Are Wood Chips Better Than Corn?

Wood takes six times the land area as corn for equal energy output.

Switchgrass and many other biomass possibilities have no proven and consitent energy output to date.

No known renewable fuel cost less than corn. The price of corn through out all recorded history has remained constant with NO adjustment for inflation. In year 1817 Corn cost more in real non-adjusted dollars than corn cost in year 2005. Delivered dirt cost more in year 2006 than does delivered whole kernel shelled corn.

Energy companies continue to inject the fear factor and the public ignorant fact to discourage use and conversiton of boimass to fuel. Energy companies have full sqay and trust of The public and ill informed but self proclaimed technologists and university professionals. Please stick to facts unadulterated by energy company jaragon.

You need to get some facts straight, Dr Penemans research at Cornell for the DOE proved that ist costs more to make ethanol from corn simply because of the energy needed to use either the dry mill or wet milling process and the cost of the physical plant.

The folks in India have produced more ethanol with tropicalised sugar beets than can be produced with corn or sugar cane.

Using the Lurgi process to create ethanol uses huge amounts of natural gas to make the ethanol this also includes the price for physical plant needed for the conversion of the corn. The othe rproblem is the Volatile organis released by the wet grains while they are dried so it becomes a net polluter.

By simply mashing sugar beets as you would corn for whiskey you can obtain more alcohol than by other methods check out www.revenoor.com

The problem creates is that the price for corn for animal consumption doubles as the farmer who needs to buy corn for his animals has to pay double the price per bushel because they are selling more corn for the thanol plants and in the process driving up food prices to the consumer and reducing any profit to the farmer with livestock.

Cellulosic ethanol is another energy waster as it takes huge amounts of energy and chemicals to convert cellulose to ethanol so ethanol is no bargain unless it is made for power generation only as it will be less affected by price swings as the income for power sold is relatively stable

Hi guys. Can we just use wood chips and corn and switchgrass all together at one Plant in one process???

evladi7654@aol.com

In response to "Can we just use wood chips and corn and switchgrass all together at one Plant in one process???"

that depends on whether it is a bioconversion plant or a bio mass combustion plant. You can use bio mass combustion to produce syngas, which can then be converted to liquid fuels by a catalytic reaction (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis), and pretty much any bio mass (or for that matter, most any combustible material) can be used in this reaction....the engineering of the systems can be a bit tricky, but not at all insurmountable. The advantage of this system is NOT efficiency though, because you don't get something for nothing, or even half of something for nothing....total plant efficiency is something less than 20%. The advantage is energy security and using up something we would otherwise have to "throw out" (where exactly out is when you're talking about the whole planet becomes tricky....schemes involving launching things into space are both laughable and dubious.)

a bioconversion plant would be using bacterial cultures to process the biomass and produce the ethanol as a byproduct...bacterial cultures need to be closely matched to their feed source....some are good at processing switchgrass, some wood chips, some even crude oil. They are theoretically more efficient though, since they biological systems can achieve over 90% efficiency by direct chemical conversion (mitochondria) compared with some maximum engine cycles of only about 45%. But you still need to grow the corn or trees or whatever...so you have to invest in land area, fertilizer, etc. to do that. It is certainly preferable to be able to use something you're throwing out anyways, like corn husks and stalks, but these materials contain more cellulose and that bioconversion is at the moment not as efficient as corn grains.

I have not seen a convincing energy balance to say which is in the end more efficient or "better". I honestly believe the end solution will not be one solution, but many used in concert.

To all,

I am not an expert, but I think it is important to keep in our collective minds that the value of alternative energy sources is not a COST issue, it is a pollutant and sustainable and scalability issue.

I agree that short term the cost of the alternatives will be higher, let's let the market and the brilliance of the technical people in this country solve that issue.

If we get too wrapped around the cost at every turn, Sony would not sell any Play Station 3 products until the price to the consumer dropped. They still issued the product and sold out at the ridiculous $600 price!

Price is flexible to the consumer if the value and benefit is understood, AND we as a very capable industrialized Nation need to get to work on how to be smart about the long term, and not short term profits.

I would challenge everyone to think creatively, and in the best interest of the world, talk about the value and important benefits and let the cost work itself out.

Thanks for caring.

Unfortunately economics rules all so that is not at possible and since our govenment is hell bent on ethanol at any cost we are going to be in trouble anyway due to members of the corn lobby and proponents of growing corn and cellulosic ethanol.

Sugar beets take less effort and chemicals to grow and provide natural nitrogen for the soil versus the huge amounts of fertilizer and pesticides nedded for sugar cane and corn for ethanol and the sugar beet takes less time to grow versus sugar cane and most corn varieties.

Mashing western varieties of sugar beets or tropicalised sugar beets provides huge amounts of alcohol for ethanol with much less energy versus sugar cane or cellulosic ethanol.

The fact that everyone forgets is that ethanol is an unstable product and subject to price swings if used for gasoline. and it leaves behind huge amounts of wastes and volatile organic chemicals where conventiuoanl mashing does not create these VOC's

using ethanol for power generation is a much more efficiient method than for gasoline simply from a cost and useablity standpoint and it burns clean.

HI evladi

the new fructose process digests all and could use one process to get the sugar out & then process the sugar into biogas.

thanks

goldrushnugget999

HI ALL !

FRUCTOSE is in a lot of substances corn, trees, potatoes, how about sea weeds ?

there are so many substances it's in and now fuel can be made from them all, WHAT A BIG BREAK THROUGH IN THE BIOFUEL WORLD ! I hope all the world can have a chance to have cheep fuel for their survival. the people a CR4 should contact this chemist to some how get the formula to stop big oil from moving in to strip the world from this great process.

IT IS THE MOST IMOPRTANT THING THAT CR4 CAN DO AND IT HAS TO BE DONE YESTERDAY.

the world has a chance to get cheep fuel and this is the most important i can't stress this enough !

even if CR4 has to run a blog collection to acquire it, it would be worth every Penney to get this process.

THANKS ALL

goldrushnugget999

HI ALL !

THIS IS goldrushnugget999 at a work computer. I can't emphasize this enough, CR4 should acquire the " how to " for biogas even if cr4 has to run a special fund raiser to get the money to stop big oil from getting sole control of this process. The whole world has a stake in this one. Please ALL YOU ENGINEERS OUT THERE CAN'T YOU SEE THE WORLD IS IN NEED FOR THIS PROCESS.

Thanks

goldrushnugget999

Well said.

thank you for the compliment.

MY FAMILY & I WERE ON A FARM YEARS AGO, HAY WITH SMALL EFFORT & A LOT OF BACTERIA COULD TURN OUT A LOT OF ETHENOL & WILH THREE CUTTINGS A YEAR A HIGH AMOUNT OF MATERIAL TO CONVERT INTO FUEL. BIOMAS FUEL COULD BE THE WAY TO GO WITH THE AMOUNT OF MATERIAL WHICH CAN BE DIGESTED INTO FUEL. IT SHOULD BE LOOKED INTO.

WITH THE RIGHT MATERIAL & THE RIGHT DIGESTER A LOT OF FUEL CAN BE PRODUCED.

THERE MAY NOT BE ONLY ONE SOLUTION, THE SOLUTION MAY BE IN DIVERSITY.

THE VOLUME OF FUEL REQUIRED SAYS DIVERSITY OF MATERIAL TO BEST SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. JUST LIKE THE PRODECTION OF SUGAR, SOME USED BEETS, SOME USED CANE, SOME USED HONEY, THE END PRODUCT WAS SUGAR. THE SAME DIVERSITY IS NEEDED IN ETHONAL.

Were I to attempt to make a fuel to replace gasoline, I think I would look to biochemistry for a preferred route. There are lots of bacteria and yeasts that can be used to produce fuels from materials that one would hardly consider a potential fuel...like dirt, rock and sand. When these tiny critters are fed a diet that they thrive on and encouraged to prosper their growth rate can be amazing. I think there are bacteria that can be grown in artificial, non-competitive environments amid a plentiful supply of their favorite foods. Their vast numbers perhaps killed off and fed to other bacteria or yeast and thus produce far more fuel than the world could ever imagine using.

I have a little experience with this in that I ran an still producing alcohol for some years. I enjoyed this and studied the rate of conversion of starch to alcohol. Of course I sought to get continual production from yeast by integrating computer controls over temperature, vacuum on the batch and sugar content while watching for negative indicators...like the advance of undesirable bacteria, the depletion of certain critical minerals and the density of live vs dead yeast. There are many forms of alcohol and yeasts as well.

I think we should seek to produce fuel from materials that are in great abundance and readily available like sea water, sewage and biodegradable trash.

I JUST READ A CONN POST ARTICLE THAT SAID ANSONIA CT IS PAYING 21.5 cents per KWH for power in the city that's a lot of money & where will it end?

at that price a lot of alt. power subitutes could fill in nicely to save $ and do the same job to heat & Power Homes.

MY HOUSE WAS HEATED BY CORN THIS WINTER, THOSE NEW PLANTS IN NEBRASKA do a good job to replace oil. the cost was good at $2.10 a gallon I SAVED BIG TIME

on the winter cost of oil. so what ever replacement is your best one, if the polution is low or none you should consider it for your oil replacement, Diversity is the name of the game, the more choices we have the more compitition and lower prices are our reward.

Wood chips/waste are basically an unlimited resource as compared to corn. Biomass conversion is a proven alternative.

HI ALL !

there is a new biofuel on the Sean now, it's biogas or fructose a completed process has been done by a university of Michigan chemist last week and has been written up in several world class papers ( Sydney herald sun ) titled " FRUCTOSE biofuel spells sweet news " look up this article & see the good news. i hope it is for all people to benefit from to get cheep fuel. we need a break from high prices to survive the spiral of outrageous prices.

thanks

goldrushnugget999

HI ALL !

Have you looked up that FRUCTOSE biogas article ? don't you have any comments on this process? What about all the above comments, are you all reevaluating what was said about ethanol? How dose it apply to the fructose process? I think things change a lot, instead of cutting down the trees maybe we can stick a tube in them like when you collect maple sap, but just run it into a digester for fructose and out comes biogas. sounds good doesn't it!

THANKS

goldrushnugget999

Salix (Willow) is grown in some areas for wood chip biomass. It can obviously be grown in many areas that corn cannot. Many species of trees are very fast growing. Especially new Poplar hybrids. The trick is not to kill the tree, to just harvest the growth. This can be done with machinery. Corn must be replanted annually. This is a very expensive process, and involves a lot of cultivation. With trees you just harvest the growth once a year. Canada is losing its Arboreal Forest to a beetle infestation. They could plant Siberian Elms or other cold tolerant species, and harvest it. This would be faster growing than the native pines. It would also create a whole new industry for Canada. Sweet Sorghum is more productive than corn for ethanol, and could be grown if there is more corn than needed for grain. There are also many plants that can be grown in arid regions, that are good for ethanol. Salt water tolerant reeds can be harvested from marshes, etc. ad infinitum. We will eventually have to move away from corn. There are better options in the future. Biomass is just beginning to be tapped for energy. The best way to use wood chips right now is to gasify them and heat cold regions, or run generators.