Converting Switchgrass to Ethanol

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture have been aiding scientists in Tennessee funding to see if switch grass can be a source of ethanol. Patrick O' Leary has the details.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• environment
• switchgrass
• ethanol
• USDA
• fast
• focus
• fastfocustv

[61hounddog]

Ethanol doesn't compete with food. the corn goes to feed live stock after it is use to make ethanol. that being said I believe other things wold be better to make ethanol out of. the price of corn went up because the futures market was being manipulated by big oil to drive ethanol people out on business. please read "ethanol can be a gas". people this is nothing more than "moon shine"

[happyfunnyfoo]

icelez: Oil is not a renewable resource.

[BiggerFatterBlog]

Grow switch grass along roads and highways so that food crops are not displaced.

[Keys1337]

@61hounddog Clearly there are less calories in the feed if it has already been used to create ethanol.

[noodlesmealey]

biofuel from food? butenol? hydrocarbons shouldnt be burned (fossil fuels my ass)what happened to coskata and geothermal energy promises. i am so sick of big money phoquing up our 'progress'. THE INDUSTRY IS SKITZOOPHRENIC!! you need to make up your minds,after 40 years plus of flinging bullshot,we could have used the tonnage to burn by now.

[daw162]

@61hounddog that's an oversimplification. There would be more feedstock and more caloric value if the feed went directly from corn to animals.

In addition, there are more acres in corn that wouldn't be in corn if it weren't for ethanol.

Corn ethanol is a vote-buying joke.

[Random4021]

If we did put this in our cars, we could take around 900 pounds off of our car because we wouldn't need all the cooling systems. The combustion point of ethanol is 78 degrees. No more cleaning out our pipes because alcohol is a cleaning agent, which would do it for us. ZERO pollution and gas for less than a dollar a gallon. The octane of ethanol is higher than any type of gasoline made so our cars run better. Why not?

[Random4021]

Why is the government not growing switchgrass and making alcohol out of it? The stuff grows like crazy (its a weed), it WONT affect food prices because you don't eat it and its cheap to make into ethanol. The final price of this stuff is 65 cents a gallon. It would probably be sold for around a dollar a gallon. WHY are we not doing this? Millions and millions of gallons of ethanol can be made every week.

[xBeAGoodPersonx]

More research is needed before we start growing.

[seededsoul]

why does this look like it was made in the late 80's?

[sirhcskoorb]

I have no idea why people always over look the fact that Florida already has the sugarcane infrastructure in place and could triple America's

ethanol out put.

That along with this new switch grass effort could take a very big chuck out of oil consumption very quickly.