[Vision2020] cellulosic alcohol (butanol)

Fri Sep 1 21:30:39 PDT 2006

No sugar beets for the Palouse because a) They are a row crop and very difficult to harvest large-scale on these hills, and b) they need lots of irrigation to grow well.

  Penny P

J Ford <privatejf32 at hotmail.com> wrote:
  The grow them in Colorado and Texas...why not here?

J :]

>From: Pennsylvania Place 

>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] cellulosic alcohol (butanol)
>Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 05:22:41 -0700 (PDT)
>
>What abouit the notion of using sugar beets for fuel? You can't grow them 
>on the Palouse, of course, but you can all over southern Idaho and central 
>Washington.
>
> Penny
>
>Jim Meyer wrote:
> Ted and all,
>Cellulosic alcohol is great idea. Alan Greenspan thinks it is a good
>idea. I hadn't really known it had come of age before hearing Mr.
>Greenspan talking about it. The big idea with cellulosic alcohol is that
>it can be produced from plants that require very little oil based
>fertilizer input. As I recall, and I might be wrong, corn requires about
>300 pounds of nitrogen/acre. Even with the best legume crop rotation you
>could never produce corn without external fertilizer. Cellulose on the
>hand, can grow without external nitrogen sources. Furthermore, we do
>have plenty of timber slash and marginal lands that can grow sturdy, low
>input cellulosic crops. So I second your suggestion even to the point of
>wanting to start my own plant, if that were even remotely possible.
>Secondly, I would produce cellulosic butanol, not ethanol. See
>http://www.butanol.com/. Supposedly it can replace gasoline directly
>without any engine modifications. What could be better? Currently, if
>you want to run an E85 vehicle, either you have to buy a vehicle so
>designed or you have to do considerable retrofitting. Without the
>necessity of retrofiting, butanol appears to have it all over ethanol,
>not to mention generally better fuel characteristics than ethanol.
>
>Jim Meyer
>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:00:14 -0700
> > From: "Ted Moffett"
> > Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Inconvenient Truth -- What WE REALLY HAVE TO
> > DO: " Apollo Project"
> > To: "Chris Storhok" , "Vision 2020"
> >
> > Message-ID:
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > Chris et. al.
> >
> > Yes, that was Donovan's idea about high gas taxes, and of course many 
>think
> > gas taxes should be raised, though some call it a "carbon tax" that 
>could be
> > used to develop the infrastructure and technology to transition away 
>from
> > fossil fuels. It's hard to see how addressing fossil fuel depletion and
> > global warming can be economically pain free... However, raising gas 
>taxes a
> > lot is almost politically impossible.
> >
> > Thanks for the detailed info on the biofuels project you are working on. 
>I
> > agree there is good evidence that biofuels can be practical and 
>efficient
> > enough in some applications, as your discussion of the biofuels projects 
>in
> > Alaska indicate. Wait for the final implementation, though. As they say,
> > the devil is in the details. Brazil, it appears, has a self supporting
> > biofuels program based on sugar cane, much better than corn for 
>biofuels,
> > that supplies a lot of their fuel. From the analyses I have read, 
>however,
> > biofuels are not a dominant solution to supplying the USA, not to 
>mention
> > India and China, with the fuel we/they need, given current and expected
> > future consumption levels, at least not with internal combustion 
>engines.
> >
> > I would like to hear more about this wood based biofuels program in 
>Alaska.
> > It must be based on what is called "cellulosic" biofuels. I posted to
> > Vision2020 the suggestion that the Moscow/Pullman area could have its 
>own
> > biofuels plant to produce fuel locally from the forest/agriculture 
>biomass
> > resources available in our greater area. I did not get a single response 
>to
> > this suggestion, but what the heck, it's only Vision2020.
> >
> > I don't think Vision2020 readers should need a "Warning" about your
> > discussion of the biofuels projects in Alaska being boring. The same 
>ideas
> > might be applied here for affordable renewable biofuels at a local 
>biofuels
> > plant... If that's boring, I suppose Vision2020 readers will find 10 
>dollar
> > a gallon fossil fuel gas to be very exciting!
> >
> > Ted Moffett
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> >
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