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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: combjelly who wrote (282643)4/4/2006 4:36:08 PM
From: tejek  Read Replies (1) of 1574683
 
Personally, I'd prefer if the ethanol isn't made from corn. It is hard to make it cost effective and is fairly marginal as far as energy gained. There are other potential sources, sugar cane is better. Things like switch grass is a lot better.

Things like bio-oil can also be useful by displacing fuel oil from petroleum and can also be used as a feedstock. To be cost effective, attention needs to be paid to the whole cycle. That includes using the gasses and char to fuel the process.


I think we may have to find a 'crop' like switch grass that is not used for other things to make it work. Sugar cane and corn have to many other uses. Some crop that produces high energy [for plant life] with small amounts of matter and is not demanding in terms of the amount of land it needs for growing. When I saw the statistics for how many days [yes, days] of oil usage the current crop of corn or soybeans would replace through ethanol creation, I realized that ethanol may not be able to play the dominate role in reducing the US's energy dependence on oil and natural gas.
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