Switchgrass ethanol yields
Bioengineered varieties of dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass could triple cellulosic ethanol yields from current levels within a decade, a plant biotechnology expert said on Tuesday.
The first wave of commercial biomass ethanol plants will use readily available agricultural waste such as corn stalks or wheat straw to produce the biofuel, but crops grown exclusively for energy production promise much higher yields, said Anna Rath, director of business development at Ceres Inc.
Cellulosic ethanol is produced from plant matter broken down by enzymes and distilled into produce ethanol.
“If you’re thinking in terms of ethanol per acre, switchgrass is already as good as your average corn field at generating ethanol per acre, but it’s a much less mature crop than corn,” Rath told Reuters reporters at the Reuters Biofuel Summit by telephone from Thousand Oaks, California.
“With corn you’re getting a couple percent yield improvement year over year. With switchgrass we think there will be much greater breakthrough improvements, especially in the early years,” she said.
Traditional breeding methods could produce a switchgrass hybrid that could yield 10 to 12 tons of biomass per acre in the next five years, up from about 5 tons per acre currently, Rath said. Genetic engineering could push that to 12 to 15 tons per acre by 2015, she said.
Cellulosic ethanol yields could also grow from the current 70 to 80 gallons per ton of biomass to more than 100 gallons per ton as production costs decline and plants become more efficient, she said.
By comparison, the most efficient corn ethanol plants can produce just under 3 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, according to industry experts.
The average U.S. corn yield per acre in 2006 was about 149 bushels per acre, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
U.S. ethanol plants produced about 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, mostly from corn grain.
Bioenergy Potential
Much like the human potential biomass as a source of transportation energy is boundless but we must first take the steps to make it such. There are many dedicated organizations putting in the sweat equity required to make this resource a realization in today’s business model. However at what point do we as a society need to jump and calculate the costs at a later date? It is much like the idea of our fore fathers who took the chance to cross the Atlantic to reach a new land with unlimited possibilities with out doing multiple feasibility studies. At some point there needs to be a collective ambition to realize we don’t know the risks of such a venture however with out taking chances we will never know the possibilities of change and will be limited by our established resource, fossil fuel.
Image a business sector that has the ability to transform our everyday existence by replacing our ideas of a limited energy resource but rather take the pioneering spirit that we have an unlimited resource if we only dare to believe in that which we can’t perceive yet! We must create an atmosphere of ingenuity in the energy sector in order to transform the hierarchy of the established business model that has brought us to this day and age.
The question that remains is the risk factor of establishing such a sector who should burden such a risk? Shouldn’t we all take it upon our shoulders to burden this risk? If not, we all stand to lose when market turbulence’s occur and we have no alternative to the status co.
Cellulosic ethanol is a realistic today! We must establish this industry now in order to learn, conserve and adapt.
How can one learn in the laboratory that which must be learnt on a business level? Research and science are aides to business but business is the catalysis which will drive innovation.
The “1 Billion Dry Tons” study has established that there is the potential to displace 30% of our current petroleum usage. Everyday we wait we squander this exhaustible resource. We must take the steps today to replace this energy resource with the energy resource of tomorrow because it will require the energy of today to produce the energy of tomorrow.
Only in the act of doing can we see the processes in action and therefore create the improvements in which we make the process more efficient.
