Competing for Grain

[jabbott]

Sent to me by user Rick54, original text located at: http://www.energybulletin.com

Supermarkets and Service Stations Now Competing for Grain
Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute

Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by 20 million tons in 2006. Of this, 14 million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the United States, leaving only 6 million tons to satisfy the world’s growing food needs.

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year. The grain to fill the tank every two weeks over a year will feed 26 people.

Investors are jumping on the highly profitable biofuel-bandwagon so fast that hardly a day goes by without another ethanol distillery or biodiesel refinery being announced somewhere in the world. The amount of corn used in U.S. ethanol distilleries has tripled in five years, jumping from 18 million tons in 2001 to an estimated 55 million tons from the 2006 crop.

In some U.S. Corn Belt states, ethanol distilleries are taking over the corn supply. In Iowa, a staggering 55 ethanol plants are operating or have been proposed. Iowa State University economist Bob Wisner observes that if all these plants are built, they would use virtually all the corn grown in Iowa. In South Dakota, a top-ten corn-growing state, ethanol distilleries are already claiming over half of the corn harvest.

With so many distilleries being built, livestock and poultry producers fear there may not be enough corn to produce meat, milk, and eggs. And since the United States supplies 70 percent of world corn exports, corn-importing countries are worried about their supply.

Since almost everything we eat can be converted into fuel for automobiles, including wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, and sugarcane, the line between the food and energy economies is disappearing.

[Scottimo]

This may be just the ticket as most of thees big oil nations are not big food growers. how did the line in that old song go a bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil or how about a bushel of corn for a barrel of oil if they don't like the price let them bake bread form their oil see how that tastes It's been obvious to me for a long time we can't grow enough corn to produce all the ethanol this nation would need to replace oil but we can sure use everything we don't need for food and feed and the oil barons can go do obscene things to them selves
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Scott M
LDJ 165K Boiler

[Scottj]

Some folks forget that the distillers grain is very high in protein and makes great animal feed. Just because we make fuel with the corn does not mean that the chickens, pigs and cows in this country are going to go without feed.
One of the most successful ethanol plants is a Co-Op that also has a large beef feed lot to utilize the distillers grain. I think it's around Madison WI, I'd like to get a look at it.
I sure like the idea about a bushel of corn for a barrel of oil. It would be nice to see this mess become a two way street.
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TTFN,
The Village Idiot

LMF forced air furnace/vacy-sucky thing corn mover and sqashed beer can, wasp nest, and rock remover

[curty]

[LDJisdaway]

A Friend of mine actually buys the distillers grain for his cattle. He said the cows really like it and they seem to fatten up just as quick. Not only can the ethanol plants make money with the ethanol but with what is left over also. Its great all the way around!
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LDJ 100,000 btu Furnace

[Ahshucks]

Would there be any benefit to trying to burn distillers grains? It could be pelletized.
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[LDJisdaway]

I don't know about pelletizing it. I know that when it comes out it is very moist so it might take some drying time.
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LDJ 100,000 btu Furnace

[JET]

Distiller's or Brewer's grain comes from an ethanol plant and they take most of the energy out of the corn. That makes it a poor fuel source for a stove. BTU output is about 1/2 of corn.
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Bixby 120 - Black/Nickel <--- In the house
Bixby 100 - Black/Gold <--- In the shop

[burnsalot]

I have seen a burn analysis of pelletized distillers grain. It had around 9000 btus. per pound. It also had around 4% ash. They do take energy out, but the left over stuff would be condensed.
The pellets smell sweet, like feed with molasses on it. And yes I had to know, it has a bitter taste. If you remember the hot drink called Postum, I don't know if that is spelled correctly, it tasted like that stuff, only very bitter.


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Pelco 1520

[Ahshucks]

burnsalot ... where did you get those pelletized distiller grains? I would like to try a sample of them in my pellet stove.
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[xracer]

The maddening part of this to me is the U.S. is a big oil nation. We have more oil than all the Middle East and several other countries combined. There's no need for $3/gal gasoline or natural gas shortages. I had an article from Popular Science 1979 about converting coal to gasoline. At the time the cost was about $.90/gal vs $.65-.70 for gasoline making it uncompetitive. However, now it's 27 years later and no doubt the technology has improved. Alas, in 1996 President William Jefferson Clinton locked out the largest clean coal reserves ever discovered and created the first desert wasteland "National Park" in Utah.

Write it down. Utilizing all this corn for ethanol is going to be our achilles heel once the trend lines cross paths. Also, we are so used to having abundant corn crops it's assumed it always will be so. One bad year when the scales are even and we're in big trouble. Prices will then soar and the advent of the corn stove will be nothing but a conversation piece, sold at flea markets for pennies on the dollar or rusting away in our yards.

Why not force the politicians to free up our own resources? With the recent shut down of the Alaskan pipeline, this proves how fragile the supplies are, and it's not because the world is running out of "fossil fuels". It's time to put pressure on Congress.

[jabbott]

I think you would have a hard time coming up with many buyers for the theory that the U.S. has more oil that the middle east. No nation, possibly with the the exception of China, has been more thoroughly searched for oil than the U.S. U.S. oil discovery peaked back in the 1950s and production peaked in 1972. Oil sits in a very narrow window of depth, too deep and the pressure is too great, the atoms crack and you get your methane and lighter gasses. I have a hard time believing there is much oil to be had outside of that window.

Refining coal to produce oil is a pretty stable technology. The Germans did it in World War II, and it proved so costly they had to go after their friend Russia to get their oil fields. A move that cost them the war. Syn-oil from coal, oil shale, all of these technologies are fascinating, but they are not an answer you can run a nation, especially not a nation as thirsty as ours is, on. You suffer from Energy Returned over Energy Spent. If it costs $0.90 of gas to make $0.65 worth of gasoline, it is lunacy or a government project, to make much of it. Just like now, if it costs $4.43 to make $3.19 of gas. It isn't worth it. Just because we could make $0.90 syn-gas back in 1979 doesn't mean we can still make it for that now.

I agree we live in very fragile times and I have said from the very beginning; use your corn burner, save money, because right now, at this time it is much cheaper than burning petroleum products. It won't always be so. I think the whole ethanol phenomena is a cop out to keep us hooked. Big oil is in the whitehouse, they want us to keep buying those Hummers. What we need is to build a public transportation system in a short amount of time. What we need is the public transportation system we had back in the 1940s, rebuilt. If we don't, there are going to be a lot of people and good that aren't gonna be getting around very much in a few years.

We don't need to free up resources, we need to conserve the ones we have.

[fwbroke]

"Just like now, if it costs $4.43 to make $3.19 of gas."

JA, I know one of the complaints about corn ethanol is that it takes more energy to make than it provides (think I am right, not going to look it up right now). How much energy is spent (gasoline, diesel, electricity, nat gas, whatever else) to take my gas from 'insert any place' other than U.S or Canada and.

Drill it,
Tank it,
Move it,
Store it,
Put it on a tanker,
offload and store it,
Distill it,
Transfer to regional holding tanks (via pipelines or trucks)
from local holding tanks,
to my gas station
then I get to pay $3+ for it.

I have not heared (outside of your post) what is costs in fossil fuel to get fossil fuel to the pump. Too bad those oil tankers didn't run on syn-gas.

Anyone got any resources that talk about this? I am assuming JA's is just a guess?

Point being, maybe corn ethanol isn't REALLY that bad of a deal.

[Ahshucks]

fw ... You forgot "TAX" it
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[xracer]