously, and seriously deforest our planet to produce ethanol. Even 1/10 th percent may be useful as every little bit helps. We need to persue hundreds of alternative energy ideas as it is likely none will provide more than a few percent of the world's energy needs. Ethanol is typically made from sugar. How do you convert cellulose to sugar? Neil |
Subject:
Re: Cellulose ethanol
From: redfoxjumps-ga on 20 May 2006 23:33 PDT |
Cellulose ethanol - Cellulose is a sugar. It is one your stomach can not digest. Cows use their four stomachs to break it down using bacteria. Mollasses mills break down some of the cellulose in sugar cane using a common acid or base (forget which) The brewers can make more rum that way. Brazil has a major fleet based on ethanol. They did this by the simple step of making it very hard to import oil. Ethier banned or massive tax (again i forget.) If you wait around long enough cellulose turns into peat and then coal. Takes a while though. |
Subject:
Re: Cellulose ethanol
From: keystroke-ga on 02 Jul 2006 23:06 PDT |
It doesn't really matter if there's enough land to produce enough ethanol-- ethanol actually uses MORE fossil fuels to produce it than would be used if automobiles were powered by those fossil fuels themselves. I wish it were any other way, believe me; I am even from Illinois, which is huge on corn and very pro-ethanol. If ethanol were the solution, Illinois would become much richer than it is and I would love that! But ethanol is very inefficient to produce; it uses tons of fossil fuels and the amount of corn that is needed just to produce a teeny bit is huge. It also produces more emissions than regular fuels, which is a huge problem as far as global warming goes! Basically, instead of putting our money and time into ethanol, we need to produce hydrogen fuels or something like that. |
Subject:
Re: Cellulose ethanol
From: mogg-ga on 03 Jul 2006 15:05 PDT |
You should look at cellulosic ethanol and forget about corn. Its true that the ratio of energy in/energy out isn't good for corn based ethanol. But the energy potential of cellulose is higher than that of the starches which corn produces. There are already some good prospects for crops that have very high cellulose content and they haven't even started to optimize them yet. The original food output of modern corns ancestor wouldn't be worth farming. Also, the plants that could be grown just for cellulose production do well in poor soil that wouldn't support food crops anyway. Things like switchgrass are perrenials so they won't even need reseeding. And they don't require the same investment either. No real need for fertilizer, soil preparation etc... means that it actually takes less energy to grow and stores more energy than corn. So, to sum it up the answer is no there probably isn't enough land based on current technology but given the advances just in the last couple of years I don't think its unreasonable to think we could push ethanol up over the halfway mark for auto fuel. |
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