The use of native prairie grasses is meant to avoid some of the other risks associated with biofuels such as reduced diversity of local animal life and displacing food crops with fuel crops. "This is an energy crop that can be grown on marginal land," Vogel argues, such as the more than 35 million acres (14.2 million hectares) of marginal land that farmers are currently paid not to plant under the terms of USDA's Conservation Reserve Program.
His post is a very nice explanation, with a numbered list, of why ethanol is a bad idea.
Oh, by the way? The leftover stuff from the fermentation? If I read this right, it might be usable as cattle feed. (Plus foraging after harvest.)
2 comments:
The argument that Ethanol is better in terms of CO2 is laughable to anyone with a background in chemistry. They were concerned about CO2 per gallon rather than per BTU. It makes less CO2 per gallon because it is weaker per gallon.
Cattle are already fed the leftovers from fermentation. The major brewers sell their left overs as animal feed since the only thing really extracted is the sugar. Many home-brewing farmers will feed their pigs the left overs. The problem with it is that it is an acidic diet which messes with the cow's milk supply making it more susceptible to bacteria and spoiling faster. But that is only a concern when that is the main staple of their diet.
More acidic guts has been linked to more e. coli in the gut in some studies-- that said, if there's a way to take post-fermentation grass that's mostly the stuff that passes through, and make that into better feed with time and a bit of off-the-shelf fungus, let's go for it!
While we're at it, compare and contrast the result of the grass-ethanol to that bio-diesel from the microbes they've been working on.....
And do it all privately.
Hey, if it's good enough for space travel, it's good enough for roads, yes?
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