[Gasification] Food meets energy, butanol catalysis anyone?

[Ken Boak]

List,

There are many inefficiencies present in modern agriculture.  Displacing 
food crops for fuel crops might seem controversial, but many of the crops 
grown, are for purely commercial reasons, and do not reflect the direct 
(human) food value of the crop.

This links to an article discussing the various production efficiencies of 
biofuels, biodiesel from rapeseed and ethanol from wheat.

http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/levington.htm#3.%20Crop%20production%20and%20energy%20output

Whilst ethanol from wheat returns only 11% net energy and is on the limits 
of commercial viability, biodiesel from rapeseed has a 78% energy return 
over investment. In the UK, ethanol from sugarbeet is attracting commercial 
attention, with British Sugar building a beet to ethanol plant in East 
Anglia.

It has been postulated that 75% of the US corn production is fed to 
fattening beef cattle and the remainder is made into corn syrup and ethanol. 
Is this really the most efficient use of the crop?

How many bushels of corn does it take to make a pound of prime beef?

Corn must be considered such a low value feedstock that it can be used in 
this manner as cattle feed, and the same wasteful mentality is applied when 
it comes to converting corn to ethanol, or burning corn kernels directly in 
pellet stoves.

>From an evolutionary viewpoint, cattle were much happier and healtier eating 
grass, and their cousins, the American Bison, were perfectly adapted to 
eating the low grade prairie grass, which was displaced to make way for 
mechanised farming of corn and wheat.


Ken