> -----Original Message----- > From: Greg Morphis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 8:36 AM > To: CF-Community > Subject: Re: Open Your Corn Holes > > Can't we get ethanol from other things too, sugar cane? and can't we > turn the left over corn product like the stalk into ethanol? I seem to > remember reading something on that..
My understanding is that Sugar Cane (which is the primary Ethanol crop used in Brazil) is vastly superior to corn - the more sugar the better the fuel. Unfortunately the U.S. just doesn't provide a very good environment for Sugar Cane (although I think that we may be able to do sugar beets pretty well). The main problem for us is that corn doesn't make for really good ethanol: the process of producing ethanol from corn (which is dependent on natural gas and other resources) takes nearly as much energy as the resulting fuel provides - it's nearly a wash in the case of corn kernels. I really think that ethanol is the "good" future but I'm really amazed that we're focusing on Corn rather than the few sugar-heavy crops that we can grow here. Right now corn stalks, husks and cobs (mostly cellulose) are even worse: it's takes (much) more energy using traditional methods to produce fuel from that than it provides. Now really interesting stuff comes in when you throw a little mad science into the mix. At least two companies have had success with targeted bacteria which actually convert cellulose to sugars. Now, if that could be made to work on large scales (and there's nothing to indicate than we can't) then we're basically set. Corn is still used, the food part is used as it is today (as food) and the stalks, husks and cobs are converted to sugars and finally converted to fuel. There was a great article in the January issue of Scientific American that offered a great summary of the issues facing Ethanol in the U.S. and how we differ from other countries (namely Brazil) heavily using ethanol. Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=RVJQ Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:231441 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
