<Site upgrade coming; make sure your email address is up-to-date The Oil Drum DrumBeat: December 8, 2006>

88 comments on Biofuels: Bring back the Prairie

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davidsmi on December 8, 2006 - 10:41am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I heard the story on this article listening to NPR last night and had the same thought as Stuart;

"So basically, we should return much of the Midwest to prairie and then mow it regularly to make biofuels!"

While the image is certainly amusing, something in it disturbs me and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it is the notion that we turn 1/3 of the country into the equivalent of a lawn. (Disclaimer: my front lawn is "xeriscaped")

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Wharf Rat on December 8, 2006 - 2:22pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
So us hippie environmentalists have been right all along? It's another beautiful day in Paradise.

Here is an old idea...

The Buffalo Commons as a possible future

These guys have been trying to save and restore what's left of the tallgrass. Some folks even walk railroad right of ways to collect seeds, cuz there are still small patches here and there.

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NC on December 8, 2006 - 3:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Quick comment about harvesting Prairies.

Prairies have net carbon gain when they are not harvested and not heavily grazed.  Soil building due to prairies (net carbon gain) was a result of an intact ecosystem with migrating grazing animals.  Heavy grazing and/or mowing tends to destroy prairies.

My knowledge of this is based on my botany degree and my wife's work doing prairie remnant surveys for the U.S. government in Iowa.

No such thing as a free lunch, even with Prairies.

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Syntec on December 8, 2006 - 4:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I concur.

That said, I'm sure you and your wife would agree that 100 million acres of prairie planted with a nitrogen fixing perennial DEC (switchgrass or my preference canabis sativa) would be a far cry and considerably better for the prairie than 100 million acres of environmentally destructive, fossil fuel and water intensive GMO corn or GMO soy that grows at present would you not?

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NC on December 8, 2006 - 4:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I am neither pro or con on this issue.  Too complex for simple answers.

I like the Prairie and see great value in wild and undisturbed lands.  We need more of them and need to hold onto what is left.

However,  I have also seen great positives made with no or low tillage crops used for food.  Done right these crops can still have a net carbon gain to the soil due to root mass and residual leaf/stem.  A farm I hunt switched from conventional to no till 2 years ago and the change in the soil structure, for the positive, is significant.  Soil is now softer, more friable, better water holding capacity and more above ground structure in winter that holds the soil.

The key here is that many conventional, including some GM, crops are adapted to high intensive cropping via breeding selection.  Not all agriculture is bad for the environment.  Marrying more sustainable agriculture practices to them is what should be doing first, not try and re-constitute Prairie communities which are immensely complex.

A pretty stand of planted Big Bluestem, Indian Grass, Compass plant, Lead plant and Purple Cone Flower does not a Prairie make.  Prairies are symbiotic interactions of plant, animal, insect and bacterial populations and take years to reproduce.  We destroyed them easily in a few years, unfortunately we can not remake them in the same time frame.

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pstarr on December 8, 2006 - 5:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
It is always a matter of scale when discussing biofuels. "100 of millions of acres of prairie" converted to ethanol production would only contribute a small fraction of our gasoline needs and disable ecosystems, communities, and food-favoring humans.

6 tons of switchgrass / acre / year - normal Iowa switchgrass acre
70 gallons of ethanol / ton - current process efficiency
= 420 gallons of ethanol / year / acre
= 1.15 gallons of ethanol / day / acre
= 42,086,956.52 acres needed / day
= 65,760.86 square miles harvested & processed / day

Which means, to meet 10% of current gasoline energy demands, someone would need to harvest and process enough switchgrass equal to the entire state of Illinois every day.

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Syntec on December 8, 2006 - 6:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A billion tons of biomass is produced on the continent annually and DECs such as canabis sativa can easily produce 10+ tons per acre under optimal growing conditions.

Our scientists work on the NREL theoretical of 100 gallon yield per ton of gasified biomass, however, an ethanol catalyst at >65% selectivity should produce 169 gallons per ton per the syntec process.

Yes, there are technical hurdles.

Yes, there are known unknowns.

However, your assumption that "100 (sic) of millions of acres of prairie converted to ethanol production would only contribute a small fraction of our gasoline needs and disable ecosystems, communities, and food-favoring humans." is to be polite... wrong.

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toilforoil on December 8, 2006 - 6:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Your scientists are wasting someone's money.

Land will be used to produce solid fuel for space heating, water heating and some electricity, because the energy return when used as a solid fuel is already between 10:1 and 20:1, and is as likely to improve as is any liquid fuel process.  Moreover the technology to convert perenniel grass, such as switchgrass, into pellets or bricks, is inexpensive.  Production and distribution are relatively low tech.

Space heating is as fervently demanded as is transport fuel.
People will give up driving alone, before they give up living in single family units.  The land suitable for 'energy' crops is overwhelmingly in regions that experience winter.  

The space heating crisis looms, as natural gas production approaches the production cliff, while the more gradual downslope of liquid fuel production has a mountain of easily overcome consumption inefficiencies to mitigate the effect of declining supply.

At the farmgate, the buyer for the liquid fuel manufacter will not compete with the buyer for the solid fuel manufacturer.

You folks are pissing away good money.  But party on, while it lasts.

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Syntec on December 8, 2006 - 7:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I suggest you rethink this gem, 'space heating is as fervently demanded as is transport fuel.'

As for our catalysis research...  your opinion is your own, however, the feedstock for syngas as you know, is virtually any carbonaceous material i.e. coal, NatGas, MSW, biogas and of course biomass in the form of agricultural residue, green waste, forestry residue etc. that can or is currently economically harvested or captured.

In many instances, these renewable wastes are a cost negative feedstock from some other industry i.e. manure from agriculture, that must be dealt with for a myriad of reasons.

As Peak Oil is a LTF crisis (not a space heating crisis) one need not be a rocket scientist to visualize the potential economic and environmental impact a LTF production path utilizing said feedstocks would have.

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toilforoil on December 9, 2006 - 3:19pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Dream on.  Peak oil is part of a larger energy crisis, of which the most immediate impact will be felt by those millions depending on natural gas to keep their water pipes from freezing.  We were discussing the use of the prairie to source fuel.  Your industry will not be able to compete for supply of the perrenial grasses suited to this environment because you aren't remotely close on the energy profit front.  Nor is the demand for transport fuel going to be any more intense than the demand for heating fuel.

As for the use of manure, go ahead, though over time the concentrations of it are likely to be fewer as the oil and gas dependent meat and egg manufacturing factories close their doors.

The fact is yours is an industry dependent of the public dole and it always will be.

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pstarr on December 8, 2006 - 10:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
You appear to be claiming nitrogen fixation for switchgrass and canabis. Neither plants is a legume and both require complete NPK fertilizers for sustained yields.
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Stuart Staniford on December 8, 2006 - 6:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's not what the paper is saying. They annually harvested and got carbon sequestration in the soil.
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Engineer-Poet on December 8, 2006 - 11:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
But the harvest is pretty meager.

Taking their figures of 68.1 GJ/ha and dividing by a reasonable figure of 17.4 GJ/MT, we get a yield of 3.91 MT/ha or 1.75 short tons/acre.  Contrast this with ~2.5 short tons/acre of corn stover alone from the average field, and another 4.2 short tons of grain.

Even if we radically increase efficiency of use (ala Sustainability), we're not going to be able to support "American Dream" lifestyles on harvests that slim.

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Stuart Staniford on December 9, 2006 - 12:16am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Presumably this reflects their experimental conditions of no inputs and degraded soils versus an "average field" which is probably pretty degraded too but has a lot of inputs.

Historically, with energy inputs very cheap, it's been the case that it was more profitable for farmers to use a lot of inputs and gain more ouput.  Hence we have a farming system with very low EROEI but high yields/acre.  These guys are pointing out that a low input system with a broad species mix has significantly higher EROEI (though we can't tell exactly what the number is).  The question is under what circumstances would their approach be more profitable?

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Engineer-Poet on December 9, 2006 - 12:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That does make a difference.  However, if recycling 1 GJ of fuel as input to a Haber plant for extra nitrogen yields 10 GJ of additional growth, increasing inputs does look rather profitable.

I took a look at possibilities like that in Starting the cycle, and found that corn stover could supply both all the nitrogen and all the diesel required to grow a crop of corn (with plenty left over).

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88 comments on Biofuels: Bring back the Prairie

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