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Biofuel Bungle, the Question: Ethanol or None at All?
US - Biofuel technology has the potential to sustain future American energy needs.Biofuels have received a bad rap over the past year. The concern is that using acres of corn, sugar cane, soybeans and rapeseed for ethanol and biodiesel production decreases land use for food crops. In the mind of a skeptic, the U.S. has already maximized its farmland production, and for every acre of land given to bioenergy crops, an acre of food will be taken away. That pessimistic view of biofuels is oversimplified, at best.
The technology used to commercially produce ethanol and biodiesel has not been perfected because it is less than two decades old. Promising alternatives will turn trash into energy and make more efficient use of cropland and deserts.
"We are going to see all kinds of new technologies -- solar, wind, biofuels will all get a good testing over this next decade," said Wayne Hamilton, a Texas A&M professor of ecosystem science and management who studies rangeland ecology modeling switch grass production. "And it could be that all find a place in the total energy picture."
The next generation of biofuels will use grass, woody plants and organic waste instead of food crops. Switch grass is one of Hamilton's favorite candidates because it will not compete with food crops. Switch grass is native to North America and could be grown and harvested in crop rotations with food plants or planted in the Conservation Reserve Program lands (CRP). CRP mandates that a percentage of erodible farmland be seeded with native perennial grass. This opens unused land in the central plains to ethanol and biodiesel production.
Single-celled organisms might provide a portion of our economy's fuel needs. A&M agricultural engineering professor Ron Lacy is attempting to grow oil-producing algae to refine into biodiesel and jet fuels. Lacy's system is designed to harvest algae from artificial ponds in Texas and New Mexico deserts.
Some new developments have been revolutionary. Mark Holtzapple, a professor in the Chemical Engineering Department, advocates building biomass refineries on a large scale. The refining processes Holtzapple is developing work under the same principle as oil refineries. He proposes how to transform biomass -- trees, grass, manure, sewage sludge, garbage, agricultural residues and non-food energy crops -- into mixed alcohols and chemical products. The alcohols can be converted into gasoline nearly identical to that derived from crude oil. Tarrabon, the company he partnered with, said the process is efficient enough to yield gasoline at $1.65 a gallon.
The public should not give up on biodiesel and ethanol yet -- there are options to explore. As energy prices rock the economy and belligerent oil-states in Asia, and Africa and the Middle East defy the U.S., ethanol and biodiesel are attractive alternatives for transportation fuels. Biofuels will be limited by lack of creative national leadership. If the government and the private sector invest in new technology, the future will be greener and the world safer.
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