Corn Ethanol is Not Optimal - Says Senator Obama
Now that Barack Obama is President Elect, it seems a good idea to recap some of his previous newsmaking thoughts about the future of energy in the US. One of his most telling comments came at a stop in Terre Haute, Indiana last March, where Barack Obama spoke of his support for alternative energy, saying that corn-based ethanol is not optimal.
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Responding to a question about corn-based ethanol, he described it as a “transitional” technology.
“Corn-based ethanol is not optimal. I’ve been a big supporter of corn-based ethanol. I come from a corn state, Illinois, and it’s a good transitional technology, but the truth is, it is not as efficient as what the Brazilians are doing with sugar cane.”
He closed by saying that he intends to charge polluters for their negative impact on global warming and then reinvest those funds on renewable energies, such as wind, solar and clean coal.
Not being a fan of “clean” coal myself, two out of three aint bad.
Photo: courtesy of Jason Means via Flickr Creative Commons Licence
Comparing corn to sugar cane is Not a fair comparison. The corn ethanol industry also produces distillers grains livestock feed as a byproduct, which doubled in value and export this year. Try feeding sugarcane to livestock. It won’t work. You may get more ethanol out of sugarcane, but you don’t get the high protein corn byproduct that increases milk production by 10 lbs per cow per week and also puts 10% more meat on livestock, for a very reasonable cost. Also, sugarcane has a much longer growing season, over a year, whereas a corn field can produce a second crop, a winter biodiesel or feed crop to fix the soil.
There is also a new model for a corn ethanol refinery emerging. One that integrates a dairy or a livestock operation directly into ethanol production. The manure is digested into biogas-methane which is converted into CHP, combined heat and power to run the plant and supplement the grid. And the corn ethanol byproducts are fed directly to the onsite animals. This is integration. Corn oil or Biodiesel can also be extracted from the distillers grains, prior to feeding it to livestock. Corn ethanol is food and fuel and always has been.
We may also be able to exploit our network of corn ethanol refineries for algae production. Solarzyme’s method of growing algae in the dark by feeding it sugar and carbon dioxide could be adapted to corn ethanol plants, leveraging corn sugar and CO2 into algae and multiplying fuel output, for both ethanol and biodiesel.
American ethanol is a viable industry that is still evolving. Something we can build on. Ethanol is not a cure-all or savior. It’s a supplemental transition fuel. It’s also an important component of our economy, providing jobs, tax revenue, and domestic liquid fuel that can be produced and consumed locally. The 9.5 Billion gallons of ethanol that the U.S. is producing this year and blending with gasoline lowers the price of fuel by 25 to 40 cents a gallon and replaces a significant portion of foreign oil. Oil that we would have bought with interest laden debt instruments.
Ethanol optimized engines and advanced ethanol is in the works. Hydrous Ethanol, where 4% water is left in an ethanol bonded solution and then blended with gasoline. A fuel that is cheaper yet and actually gets better gas mileage. Then there’s non-gasoline hydrous ethanol that is just ethanol and water. In the 1920’s, the model A Ford cars and trucks ran on 165 proof ethanol: 17.5% water and 82.5% ethanol. Dongfeng, a major Chinese auto maker is introducing a car this year that runs on 65% ethanol and 35% water. This is a standard internal combustion engine equipped with a basic fuel processing device attached to the intake. They claim hydrogen is formed. Toyota also has a similar hydrous ethanol add-on prototype for a standard engine that produces onboard hydrogen. Internal combustion engines can be highly efficient running on ethanol and water.
Phil Ratte (Mechanical Engineer, BME University of Minnesota) took hydrous ethanol a giant step further: “From 1981 to 1989, I worked with Herb Hansen, who had been an engineer on a WW II submarine, and a former captain of a nuclear submarine. We developed two prototype cars, a Ford Pinto Station Wagon and a Mitsubishi Sedan, that ran as well on 65 proof ethanol (2/3 water and 1/3 ethanol) as they did on unleaded regular gas.”
Jeff,
thanks for the excellent comment. I feel that I do you a disservice, because to properly reply to your comment, I would have to write another article!
Inevitably, for everything that is said, there is always something that is left un-said. This is usually due to length, knowledge or agenda constraints. (In General)That is why these comment conversations are always so interesting.
Let me try to bite off a few small pieces of your comment, if you don’t mind.
You mentioned distillers grain (which as you stated is a byproduct of the ethanol creation process) Distillers grain is the corn product minus the starches that are used to create the sugars that are turned into alcohol. (A rudimentary explanation I’m sure)
What you don’t mention is that distillers grains are being looked at as a possible cause of the E-Coli virus in Cattle, which may have contributed to the increase in recalled beef that we’ve seen in the last few years.
Although you mention that distillers grain “increases milk production by 10 lbs per cow per week and also puts 10% more meat on livestock, for a very reasonable cost”, you don’t mention that distillers grain is not a cows natural diet. It is because of this, that we have to give cows antibiotics almost from the day they are born, to keep them alive long enough to get them fat enough, to make it to the slaughter house.
One other thing that you failed to mention is that there are more antibiotics given to cows in the United States, than to people.
Taking just these few fact’s into consideration, I must ask myself if feeding cows our ethanol “byproduct” is even a good idea.
I do like the idea (if we have to use acre ethanol) of utilizing cow manure to run the ethanol plant, and thereby helping close the production loop. I first read about this concept about a year ago, though I’m sure the idea has been around a much longer time than that.
With all this being said, the Renewable Fuel Standard that Congress enacted, mandating 36BGY of biofuels by 2022, will ensure that first, second and third generation feedstocks will be well funded and governed well into the future.
Thanks for your comment
Adam
Hi Adam – Thanks for your comment and the article.
I’m a lot more interested in the economics of ethanol being given a fair shake, because their have been so many false claims and misinformation about it. There are episodes of contaminated distillers grains that caused E-coli in cattle. But that is because distillers grains are occasionally being mishandled by companies using it. Theres two types of distillers grains: wet and dry. Wet has to be used within a certain period of time, and if it’s not, it goes bad. And, after contamination, the storage containers must be cleaned thoroughly before they can be refilled, or else the next batch of feed will be contaminated also. The dry grains, if they get wet, piled on ground with manure, or exposed to rodents, birds, or other, that can cause contamination too.
Overwhelmingly, the over-crowded, dirty conditions in feedlots where animals are standing in manure and urine which is piling up on the ground, is one of the main reasons for all the antibiotics, not distillers grains. If the distillers grains are handled properly, they do not cause E-coli. All they are is basic protein and lipids.
You are absolutely right that distillers grains are not the natural diet of cattle, grass is. But grass would make feedlots not profitable. You can get grass fed premium beef, but its very expensive. If people saw what was going into animal feed, they would be appalled. Most people eat the cheap stuff thats raised in crowded feed lots and fed crap like blood and bone meal and hit-or-miss animal by products. Again, this is the other main reason for the antibiotics, not the distillers grains, which are way clean and safe by comparison. Distillers grains are being fed to a variety of types of animals: cattle, dairy cows, chickens, turkeys, fish, goats, sheep, and hogs. They can only be fed a certain percentage, usually about 10-15%. Each type of animal is different. Feeding distillers grains increases production and profit. That’s business.
Distillers grains dried makes a good export product. This year we exported 20% of our corn crop, which is all feed corn, not for human consumption. What we should do is stop the export of whole corn, extract the starch to make more ethanol, and only export distillers grains. That would almost double our ethanol production. Then we could raise the blending wall to 20% and displace more foreign oil. That’s something we could do right now with the stroke of a pen. Another thing we could do is produce a portion of our distillers grains for human consumption, and that could also be exported to help the needy.
Distillers grains are economical and safe, as long as they are handled and stored properly, not contaminated. They continue to be used safely on a massive scale with or without antibiotics.
I’m not nearly as informed on the subject of ethanol production as Jeff and Adam, but I’ll just add that I’ve never quite bought into the “corn-based ethanol = bad” argument. Many of the articles I’ve read use out-dated numbers (e.g., for corn yields, fertilizer usage, etc.) and neglect efficiencies added with increased output (economies of scale), and plain forget that humans have an uncanny ability to improve things with time.
One of the strange things about most arguments in favor of government support for ethanol is that they are presented as reasons that ethanol should be profitable on its own. If ethanol production creates all these valuable products like feed for cows and is actually much more efficient than is let on, why would government support be necessary? Government funded research might be justifiable, but not government subsidizing or mandating use of ethanol. These seems like arguments that the market can provide ethanol.
You might say that ethanol will be underutilized because the social cost of fossil fuels is not captured, i.e. greenhouse gases and terror funding. But then we would do better to simply tax those products in proportion to their greenhouse gas content or whatever and then rebate the money with corporate or personal income tax cuts. If we don’t want people to use oil and coal, why should we tell them what to do instead? Just make them pay more if they use oil or coal, and people will figure out the most efficient way to avoid it. Then all your facts could be useful as marketing, but as public policy arguments they are completely unpersuasive.
“He closed by saying that he intends to charge polluters for their negative impact on global warming and then reinvest those funds on renewable energies, such as wind, solar and clean coal.”
Who out there drives a wind-powered pickup truck? A solar-powered car? Or a coal powered SUV?
Notice no mention of biofuels or nuclear.
During his campaign, Obama danced around the subject of ethanol and even natural gas as fuels, lending only minor lip service to them, if at all.
That fact was nicely glossed over by our agenda-driven, self-righteous, fact mangling, truth concealing news media.
They selected Obama for election and promptly threw fairness, honesty and integrity out the window.
The lesson? The news media is a large part of the disinformation campaign about biofuels, specifically ethanol. Unless, and until the media prostitutes come down from their self-assumed throne and abandon their self-righteous assumption that THEY know what’s best for the unwashed masses (you & me), the future of biofuels is precarious and subject to political whim and we will have to wait on the information gods to bless them.