From the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t department”.
More Maize Ethanol May Boost Greenhouse Gas Emissions
From the American Institute of Biological Sciences
Read the full article (PDF)
In the March 2010 issue of BioScience, researchers present a sophisticated new analysis of the effects of boosting use of maize-derived ethanol on greenhouse gas emissions. The study, conducted by Thomas W. Hertel of Purdue University and five co-authors, focuses on how mandated increases in production of the biofuel in the United States will trigger land-use changes domestically and elsewhere. In response to the increased demand for maize, farmers convert additional land to crops, and this conversion can boost carbon dioxide emissions.
The analysis combines ecological data with a global economic commodity and trade model to project the effects of US maize ethanol production on carbon dioxide emissions resulting from land-use changes in 18 regions across the globe. The researchers’ main conclusion is stark: These indirect, market-mediated effects on greenhouse gas emissions “are enough to cancel out the benefits the corn ethanol has on global warming.”
The indirect effects of increasing production of maize ethanol were first addressed in 2008 by Timothy Searchinger and his coauthors, who presented a simpler calculation in Science. Searchinger concluded that burning maize ethanol led to greenhouse gas emissions twice as large as if gasoline had been burned instead. The question assumed global importance because the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act mandates a steep increase in US production of biofuels over the next dozen years, and certifications about life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are needed for some of this increase. In addition, the California Air Resources Board’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard requires including estimates of the effects of indirect land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions. The board’s approach is based on the work reported in BioScience.
Hertel and colleagues’ analysis incorporates some effects that could lessen the impact of land-use conversion, but their bottom line, though only one-quarter as large as the earlier estimate of Searchinger and his coauthors, still indicates that the maize ethanol now being produced in the United States will not significantly reduce total greenhouse gas emissions, compared with burning gasoline. The authors acknowledge that some game-changing technical or economic development could render their estimates moot, but sensitivity analyses undertaken in their study suggest that the findings are quite robust.
Effects of US Maize Ethanol on Global Land Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Estimating Market-mediated Responses
Thomas W. Hertel, Alla A. Golub, Andrew D. Jones, Michael O’Hare, Richard J. Plevin, and Daniel M. Kammen
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Your claim is not honest.
By Gale Rose
The Pratt Tribune
Posted Mar 15, 2010 @ur momisugly 04:39 PM
Pratt, Kan. — The removal of an Indeck power boiler from the Gateway Ethanol Plant will move the last of the objections to the asset sale close to resolution. Once the objection is resolved the rest of the matters involving the ethanol plant should be easily resolved, said Ted Loomis, chairman of the Gateway Ethanol board of directors.
“I think the bankruptcy court will handle any other items fairly quickly,” Loomis said.
Indeck objected to the asset sale because they wanted a ruling on the validity of the lease of their boiler to the plant. A judge ruled it was a valid lease and Dougherty, the principal lender, rejected the lease so Indeck is removing the boiler.
The plant purchased pair of Victoria Energy boilers on Jan. 22. Those boilers sit covered on the plant site ready for installation once the Indeck boiler is removed. The $110 million ethanol plant began operating and stopped. No “playing commodities” there.
40 banks are involved with the plant.
News on Panda,
Although the ethanol refinery is in the late stages of construction, on December 31, Panda Ethanol was notified by Societe Generale, the administrative agent for the Hereford subsidiary’s lending syndicate, that one of the major syndicate banks had informed Societe Generale that it would not fund its share of further borrowing requests for the project
Never finished 3 plants. No “playing Commodities” there. $200 million dollars for one plant means they really had no chance to make money.
“Ethanol is good for your community and country. American ethanol production creates tens of thousands of jobs, revitalizes rural communities, and reduces oil consumption by 600,000 barrels per day … and growing. ”
http://www.icminc.com/ethanol/
ICM is the largest engineering design firm in ethanol. Dave Vander Griend is fudgin a little because 600,000 bpd is around 10 billion gallons a year. His deception is that there are no fuel gallons expended in raising grain and brewing C2H6O
Creates thousands of jobs. They laid off hundreds at a time. Many foreign banks stopped lending during construction.
Ethanol has Poet, ADM and a new player Valero, Other than that, it is bad news.
Abengoa folks claim:
The claim “Bioethanol is indirectly increasing GHG emissions” is just one of the many false statements being spread to the general public. We have decided to stand up and contest these falsities with supported evidence. We believe it is the right thing to do.
Abengoa Bioenergy, a business unit of Abengoa, is Europe’s largest bioethanol producer and the only global producer with operations in the US and Brazil as well.”
The claim they make is 100% lie. I give them a quible. It is not indirect. It is direct creation of greenhouse gases when ethanol burns
The exhaust from a car running ethanol is CO2 and H2O vapor. Both are 100% greenhouse gases.
Why do they lie? (they do around 200 million gallons a year in Europa, Brazil and the U.S. They have a higher cost of brewing refining per gallon than do some more efficient operators. )
The greenie weenies goble this up. No indirect increase of GHG emissions. Watts up is a great site. Anyone reading this site knows combustion of ethanol creates GHG’s.
10 billion subsidy. Ethanol plants are high in pollution and water contamination. I know the plant that sold toxic distillers grain and killed a large herd of cattle. Ooops. It wasn’t sterilized.
Harry,
you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. $200 Million is an average price for a 100 Mgpy Ethanol refinery. The woods are full of them.
There are 200 plants operating, Now. Everybody’s making money.
10 billion subsidy. (Way too high) Ethanol plants are high in pollution and water contamination. (Bull) I know the plant that sold toxic distillers grain and killed a large herd of cattle. Ooops. It wasn’t sterilized (Name it.)
This is getting silly. I’m through.
hotrod ( Larry L ) (19:11:13) :
I appreciate your civil reply to some of my objections to ethanol. I am an engineer with a post graduate degree wiith almost 50 years experience in the energy sector including study design of cellulosic biofuel plants and CO2 capture facilities.
Since I have studied ethanol thoroughly as well as biofuels, there is nothing that you or anyone else have said that changes the facts as I know them. You make a good point that the transition to 10 % is probably the most painful period for gasoline engines. I personally know many boat owners that have had ethanol induced, expensive repair problems during the transition including myself- fact including fuel turned to junk . Many have found towing insurance a must. One needs to keep in mind that the coastal marine environment is very hostile in the North east with high humidity and huge temperature swings. One cannot ignore the problems of winter storing a boat with 10 % E without peril, even assuming the painful transition is over. MTBE apparently did not cause the same problems but had it’s other issues that were ignored by the EPA even though oil executives accurately warned Congress.
There are many other technical and economic concerns, but the real issue that embitters many of us is that the government has taken away our right to decide which fuel we use via the Ethanol mandate especialy in the harsh marine environment. This used to be a free country where we could mak our own decisions without government interference and live with them. Would you like it if the feds mandated that you purchase and eat 10% of your tomatoes from the state of New Jersey because we have a strong Lobby?
True some problems arose because of deposits in tanks etc, but these were not a problem until ethanol was mandated. So blaming the oil companies does not wash!! No exceptions were permitted except for aviation (ever wonder why?)
I can tell you that the mandate to use ethanol from farm states has soured many of us on farmers, ADM, Cargile, and their lobby; they constantly demand more and more ethanol consumption via bribes to Congress. The EPA is looking at 15% mandate ignoring all problems. Farmers that were previously darliings in our minds, now they are quickly becoming a scourge for us taxpayers that have to pay for the subsidies, without benefits, and survive all the problems including poorer gas mileage. Public opinion has turned against farmers since they take away our right to decide what fuel we use.
Finally I read all the various claims about how great Ethanol is economically. I only believe the free market without government interference can settle the debate. Otherwise the claims have no credibility.
I happen to have a fair amount of experience with celullosic ethanol and the fact of the matter is that it has not lived up to the promise use to get taxpayer dollars. There are no commercially operating cellulosic ethanol plants. Only a fraction of the ethanol mandate will be met and the outlook is bleak with more delays promised from plants that were once the darling of the industry. The EPA has lowered the targets and doubled up on failed technology. One plant cannot even make ethanol for a few more years and has switched to methanol production at a significantly reduced rate.
Sorry about long post, Have a great day
Kum Dollison (19:34:39) :
Harry,
you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. $200 Million is an average price for a 100 Mgpy Ethanol refinery. The woods are full of them.
There are 200 plants operating, Now. Everybody’s making money.
“Every body is making money now?” I take it you are a CPA and reviewed the financials? Just speculation?
If they are making money, why did a repo plant from Panda Energy go for 15 cents on the dollar? Why can’t some other plants in foreclosure sell at a discount? Looks like ICM is running some re possessed plants because they are broke and waiting for a buyer. It costs too much to mothball and re open later.
If they are making money, why can’t they pay their bills?
Last tough question. Are they making money after 10 billion in fed subsidy?
Looks like bankruptcy hits the industry. Many plants under construction are halted and many closed waiting for buyers. ADM has deep pockets. They will come out OK.
This is an industry which will see more bankruptcies. Smart bankers will not lend on cash flow “projections” but may make loans if enough farmers put up land for collateral.
POET can survive because of size and opportunity to buy out insolvent small operators.
*ahem*
@ur momisugly Henry chance (19:21:37) :
I found ths piece at Grist.org complaining about distiller’s grain, I’ll just note two of the problems mentioned. The E. Coli, which is mainly covered in this piece linked to by the other, and sulfur poisoning. Apparently sulfur can be added during ethanol processing, and the distillers grain can wind up with high levels leading to cattle poisoning and death.
Your wording was the distillers grain was toxic, and wasn’t sterilized. The first part indicates a chemical issue, the second a biological one. I’m not doubting your statement as is, as the product can be sold wet thus stuff can grow in it yielding toxic levels of assorted substances, as with mold. If the product had been dried then I would assume it was effectively sterilized. I am wondering if perhaps two different things got mixed together into what you’re reporting.
Note: The Grist.org pieces reference both The Coloradoan and The Des Moines Register. For both papers the links go to very similar “Story not found” pages with a Gannett publishing mark at the bottom, with “Archive” links where you can buy old articles. Ouch.
Kum Dollison (10:43:49) :
Actually, Bill, Canada imports 1 million bpd from, primarily, Algeria, I believe, and Mexico, a soon to be non-exporter, is nowhere near our top 3 exporters.
And, of course, Nigeria has its issues, also.
I wasn’t addressing of Canadian imports — I was addressing US imports.
And, we are spending in the neighborhood of $200 Billion/yr in the Middle East. We’re not there for the date palms.
If we were here for the oil, I’d be tripping over people with Texas accents…
@richard M (18:43:27) :
Ethanol discussions always bring out lots of disinformation. Listen to John and the farmers, you’re getting it straight without the political spin.
It really is feed corn and the feed is still produced.
– – – – – –
I certainly agree with you about the ethanol discussion bringing out disinformation , but not on the sources of that disinformation. Do you honestly believe that the corn farmers /producers are a disinterested source of unbiased information? After all, who is making a profit from the crop, and who would lose if the subsidies from Uncle Sugar were halted? If ethanol is so great for use as a fuel, why the need for the subsidies? You need to look at the big picture. The USA is no longer a net exporter of food for human consumption and livestock feed. Why would that be? This statement by the USDA only deals with corn, but wheat and other crops used for biofuels are affected similarly:
“To meet the sector’s growing demand for corn, some U.S. corn is likely to be diverted from exports.” [Source:USDA]
I however, take the USDA’s claim of low energy input costs for the manufacture of corn ethanol with a grain of salt. After all, blending of renewable fuels with gasoline is official USA policy, they don’t want to undermine that objective:
“Third, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 specifies a new Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that will ensure that gasoline marketed in the United States contains a specific minimum amount of renewable fuel. Between 2006 and 2012, the RFS is slated to rise from 4.0 to 7.5 billion gallons per year.” [Source:USDA]
Then there is the factor of biofuels induced food shortages:
“A recent study conducted by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (which receives funding from grocery manufacturers and livestock producers) reported that U.S. ethanol production could consume more than half of U.S. corn, wheat and coarse grains by 2012, driving up food prices and causing shortages. The study estimates that booming ethanol production has already raised U.S. food prices by $47 per person annually. In Mexico, protests have already erupted over the high price of corn tortillas, a staple food in the local diet.
[Source:http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-06/america-headed-food-shortage
And this:
“Rogers: Food Shortage Coming as Farmers Struggle
Monday, 18 Jan 2010 09:59 AM
Article Font Size
By: Dan Weil
Legendary investor Jim Rogers remains bullish on commodities and says the world will soon face food shortages.
“The fundamentals (for agriculture) have gotten better,” he says.
“The inventories are now at the lowest they’ve been in decades, not in years.”
And that trend is just intensifying, Rogers tells CNBC.
“Things are getting worse. Many farmers can’t get loans to buy fertilizer now, even though we have big shortages developing.”
And what will be the end result of this dynamic?
“Sometime in the next few years we’re going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world, and prices are going to go through the roof,” Rogers said.”
[Source: http://moneynews.com/StreetTalk/jim-rogers-food-shortage/2010/01/18/id/346650%5D
Here are some additional conclusions made by Pimentel in 2005, not included in the Cornell University press release of 2005 cited in my earlier post:
” * The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes. Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States. Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: “In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace”
* The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.
* If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.”
The religion that “Ethanol is great” as a fuel appears to be a first-cousin to the religion of “Anthropogenic Global Warming.”
Poet didn’t buy any ethanol plants.
E Coli didn’t turn into anything. All manure has E Coli.
Pimental is nutz. You can grow that much ethanol on One acre.
Show us how 20 barrels of crude are save for every barrel invested in ethanol. Show numbers. I am a CPA and know you are lying. $64.68 to save
to save NY crude $3,431.00 at this time.
I apologize in advance for being blunt. If I told my banker this, he would never do business with me again.
So using mariners wild claims, that 12 million gallons can save us 240 million gallons of crude. I remember when Bill Patterson headed up the energy lending department at Penn Square Bank in OKC. (he syndicated loans with Continental Chicago and Seafirst) He got drunk at lunch and would loan to about anyone in the oil patch.
Can’t fool me Mariner. Can’t fool my banker either.
This is why there are so many bankruptcies surrounding Ethanol. 10 billion in subsidies and billions in copnstruction stopped.
Yesterday Obama said he could see people save 3,000 percent in insurance premiums costs. Today I read a promise of 1 gallon saving 20 gallons in petrol.
(Mumble to self, look up second law of thermodynamics) Conservation of energy.
The same reason industries all over the U.S. are scrambling for capital, you have heard of the recent economic crisis and its impact on operating capital loans to businesses?
When financing tightened up across the board for every business operator in the country, some ethanol operations got caught in the crunch. They lost access to capital that was easy to get when they started the plants. They over extended themselves and could not weather the funds crunch just like 10’s of thousands of other businesses. In some cases the real problem was that their investors got burned so bad by the stock crash that they could not continue to invest in the operation even though it was a viable business opportunity. If you don’t have the money to pay bills you can’t invest in future growth.
In some cases it was due to poor planning investors that did not do due diligence got into fuel ethanol as pure speculation when the stock market was booming, and when things tightened up and their portfolio’s collapsed they were sitting on an older fuel ethanol plant that needed expensive upgrades to compete effectively in a tight market against he new modern plants that are coming on line all the time. In some cases it was a smarter investment to sell the old plant and move the money to invest in a new modern technology plant.
There are lots and lots of successful profitable business that have gone bankrupt in the last two years simply because they could not fine operations capital to get them over the crunch. Anyone who is aware of current financial conditions for business would know that off the top of their head and understand that bankruptcy of healthy businesses can be triggered by changes in the availability of financing that are totally beyond their control, even if they are doing every thing right.
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/plant-list.jsp
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/plantmap/
Current fuel ethanol plant capacity is standing at 13318 Billion gallons a year. You will note that two of the plants are flagged as currently undergoing expansion.
There is currently 1,047 million gallons a year of ethanol plant construction and expansion underway. In spite of plant shutdowns of marginal plants net production capacity is still growing, in spite of current financial conditions.
Larry
I would think that a CPA would know the difference between 12.5 BILLION and 12.5 “Million.”
Mariner is just reiterating the fact that you get somewhere between 15 and 20 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of petrol invested in the process.
AGW skeptics make such cozy bedfellows with the neo-watermelon anti-biofuels brigade.
Corn ethanol does not cause the Amazonian rainforests to be cut down in order to grow soybeans. The corn protein by-product replaces the soybean meal which now does not need to be grown and crushed. Great savings are made growing 160 bpa corn instead of <45 bpa soybeans. Gluten feeds and distiller's grains replace both soybean and whole corn. Costs, be they dollars or emissions are attributed to the whole spectrum of products and services associated with corn milling.
Corn is the agricultural gold standard. When you see someone criticising corn economics ask them to offer a better alternative. They won't be able to do it.
Henry chance (07:26:45) :
Henry, the savings come from the amount of petroleum used in ethanol production rather than total fossil fuels used. Ethanol production uses very little petroleum. The (in)famous “uses more fuel than it produces” meme from Pimentel et all, the GGE Gallons of Gasoline Equivalent uses Magic Numbers, a technique that should be familiar to readers of this blog, to confound manure, solid waste, wood, coal, natural gas etc inputs with refined liquid fuels.
Also ignored by the Cornell Cons is the fact that replacing corn-soybean feed with ethanol by-products (corn-soybean-ddgs) reduces the cost of providing feed. Most of the energy inputs for “corn ethanol” are actually accounted for in the feed value of the by-products. Adding a corn milling step to feed production increases the value of that feed. The process is better than transparent. None of the cost of growing corn should be attributed to the ethanol process and much of the energy inputs to the actual ethanol process should be credited to the feed value.
Consider a transparent simplified combined cycle: ethanol and hot water.
Fuel -> Hot Water
Fuel -> Hot Ethanol Vapor -> Condensed Liquid Ethanol + Hot Water
“”” Kum Dollison (17:13:02) :
George E. Smith,
“Silly” is telling someone who understands a business that you dont’ understand that he made a “Silly” statement. “””
Kum, I am still looking for the post of mine in which I may have said you made a silly statement. If I did it was unintentional and I apologise.
I’m also looking for my post in which I talked about the business of Ethanol ; or of any bio-fuel. I’m not much of a business person; so the last thing I would do is try and present myself as any sort of expert on any bio-fuel business; including ethanol. So If I did happen to drop any business “advice” on bio-fuels or ethanol; please disregard what I said.
I’m really only interested in the science of these things, including the energy availability; I’ll let the better business minds run the business end of things.
“”” Kum Dollison (17:13:02) :
George E. Smith,
“Silly” is telling someone who understands a business that you dont’ understand that he made a “Silly” statement.
I will guarantee you that the ethanol producers are making money at $1.54/gal.
The producers that went broke went broke “playing commodities,” not producing ethanol.
George, you could run your ethanol refinery off the DDGS, and have some left over. That would satisfy your test. However, it would be financially senseless inasmuch as the DDGS are worth much more than nat gas. “””
Well Kum, I have no idea what DDGS is(are) or how it(them) relate to energy.
But I’ll take your word for it that a complete self sustaining ethanol factory can “run” off it.
But you say DDGS are more “valuable” than natural gas. Usually in a competitive open market, that would mean it costs more. Heavy water D2O for example is more valuable than H2O.
I thought the idea of free clean green renewable energy was to reduce the cost of obtaining ever more expensive(valuable) fossil fuel energy.
You have me thoroughly confused. To whom is DDGS more valuable; the end user or the purveyor ?
You seem to have your ratios backwards. The ratio he claimed was 1:20. 1 gallon ethanol saves 20 gallons crude. He said One (1) gallon ethanol saves twenty (20) gallons crude.
You are misquoting Mariner.
Question
are the ratios 12 billion to 240 billion the same as 12 million to 240 million?
Bonus question for 500 dollars.
Do you believe it is true when he (Mariner) said investing in One unit of ethanol saves 20 units of crude?
Kum you misquoted Mariner by inserting the word “process” a;lso.
The claim still isn’t true.
P.O
These ethanol advocates take too much alcohol per os.
Looks like the banks learned the hard way regarding ethanol plant loans.
DDSG is distillers dry grains and solubles. It is one of the co-products that is produced when ethanol is produced from corn. It contains all the nutrition that was originally contained in the corn plus added nutrients provided by the yeast that made the alcohol. The only part of the corn used for the ethanol production is the sugars and starches.
This is one of the fallacies of the “using corn” argument. You are not destroying the corn it still produces high value animal feed (actually more nutritious than the original corn) in addition to the ethanol. It is not an either or solution.
In some cases the DDSG is more valuable as a fuel than it is as a live stock feed. For example if the local market has all the animal feed it can consume, then the DDSG must be dried and shipped to another market or be used for some other purpose. It can be plowed back into the land the corn came from as a soil amendment, to return trace minerals and such to the land (ie fertilizer) or it can be burned directly as a fuel by the ethanol plant in a fluidized bed boiler.
This way it can be put to its highest value use at any given moment/market conditions.
To properly evaluate fuel ethanol you must include its co-products like corn oil, and DDSG as they all come out of the same process. To do other wise would be the equivalent to only counting the leather produced by cattle and ignoring the meat, blood and bone meal.
Larry
FYI, the approx yield from a barrel of crude (42 gal) is 19 gallons of gasoline. So is the discussion about crude or gasoline?
Kum Dollison (06:21:37) :
(…)
E Coli didn’t turn into anything. All manure has E Coli.
(…)
And amazingly enough I don’t eat manure.
From Wikipedia (hooray!):
You feed cattle distillers grain, you get twice as much of the dangerous O157 E. Coli strain. And manure I would not want to use on my spinach garden, if I had one. With more O157 present, the chances of getting O157 mixed in with my beef sure look increased, thus the odd chance of me getting infected by O157 looks increased as well.
Of course all beef should be thoroughly cooked before eating, yada yada. I must assume the “healthy eating” people consuming fresh organic produce fertilized with cow manure have some way to avoid getting infected, since it seems foolish to willingly assume such risks to health in pursuit of better health.
But how is the general consumer benefited from assuming the greater risk? Would the general consumer even do so, if they knew that additional risk could be there?
Are you serious?
You flunk at cost accounting. In fact, the distillers grain has handling and DRYing costs. In cost accounting all the direct and indirect costs are totalled and the fixed and variable costs plus cost of capital and net present values etc.
I won’t even let people cheat and disregard the material, depreciation, labor costs of the castings from John Deere’s Waterloo Works refinery and its pollution. Idle land has no CO2 output from casting steel.
Can’t cut corners with me and get by with it. Just ignoring certain CO2 output that is not convenient is disappointing.
All means all. I enjoy this. I suspect many people borrowed 200 million to build a plant and really didn’t have crackpot cost analysts like Cargill, ADM and Bunge do and it haunts them when they miss targets and kinda have light shed on energy waste.
Do you realize school buses exhaust CO2 and fall under the EPA pollution guidlines. It pollutes to haul kids to school.
My kid travels to New York for track meets is carbon intensive. The NCAA championships took 12 team members and 13 coaches and staff. How much CO2 is emitted in 157 pound athlete jumping 6 ft? 7ft?
What is my carbon footprint flying to the Mediteranean and yacht racing for one 4 hour race?
It is very tempting for people to cut corners and act like CO2 and other emissions from input materials don’t exist.
Can’t slip it past me.
Some modern fuel ethanol plants are multi-fuel plants and can use several different types of material for producing process energy. Some plants are actually net energy producers selling steam heat and excess methane or electricity to other users.
In multi-fuel plants they can run the plant on natural gas from the local pipe, self generated methane from bio-gas digesters, burn directly crop waste from the corn producers, (ground corn cobs, spoiled grain, and crop trash from the field), and also excess DDSG when it is in surplus locally and it makes more economic sense to burn it for energy than to expend energy to dry it and ship it to another market.
Wet DDSG can be fed directly to live stock locally but spoils quickly if stored so if it is in excess it either must be dried (energy expensive) and shipped out to other markets or burned wet in a properly designed fluidized bed reactor. Plants can also use municipal waste like trash for fuel in a properly designed multi-fuel system.
Unfortunately many folks are making unreasonable assumptions that the only source of fuel to run these plants must be conventional fossil fuel or natural gas and heating oil.
In plants that can use a wide spectrum of fuels they are essentially converting other low quality fuels (for transportation purposes), to a high quality liquid fuel that can be used as a direct displacement of fossil hydrocarbons. In effect they are converting energy inputs like coal generated electricity, wood chips, corn cobs, spoiled grain, corn trash (chopped stalks) etc. to fuel ethanol.
Modern fuel ethanol plants are aggressively co-partnering with other industries to create symbiotic relationships, where both industries benefit.
The classic example is co-locating a feed lot with a fuel ethanol plant, that uses manure from the cattle to produce methane in a bio-digested to fuel the ethanol plant, which creates high quality cattle feed (DDSG) which is shipped directly to the feed lot without drying and fed to the cattle.
They are also actively recycling process water and process heat from the condensation from the distilling process back into the system to minimize net water consumption and recycle energy within the plant.
Larry
Today is St. Patrick’s Day!
As is traditional, to go along with the Corned Grief we will need Cribbage!