FYI: Switchgrass yields five times more energy than it takes to grow it

Results from the five-year study highlights the prairie grass' potential as a biomass fuel source that yields significantly more energy than is consumed in production and conversion into cellulosic ethanol, said Ken Vogel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service geneticist in UNL's agronomy and horticulture department.  . . . more

Comments

[GreyFlcn]

And where, pray-tell, are they going to grow all this switchgrass?
(Keep in mind, Sugar Cane gets an 800% EROEI. So the results of switchgrass would be much lower.)

Also, how are they going to keep that level of production up without destroying the soil?
Peak Soil
Patzek on Soil

_

I really hate it when EROEI creates a false benchmark, when the discussion should really be about Greenhouse emissions reductions.

The "Greenhouse oppourtunity cost" of biofuels is far too high.

[Danzig]

The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Don’t you see it coming?

The entire argument for the use of switchgrass has always been that it is a non-food crop and it can be grown on non-farm land. By using switchgrass for fuel, we can use corn and beans solely for food.

Oh, yeah? This one sentence from the article tells us what is likely to happen:

"Now, we really need to use an Extension effort to let farmers know about this new crop," said Ken Vogel, U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist.

Mr. Vogel wants to tell farmers about this new crop. And as soon as they know about it, do you think anyone is going to choose to grow corn or beans? Forget the “low quality acreage” idea. The fertile farms of the midwest will quickly abandon corn and beans for the new easy-to-grow, strong-cash-flow crop.

Guess how much tortillas will cost then.

[Kit P]

“I really hate it when EROEI creates a false benchmark, when the discussion should really be about Greenhouse emissions reductions.”

The debate should not be about AGW. AGW is only one of many environmental issues. A very minor one at that. EROEI is a good benchmark for ghg and also the usefulness of biomass as a transportation fuels.

“Guess how much tortillas will cost then.”

The reason I am negative about PHEV, wind, and solar is that there is huge environmental impact. The only benefit is a slight reduction in ghg assuming these technologies work as advertised. Still waiting for that to happen.

The reason I am very positive about biomass to energy is that there many huge environmental benefits like restoring top soil and reducing wind and water erosion.

GreyFlcn and Danzig flunked geography because they do not know sugar cane is not grown in North Dakota nor are tortillas a staple.

[Aaron]

GreyFlcn wrote:

"Also, how are they going to keep that level of production up without destroying the soil?
Peak Soil
Patzek on Soil"

Since the author for your Peak Soil" article appears very against biofuels in general, I find it odd that one of her suggested actions is to continue funding research for cellulosic ethanol. Isn't this what this Switchgrass study is all about?

[josh]

I live by a simple rule: equivalent exchange. It is impossible to get more or less energy out of something than is in it. I realize part of that energy comes from the sun, but part of it also comes from the earth and the air. Remember, whatever that plant grew from, it had to come from somewhere. It may have '5x' its production cost from the standpoint of 'we only used 1/5 of its energy content to harvest and refine it', but that doesn't even come close to factoring in everything. By that logic, solar pv has a million times more energy than it takes to install and manufacture it.

What we need is not something else to burn, but a fuel that doesn't burn. Until then, engines are still only 15-30% efficient, and until we start using something that is 80-90 percent (like perhaps a fuel cell or some other electrical source with a motor), we can't start bragging about how one burns cleaner than the other. Rubbing alcohol burns clean too, but most people aren't putting it in their engines.

[averagejoe]

josh, I think you've been watching too much Anime. Switchgrass can be grown as part of a mixture of prairie plants. Grown in this way, very little fertilizer or irrigation is needed. One or more of the plants can be a nitrogen fixer, thereby reducing fertilizer inputs after the first year. As a bonus, the root systems of these plants sequester atmospheric carbon into the soil, improving soil fertility and reducing erosion. Given the rising demand for grain from countries like China and India, I sincerely doubt that switchgrass will supplant staple grain production. In fact, prairie "grass" mixtures can improve the fertility of marginal land rather than exhausting it. The end result would be more arable farm land, not less. Finally, when did it become the responsibility of the U.S. to feed the world all by itself? Can't other countries produce grain for export? Saudi Arabia doesn't provide all the oil for the world... why is the United States expected to provide all the world's grain?

[DaveMart]

Agrichar and prairie grass would actually vastly increase the fertility of the soil, whilst pyrolysis and the admixture of the resultant charcoal could potentially sequester for tens of thousands of years as much carbon as industrial society produces:
http://www.ea2020.org/drupal/node/288
how productive that is in biofuel though I don't know, nor whether we will actually use a good and sustainable system, or whether we will produce corn using more and more fertilisers and at vast energy cost.

[averagejoe]

Dave, here's a link to an article about a company called Range Fuels. They've developed a modular and portable pyrolysis system that can turn wood chips, grasses, ag waste, etc into biofuels. The portability aspect might allow regional and local production of ethanol, reducing the distances involved in distribution. Of course, Butanol would be better, but until then... Luckily, the two stage process used by this system should be amenable to producing other biofuels at a later date, with some modifications.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/02/range_fuels_to_.html

[DaveMart]

That's what we need to see more of.
I read an article somewhere today which indicates though that at the moment ethanol from cellulosic material costs twice as much as from corn, but I can't locate it now I want it.
I hope this process you've linked to here does better than that.

[Danzig]

Kit! Good to hear from you again. Your epithet-hurling has taken on a new humorous twist. And you have even added a bit of racist conversation to your posts. Interesting touch, that. But unlikely to make any new friends for you. Most Mexicans (and many Southern California residents) will be interested in your theories regarding tortillas as a non-staple.

I thought, perhaps, that 2008 would usher in a period when you would be able to share ideas and conversation without flaming the other posters.

Alas, my hopes are dashed. 2009, maybe?

[GreyFlcn]

==I read an article somewhere today which indicates though that at the moment ethanol from cellulosic material costs twice as much as from corn, but I can't locate it now I want it.==
Perhaps it was this article:
Second Generation Biofuels: An Unproven Future Technology with Unknown Risks
Here's a chart on that

Iogen, for certain is a rather silly approach.

Range Fuels, while better on the EROEI, is essentially just a glorified Fischer Tropsch process.
(i.e. The same infrastructure required for Coal-to-Liquids)

==The debate should not be about AGW. AGW is only one of many environmental issues. A very minor one at that.==
Says who?
If the debate isn't about Greenhouse emissions, then we might as well just liquefy coal.

Then again, a lot of the Solid Biomass Ethanol stuff is really just a bait and switch for Coal-to-Liquids. Since Coal is Solid Biomass.

[petr]

does the switchgrass study include the cost of manmade fertilizer?
And I thought cellulosic ethanol plants were still a ways away..
As far as the tortillas issue - the vast amount of US corn is no. 2 field corn - it goes to feed livestock (grass eating ruminants which never originally ate corn) on the huge agribusiness feedlots as well as high-fructose corn syrup that goes into soft drinks and the countless other products that use corn..even packaging.
In Omnivore's Dilemna (Michael Pollan) has a McDonald's meal analyzed with a mass spectrometer and most of it is corn in one form or other.
Since the 70s when Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz did away with the Evernormal granary system that kept the price of corn in check - the bottom dropped out of the price of corn and farmers have struggled ever since.
In the 30s farmers were happy to have 30bushels an acre - now they're making 150-200 per acre and still losing money, when corn sells for $2.50 a bushel and it costs them $3.50/bushel to grow. Sure the govt makes up the balance with subsidies but the real beneficiaries are the ADMs and Cargills.
Because for a farmer to survive - he cant downsize or layoff like other industry- he tries to get more yield per acre which means more fertilizer (which runs off and pollutes rivers and bays) more pesticides or expensive Monsanto seeds etc.
The food industry is now developing non-digestible starches so that it can get people to eat more - because you have the problem of non-elasticity of demand. When there is an oversupply of food people don't eat up the difference there is only so much you can eat. (That's why they came up with supersizing and larger softdrinks to get people to consume more and people got fatter)
The price of tortillas went up in Mexico
because Mexican corn growers could get more for their corn in the US where there was all this speculation in corn ethanol.
The farming system in the US and Canada is already broken and this should be considered
when deciding which direction to go with biomass energy.

[averagejoe]

petr, you raise some interesting points about modern agriculture. I remember reading an article a while back about biochar soil amendments reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation (somewhat). Done correctly, a cellulosic fuels program could help modern agriculture onto a more sustainable path:

- mixed prairie "grass" crops returning marginal land to fertility.

- Biochar as a byproduct from pyrolysis fuels being applied to cropland. It would be interesting to see how much nitrogen fertilizer levels could be reduced if biochar and adequate trace minerals (rock dust?) were applied.

- Algae oil technologies that were developed for biofuels could be adapted to grow animal feed using less land and water.

Whether or not the biofuels industry will move in this direction is anybody's guess.

[Susan Gets Native]

I was researching green energy sources and came across your blog.
Thanks for putting the info out there...hopefully people are listening. I know I am.
I am the director of education for a rescue and rehab center for birds of prey in Cincinnati and we are in the process of planning a new building. We want to be as green as green can be (solar water heaters to supply warm water in the winter months for cage cleaning, etc.) and I have found that there is hope.
Thanks for a great blog.
(And I promise to NEVER try to inflame your readers or you.)
: )

[DaveMart]

Susan, I hope the budget runs to a Greenroof and a Geothermal heat pump!
Good luck with your project.

[Kit P]

“does the switchgrass study include the cost of manmade fertilizer?”

Is this an honest question by petr or the prelude to a irrelevant rant? Since the research is linked in the story it is easy to answer this question. The irrelevant rant is the second give away.

For Susan, I promise to let readers be responsible for their own feelings. The dishonest and manipulative will not get a break from me.

With respect to energy, bird dropping have an high energy content.

[petr]

the overproduction of the corn monoculture in the US is hardly irrelevant - when planning biomass to energy.. Actually Im all in favor of a perennial grass crop that would improve soil and require less inputs.
And so what if farmers can make more money
growing it? Id say there is little worry over no one growing beans when they go up in price people will grow them.
As far as the cost of food.. As a percentage of disposable income it is much less now than it was in the 50s.. Furthermore - people still find money ($50-100month) to pay for things that didnt exist a few years ago such as cellphones and internet access.

Cows dont need to eat algae either, they do quite well enough eating grass and healthier for it.. There are many 'grass farmers' that raise beef and chickens -like this one
www.polyfacefarms.com
I know, Iknow the troll paid for by the coal and gas industry will rant that its irrelevant - but I hardly think the energy discussion should not look at the whole picture.

as far as agricultural inputs ? Reading the article it wasnt clear how much fertilizer was used.
'Switchgrass grown in this study yielded 93 percent more biomass per acre and an estimated 93 percent more net energy yield than previously estimated in a study done elsewhere of planted prairies in Minnesota that received low agricultural inputs,'

[stevenchen18]

The food price will go up one way or the other. I think it is way too low right now.

[averagejoe]

petr, look at it this way. The right mix of prairie "grasses" can serve as feedstock for biofuels, biomass for electrical generation, or pasture for livestock. According to the most recent estimates, the world's population will increase to about 9 billion by 2050. Even if the use of biofuels is totally discontinued by that time (in favor of EV's), food for 9 billion people will put a serious strain on the world's agricultural systems. Wouldn't it be useful to add sustainable capacity to world Agricultural output in the mean time?

First: prairie grasses could restore marginal land to fertility, leaving more land for food production when EV's eventually displace the need for biofuels. Second: animal feed derived from algae farms may become a matter of necessity if world population continues to increase. I'm not sold on the AGW theory, but the weather has been weird lately. A world agricultural system strained to the breaking point by 9 billion people will be highly vulnerable to weather fluctuations. Algae farms might help offset that.

[Kit P]

“as far as agricultural inputs ? Reading the article it wasnt clear how much fertilizer was used.”

Petr, have you been checked for color blindness? Go up to the top of this article and click on the red (grey for Petr) “more” and then go to the PNAS if you want to read the paper instead of the press release.

“I know, Iknow the troll paid for by the coal and gas industry will rant that its irrelevant - but I hardly think the energy discussion should not look at the whole picture.”

Since I am not a paid troll of any industry, I may need petr to explain the relevance of the eco system of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley (since I have not been over there in a couple weeks) to a scientific report about growing switch grass in the upper great plains.

[Roger Brown]

Averagejoe wrote:

In fact, prairie "grass" mixtures can improve the fertility of marginal land rather than exhausting it.

I am skeptical that prairie grass mixtures can be mowed down year after year without depleting the soil of nutrients. Carbon and nitrogen do not exhaust the list of important plant nutrients. In the long run all biomass production systems are going to have to incorporate nutrient recycling. Carbon and hydrogen of course can be recycled by natural atmospheric processes. So can nitrogen to some extent, but my understanding is that in natural ecosystems fixed nitrogen is cycled through the food chain a number of time before being returned to the atmosphere so that depending on newly fixed nitrogen alone may not be sufficient to ensure adequate levels of this nutrient.

[Paul F. Dietz]

I am skeptical that prairie grass mixtures can be mowed down year after year without depleting the soil of nutrients. Carbon and nitrogen do not exhaust the list of important plant nutrients.

All other mineral nutrients can be recycled back to the field at very high efficiency. Ethanol doesn't contain any of them, after all.

What perennial crops do is greatly reduce the real loss, which is from erosion.

The biggest limit to all this, in my mind, is water, not soil nutrients.

[averagejoe]

Roger, it's my understanding that native warm season grasses like switchgrass are extremely efficient users of nitrogen. When grown in a mixture of grass, forb, and legume species, biological nitrogen fixation was adequate to support the plant community. Indeed, too much nitrogen fertilizer applied could cause overgrowth of weeds. Prairie plant communities also typically have extensive root systems that can bring up nutrients and water from the subsoils, with some roots extending 5 to 20 feet down.

Granted, overly intensive harvesting might not be sustainable, but that's true of any crop. A compromise between the frequency of harvesting and the required inputs (fertilizer) would have to be arrived at. As I envision it at least, prairie grass mixes would be harvested for biofuels at a medium intensity with a rotation of fallow periods or low intensity grazing interspersed every few years.

[DaveMart]

In addition, should pyrolysis be used and some of the charcoal be returned to the soil, this appears to increase retention of nutriments enormously, and so hopefully fairly low inputs of nitrogen and so on will be needed.
In the agrichar system, the charcoal seems to make a kind of microclimate, with a huge surface area giving rise to the nutriments being trapped, particularly handy where rain causes fast erosion.

[Roger Brown]

Danzig wrote:

"The entire argument for the use of switchgrass has always been that it is a non-food crop and it can be grown on non-farm land. By using switchgrass for fuel, we can use corn and beans solely for food."

If a truly cost effective method of making biofuels out of arbitrary biomass feed stocks is developed, it is unlikely that production would be confined to marginal lands unless the market is deliberately controlled (e.g. through agricultural zoning). Landowners will grow whatever crops are most profitable. Presumably high quality land can produce more biomass/ha than marginal land. The ability of marginal land to produce biofuel may allow high prices to call forth higher supplies of fuel more easily than higher supplies of food, but you are kidding yourself if you do not understand that high volume production of biofuels is going to drive up food prices.

[Carl Hage]

I read the Nebraska report in detail and have some answers to questions raised above. The report has tables with detailed numbers. Nitrogen was 74kg/ha in this study vs 150kg/ha in the (corn) "Ethanol Today" paper (EBAMM).

Note that they did not actually produce ethanol-- the study was on farming practices to measure biomass yield and energy inputs in a realistic setting. Prior studies just estimated yield from small plots. The energy balance calculations was hypothetical based on the EBAMM model, and they assumed that the energy needed for biomass to ethanol conversion was obtained by burning the leftover biomass. (28MJ/l burned energy to get the 21.5 MJ/l output)

Here are the numbers: To get 21.5MJ/l, they measured 1.74MJ agricultural input, then assumed from EBAMM 28MJ biorefining energy, with 26.3MJ burned biomass, and 3.8MJ coproduction "credit". Some of the credits are leftover steam from the burning biomass used to generate electricity.

In the GHG calculations, carbon sequestration from growing switchgrass offsets the emissions, and biomass is burned instead of coal, so that affects the comparisons.

Here is a very interesting calculation. Compare the energy production of switchgrass ethanol vs photovoltaic (say 8% efficient), then converting units from MJ/ha/yr to kWh/day/ha, switchgrass yields 43 vs 3920 PV (Omaha). If you assume an electric car is about 2x the effiency of an ethanol ICE (or fuel cell), then for a 100m deep switchgrass field, a solar panel .55m deep would provide the same transportation energy!

It's really interesting when units are converted into something we can work with like kWh/day. It seems clear to me now that the future for transportation is battery-electric.

[averagejoe]

I sometimes wonder what the Food vs. Fuel people would do if the use of biofuels disappeared overnight and food prices still went up. Without the convenient scapegoat of biofuels, they might actually have to look at the other factors driving up food costs: increasing demand, crop damage from extreme weather, high fuel costs, poor management, etc. I wonder if the following factors are even a blip on their radar:

- the weak U.S. dollar encouraging speculation in the commodities markets.

- the Australian drought cutting into wheat production.

- Increased demand from countries like Mexico and China. Dysfunctional trade agreements like NAFTA putting many Mexican farmers out of business and encouraging dependence on U.S. corn. Arable land in China being lost to commercial development and expanding dustbowl conditions while traditional dietary habits change to include more meat consumption.

- the high price of fuel jacking up costs in all phases of food cultivation, processing , and distribution.

- countries like Russia limiting grain exports through the use of export tariffs.

- political mismanagement destroying the agricultural sector in developing countries like Zimbabwe. Mugabe's "Land Reform" policies turning a net exporter of food into a basket case that is now dependent on food aid.

Nah, I guess it's easier to ignore all that. Just like it's easier to ignore the fact that co-product distillers grains substituted for an estimated 512 million bushels of corn that would otherwise have gone to the feed markets during the '06-'07 marketing year.

Why let the facts get in the way of a good theory?

[Roger Brown]

Averagejoe wrote:

Nah, I guess it's easier to ignore all that. Just like it's easier to ignore the fact that co-product distillers grains substituted for an estimated 512 million bushels of corn that would otherwise have gone to the feed markets during the '06-'07 marketing year.

I did not claim that current food prices increases are driven primarily by bio-fuel production. However, corn prices did double in 2007. Furthermore ethanol/bio-diesel at present provides only a small fraction of U.S. total transportation fuel. If you have a detailed analysis showing that we can increase production by factor of ten without signifcantly affecting food prices then please present it.

[averagejoe]

OR... if you have a detailed analysis showing that increased production of cellulosic biofuels will significantly affect food prices then please present it...

In my view, biofuels have two main benefits: reducing dependence on foreign fuel supplies until EV's capture sufficient marketshare...AND helping to restore agriculture to a somewhat more sustainable path. Decades of overutilization and excessive nitrogen inputs have depleted organic carbon content in the farmbelt:

"...we found consistent evidence of an organic carbon decline for fertilized soils throughout the world and including much of the Corn Belt..."

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Nitrogen_Fertilizers_Deplete_Soil_Organic_Carbon_999.html

I'd rather see pro-active measures taken now than emergency measures taken later, when exhausted soils lose what little natural fertility they have left. If economic motivations (cellulosic biofuels) can be harnessed to achieve a constructive end, then I believe they're worth pursuing. I never said that I supported an amplification of corn ethanol by a factor of ten. My hope is that a cellulosic program incorporating prairie plants, biochar, pyrolysis fuels, algae oil, etc can be tried. The alternative, business-as-usual agriculture, may become unsustainable long before the world's population reaches 9 billion in 2050.

[eric blair]

I am skeptical that prairie grass mixtures can be mowed down year after year without depleting the soil of nutrients.

The sainted Engineer-Poet who was pimping for Zinc-Carbon batteries and originally held the POV that 'if the soil nutrients were important, a market will develop for them' has come about to 'closing the loop'

[penny auctions]

Ask these people to forward the email to anyone they think might be interested.

[dentist west hollywood]

How does switchgrass differ from regular grass?

[SEO Services]

I feel like I've already read an article about Switchgrass. Was there another one you wrote about this?

[parking sensor system]

Can they grow the switchgrass in other states as well or do those states have the optimal conditions?

[Rug Cleaning Los Angeles]

How come we're not making use of this?!?!

[Korean Auto Lease Broker Los Angeles]

That picture is pretty! Not familiar with switchgrass.

[Tours in Venice]

If they did it a 5 year study and it came out positive then why aren't we using this resource, or are we and I just don't know about it.

[acting classes los angeles]

540 % more energy produced than spent on making it?? Incredible!!

[furniture stores los angeles]

Ooh, switchgrass, lovely!