Research Shows Bioelectricity Is Better than Biofuel

By Ucilia Wang

Fuel or electricity? New research says that producing electricity instead of ethanol is a more efficient use of available farmland.

In the paper published in the journal Science this week, Elliott Campbell from UC Merced and two fellow researchers showed so-called bioelectricity can increase the mileage by 81 percent per acre of cropland over what cellulosic ethanol can deliver. Overall, a small car can travel 15,000 miles on electricity produced but only 8,000 miles on ethanol.

Not only that, generating bioelectricity produces 108 percent more offsets of greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists said.

The debate over what is the most environmentally friendly way to power cars could intensify as biofuel makers struggle to commercialize their technologies while car companies devote more resources on electric cars. Will the transportation market be shrinking faster than expected for biofuel producers? Cellulosic ethanol is made from plants or agricultural wastes, such as corn cobs, instead of corn starch. It's supposed to be a better way to go than using corn, which also could be used for food and animal feed.

The researchers set out to figure out what is the best use of our available cropland given the idea of clearing forestland for growing crops – or replacing food crops with energy crops – has drawn strong criticism from not just environmentalists but also cattle ranchers and other businesses that see the conversion as a sure way to push up prices for food and animal feed (see EPA Denies Texas Ethanol Waiver).

The "food v. fuel" debate reached a new height last year, when food and feed prices shot up significantly while corn ethanol makers increased their output. Ethanol makers released studies to show that their industry wasn't to blame, while critics said otherwise.

A report released last month by the Congressional Budget Office said higher energy costs and other factors in fact had a greater impact on the rising food prices than the rising price of corn as a result of expanded ethanol production between April 2007 and April 2008.

Corn prices contributed to roughly 10 percent to 15 percent in food price increases, the report said.

After analyzing the energy produced by both ethanol and electricity production and their uses, the researchers found that bioelectricity provides more mileage regardless of the types of energy crops.

The research is bad news for ethanol makers, who are engaged in fierce policy battles in California and Washington, D.C. over regulations that would require them to factor greenhouse gas emissions from converting land to grow crops for fuel production (see Feds Propose Controversial biofuel Mandate, Offer $800M to Boost Production and California Adopts Low Carbon Fuel Standard).

The issue isn't just about land-use issues in the United States. The belief is that replacing food crops with energy crops in the country would lead to forest clearing in other parts of the world for growing food.

Other researchers have proposed finding ways to minimize land conversions by considering whether growing crops for animal feed is an efficient use of available land. A group of researchers, led by Lynd Lee of Dartmouth College, is carrying out a project that looks at this issue, among others. At a biofuel conference in San Francisco this week, he took on cattle ranching, which requires a lot of land, feed and energy to produce beef. He noted that feed from each acre can produce more meat from chicken and other poultry than from cattle (see Eat Less Beef, Make More Biofuels).

Comments

[peabody:]

The two researchers from UC Merced missed one very important point. Bioelectricity and biofuel can both be produced from the same biomass at the same time. Once the alcohol is distilled from crop residue such as corn cobs or other biomass, the residual material (referred to as lignin) can be converted to electricity at the same site that the biofuel is being produced. That energy can be used to power the distillery and any excess energy produced can be sold back into the electric grid. That allows us to more efficiently make inroads in addrressing our domestic needs for both transportation fuel and electricity at the same time. Biofuels and Bioelectricity don't need to be competitive activities. I'm surprised that the researchers couln't see this staring them in the face.

May 10 09:13 AM

[Biodiversivist:]

Peabody,

I listened to a Science podcast where the lead researcher was asked that question. He said that they had accounted for the electricity that could be generated inside biorefineries by burning biomass.

www.biodiversivist.com

May 10 11:51 AM

[peabody:]

Biodiversivist,

The footnotes to the research report indicate that "the corn cases use only the kernels", so the researchers did not really even consider a co-production alternative in these type of biofuel facilities. The point is that there is other biomass, namely corn cobs, that can be efficiently and cost effectively harvested from the same acres surrounding these facilities that produce the corn kernels that biofuel producers currently are using. This biomass can be converted to alcohol, electricity or, more importantly, both. This is a much more practical and cost effective approach than assuming that massive amounts of biomass can be conveniently grown around or shipped to existing electric power generation plants. In reality, the scale and location of existing power plants makes accessing meaningful quantities of biomass impractical for all but a few locations. The researchers also admit that the bioelectricity approach would be more costly overall. Sometimes we need to balance idealism with practicality in order to move beyond the theoretical.

May 11 09:20 AM

[flipdog1:]

Flipdog1
IMO,alge will win in the long run,while oil is best in the short short run and CNG / Propane in the short run.
Solar depends on a much more efficient battery/storage.
If market economics is allowed to work ,life is good. If politics prevails,a quagmire follows.

May 11 09:20 AM

[billp37:]

" New research says that producing electricity instead of ethanol is a more efficient use of available farmland."

Can you beat

1kWh = 3412.14163 BTU.

?

May 11 09:45 PM

[Fred Linn:]

from the article:

-------"Overall, a small car can travel 15,000 miles on electricity produced but only 8,000 miles on ethanol."---------

What small cars can travel on electricity? There are no electric cars being widely manufactured or distributed on the consumer market now, or in the foreseeable future. There are however, over 8 million Flex Fuel vehicles capable of using gasoline or E85(85% ethanol) on the road right now, and more coming on everyday.

I can drive from Kansas City to Denver in 10 hours on E85 with one stop at Bosellman's in Salina KS for fuel. I've done it many times. Using the range and recharging times from even the most optimistic press releases I've seen for BEVs, it would take me 3 days to get to Denver.

From the article:
-------"It's supposed to be a better way to go than using corn, which also could be used for food and animal feed."---------
-------"The "food v. fuel" debate reached a new height last year, when food and feed prices shot up significantly while corn ethanol makers increased their output. Ethanol makers released studies to show that their industry wasn't to blame, while critics said otherwise."----------

Dent corn accounts for over 95% of corn produced in the US. Humans can not eat dent corn. The final product of ethanol production is DDG(dried distillers grain)---a high protein feed with about 25% protein content(versus about 2-4% for field corn). Ethanol production is the end product of anaerobic metabolism of starches by the yeast cultures that produce it. The protein content is the product of the yeast culture itself. Producing ethanol from corn produces BOTH food AND fuel. And growing the corn to feed animals was the original purpose of growing the corn anyway. It has just been made into better feed----and the ethanol is left over as a benefit.
From the article:
-------"Other researchers have proposed finding ways to minimize land conversions by considering whether growing crops for animal feed is an efficient use of available land. A group of researchers, led by Lynd Lee of Dartmouth College, is carrying out a project that looks at this issue, among others. At a biofuel conference in San Francisco this week, he took on cattle ranching, which requires a lot of land, feed and energy to produce beef. He noted that feed from each acre can produce more meat from chicken and other poultry than from cattle (see Eat Less Beef, Make More Biofuels)."----------

Cattle can eat grass. Chickens can not. You turn cattle out to pasture to grow and finish with grain. Chickens are raised their whole lifetime on grain. It takes far more grain to raise chickens than cattle---they are not ruminates. If you want to get technical and purist about it, you don't need to ever feed cattle a single kernel of any kind of grain to successfully raise them. It has been done for thousands of years.

Faulty and erroneous assumptions in, faulty and erroneous conclusions out.

Jun 08 02:51 AM

[Fred Linn:]

flipdog1--------"Solar depends on a much more efficient battery/storage."-----...

There are many ways to store energy that do not require batteries. And there are many forms of energy besides electricity. Solar thermal is easy to collect and store, and it does not require conversion to electricity. It is stored in the form of heat in stone walls---or water pools. Passive solar construction can heat a home in winter, and keep it cooler in the summer. Solar thermal can be a stand alone hot water system, or it can be an adjunct system that reduces energy requirements. A storage tank from a solar collector put in line with an existing hot water system preheats water before it enters the water heater. If the temperature is above that set on the heater---it simply does not come on. If the temperature drops below the heater set point, the heater comes on and heats the water the same as it always does.

Solar PV energy could be stored as hydro power by using it to pump water back upstream for recycling through hydro-electric dams. This has been done for over 50 years with off peak power---there is no reason existing systems could not be fitted with solar PV.

I agree with you about algae.

from the article:---------"Fuel or electricity? New research says that producing electricity instead of ethanol is a more efficient use of available farmland."----------

Ethanol need not be produced from farmland at all. Ethanol was being produced in both the US and Germany from logging and millwork wood waste over 100 years ago. Range Fuels has a plant under construction now that will use Fischer-Tropsch process to produce ethanol from logging and mill wood waste in Soperton GA. Capacity when fully operational is to be 100 million/gal/yr.

Jun 09 02:16 AM