If we're serious about biofuel production, this type of research is essential to maximize feedstock production by given land area.

This could lead to using less food crop land to satisfy essential cellulosic biofuel production.

Coupled with 100 mpg to 200 mpg PHEVs, countries with large land areas like USA, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, India, Argentina etc., could produce enough biofuel without putting undue pressure on food production.

Brad,

When the enzymes and/or pyrolosis techniques are efficient enough to make cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive, then it's all about the feedstocks. Farmers who get paid by the ton will be all over this kind of research. Farmers care about yeild per acre compared to whatever else they could grow on that land.

If Miscanthus can grow on truly marginal lands, that raises a different question; will farmers start cultivating where they did not cultivate before?

@ HealthyBreeze -

it might make sense to start separating the discussion about cellulose feedstocks from that of the fuel(s) they are turned into.

Cellulose can be broken down into simple sugars (a mix of mostly glucose and xylose) using a combination of mechanical, thermal and enzymatic processing. Let's call the everything up to this point "upstream" and refer to the intermediate product as say, "c-slush".

All additional processing into fuels or other products should be considered "downstream". The product may be ethanol, n-butanol, dimethylfurane or perhaps something else. The yields for each for the associated processes will differ, as will the properties of the educts as fuel additives and/or substitutes.

It's early days yet in the biofuels sector and, no-one really knows how it's going to play out. So please, let's not get use cellulosic ethanol as shorthand for any and all second-generation biofuels. In particular, the emphasis on ethanol at the expense of the alternatives covers up the fact that it currently enjoys massive subsidies and protectionist tariffs in the US.

Any chemical conversion of biomass, such as that from Miscanthus, involves significant losses. I believe it would be better to dry and pelletize this biomass and use it for home heating, where you get to use 80% or more of the energy content of the biomass, depending on the efficiency of the pellet-burning furnace. The fuel oil or nat. gas saved could then be used more easily elsewhere, e.g. transportation.

This should represent a much more efficient over all use of resources rather than utilizing only a portion of available biomass and suffering significant losses in the conversion process to make transportation fuels.

"I believe it would be better to dry and pelletize this biomass and use it for home heating,"

Steve, where would the demand for these pellets come from? You are proposing investments in a whole new infrastructure of pellet-burning furnaces. I understand that this is a technology that exists, but a very low percentage of people have this capability right now? 80% efficiency? That doesn't sound too good for a furnace to me. Where does the rest go?

Most importantly, if implemented correctly, the supply of biomass would almost certainly exceed the demand for these pellets. We need this energy for much more than just home heating. That would not displace enough oil to fix our problems.

IMO it would be better to burn those pellets at power stations than in homes. The ash and emissions can be more easily minimized and disposed of. There would be no need for new home furnaces. And transportation of the pellets in bulk would be cheaper.

Since I favor nuclear I don't want the stuff burned anyway. Liquid fuel is what we need from biomass for a decade or so.

Ethanol and butanol and lions and tigers and bears... Oh my!!......... Ethanol may not be the best possible gasoline extender or replacement. But for the nation there is some merit in actually getting something into cars within a few years. So I prefer we continue on the ethanol path.

Otherwise I sense there will be thrashing and arguing about various molecules for a decade. If another biomass fuel proves definitively better then phase it after 2015.

Burning dry biomass for heat and/or electricity production does make a lot of sense. The trouble is the stuff is typically quite wet and doesn't actually burn very well. I suppose the waste heat from the combustion process could be used to dry the next batch and create low-grade feed steam in the process, but I'm not sure if the available enthalpy and/or the heat transfer would be sufficient.

Also, burning biomass not as lucrative as producing automotive or aviation fuels. Besides, at some point we actually will need to wean the essential transportation sector off crude oil - growing miscanthus just to burn it would let us postpone that day, but not indefinitely.

As long as we wait for the private sector to deem this profitable enough, we may be waiting a LONG time.

If as a society we say that our tax dollars should go to THIS instead of war, then we will have bio fuels from coast to coast.

Our choice, wait until we run out of time or take action and avoid a disaster.

SJC:

The problem with committing tax dollars to one technology or another is that you create a massive special interest--just like the farm subsidies that have created the corn ethanol debacle. Government shouldn't do any more than fund basic R&D, then let engineers and the private sector work out what actually works best economically.

Any solution like this is a long-shot, but unless we start placing a lot of 100-1 bets, we're not going to avoid our looming liquid fuel crisis. In light of the risks, a half billion dollars is nothing; we should be making this kind of investment on a weekly basis.

Farmers grow what returns them a profitable margin on inputs while ensuring long term sustainability of their land. If a farmer can get a better return growing biomass for fuel than getting screwed by a supermarket or commodity trader for food crops he/she will. Miscanthus can be a rotation crop to sequester depleted soil carbon and restore fertility to soil. It has the added advantage of being a fuel source. Pumping more oil from the Arctic or converting coal to liquids doesn't address the problem of CO2 build up and is not a long term sustainable solution to energy supply.

Here's a link to a Wired magazine article about an ethanol plant in Nebraska started by the founder of Sun Microsystems.
"But the single most critical variable in the biohol trajectory is the coming rise in the number of gallons of fuel produced per acre. As we migrate from biomass derived from corn to biomass from so-called energy crops like switchgrass and miscanthus, I estimate that biomass yield will reach 20 to 24 tons per acre, a fourfold increase. At the same time, new technologies will enable us to extract more biohols from every ton of biomass, potentially to 110 gallons per ton. The result: We’ll be extracting 2,000 to 2,700 gallons of fuel per acre (as opposed to about 400 gallons with today’s technology). With better fuels and more-efficient engines improving mileage by about 50 percent, we can safely predict a seven- to tenfold gain in miles driven per acre of land over the next 25 years. Given this biohol trajectory, a future of independence from gasoline becomes not only possible but probable. And the trajectory begins with garden-variety corn ethanol"

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/ethanol.html

Alan,

What planet are you on? Haven't you been reading things like how the IEA and other oil analyses are say that demand will soon or is already exceeding supply?!