The U.S. Corn Ethanol Industry: an explanation

In follow up to the graphic I posted, I thought I would include my official write-up to go along with it:

The corn ethanol industry in the United States is of particular concern to me, and I believe its workings should be made more known to the public. Alternative energy research is of the utmost importance today, but it is crucial that government time and money go into the most efficient, sustainable, and practical solutions. I believe that by spending millions of dollars a year on corn ethanol production and research, the United States government is not upholding these principles.

Forty percent of U.S. grown corn goes into ethanol production, which exerts serious pressure on the food industry, and has increased food prices. In the past year, the price of corn has doubled to $7.67 a bushel, which with about 5 billion bushels going into ethanol production this year totals up to about $40 billion dollars in feedstock alone. On top of that, corn-based ethanol is highly subsidized by the government, which adds another $11 billion to the growing total.

I am an avid supporter of the biofuels industry, under the conditions I stated above, and by these principles I do not believe that corn ethanol is a smart or sustainable use of corn, money, or time. Corn ethanol only reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 22%, (compared to gasoline), which pails in comparison to other feedstock. Not only is it not the cleanest burning biofuel, corn ethanol is not an energy efficient fuel in terms of production. For every unit of energy put into the production process, only 1.3 times that amount is produced by the fuel itself, which compared to the 1:8 ratio of sugarcane ethanol or whopping 1:36 ratio of cellulosic ethanol hardly seems worth it. When fuel comes into direct competition with a staple food crop, it is not worth pursuing as an alternative energy. The U.S. government should stop funneling money into a scientific dead-end, and start funding more promising avenues of research, like algal biodiesel or cellulosic ethanol.

With my visualization I hope to quickly convey these crucial facts about the corn ethanol industry and intrigue the viewer to the point where they will pursue the topic on their own. Even if they just walk away, at least it is with some basic knowledge of the workings of this industry.

The U.S. Corn Ethanol Industry: a visualization

So for one of our projects  in English Writing 4o1 this semester we had to produce a visualization, which is right up my alley as a science nerd. I think the visualization of data is a crucial part of getting people to engage with and understand information. For my project, I decided to do something of great interest to me, that would make for a particularly cool design: the U.S. corn ethanol industry! I’ve already given an overview of ethanol in general, and gone into some specifics about corn ethanol, but his graphic gives a little more of the economic information. I wanted to graphically make a few points: this is ears of corn we’re talking about (I think it’s easy to forget this is an actual edible crop when we’re talking biofuels), and it is affecting both food prices and gas prices, as well as producing a certain quality of air that you are breathing. I especially wanted to highlight the monetary figures associated with this industry–just how much money we’re talking and where it is all going. So, without further ado, here is what I came up with:

The View

The idea for this post was given to me by a friend, a native of LA, whom after weeks of being asked “how do you connect to your environment?” finally gave me a brilliant answer. I only wish that I had had a camera with me so I could show this to you first hand.

Harkening back to one of my earliest posts, on nature photography, it strikes me that for two out of those three (the Ansel Adams and my own) photographs, it’s all about capturing a spectacular natural vista. This is how many of us interact with nature–we hike and climb and explore looking for the ultimate view. What my friend pointed out to me is that here in LA, we so often interact with nature for almost the opposite purpose: a view of the city.

We drove up Hayvenhurst Avenue in the San Fernando Valley, and parked at the end of this street on a steep hill. It was dark, and we kept walking up hill until we were off the paved road, just trekking up this mountain side–classic SoCal scrubland. We get to the top and turn around and there it is : a view of the entire valley, lit up and glowing in the night. And it was beautiful and amazing, just to be up there and see the whole cityscape. There we were on the top of a mountain, having climbed up the dirt and scrub, to see a city. There is something so inherently Californian in that to me.

And it struck me that this is not an isolated example. Here at Occidental, what better to do late on a Friday night than climb up Fiji behind campus and stare out at the city? It’s like an Oxy/LA right of passage. Having lived here for a few semesters now, it strikes me that the relationship between LA and its environment is so interwoven, like there is hardly a thought given to it. The mountains and the ocean and the desert are such integral parts of this city, and we weave in and out of them with such ease. In a way, climbing up a mountain on the edge of the valley to get a view of the city seems like the quintessential LA experience.

I wish I had photos from that night. If you have any good LA view pictures, or know of any good spots, please post them!

Biofuels in Los Angeles

So as promised, because I’m sure you’re not bored of them yet, I’ve been looking into the “state” of biofuels in Los Angeles, if you will, i.e. where are they used/available, are there groups related to the issue, and what is the role of biofuels in public transportation?

Here are some of my findings:

If you’re looking to buy biodiesel, either blends or pure, there is a great site from the Southern California Biodiesel Users Group that lists suppliers in all of the Southern California counties. It also has links to some of the main national sites on biofuels, including the National Biodiesel Board.

Another link I found on SoCalBUG’s site was to the Los Angeles Biodiesel Co-op, which has put a lot of pressure on the city over the past few years and has succeeded in getting B99 (99% biodiesel, 1% diesel blend) available at several commercial pumps around the city. They also operate two storage trailers from which they provide their members with biodiesel around the city. They are also involved in what I believe is one of the most important avenues of the biofuel industry: education, taking their trailers to local schools, Earth Day events, farmers markets, and similar venues to demonstrate the growing need and importance of biofuels.

From there I wound up on a site for Lovecraft Biofuels, a company that converts cars to run on vegetable oil biodiesel engines. One of the challenges of using waste oil biodiesel is that the oil must be properly filtered in the engine for best performance, so for long-term use a biodiesel adapted engine is better.

I’m glad to see there are so many resources available to Angelenos interested in biofuel! But what is the city itself doing with biofuels? I looked into the public trans issue, and found out some interesting and unexpected things about LA Metro. In this document about their Clean Fuel Program, Metro goes into detail about something I’ve never heard of, but that apparently runs over 90% of their buses–compressed natural gas (CNG), which they peg as an alternative fuel. Of course I had to do some looking into this. In brief, courtesy of Wikipedia, CNG is a fossil fuel product made by compressing natural gas, mainly methane, to a very small volume. Although it does emit greenhouse gases, its emissions are cut by over 20%, according the Metro document, and reduces carbon monoxide emissions by 80%. This was totally not what I expected to find, given that most other major metropolitan public transport systems I’m aware of run on biodiesel blends. While any fossil fuel product, however much cleaner burning it may be, is not sustainable in the long run, it is good to see the LA Metro working for cleaner air here in Smog City!

 

 

Biofuel: an introduction (Part 3: Cellulosic Ethanol)

One last thing that I forgot to mention! Dr. Paul Stamets mentioned in his TED Talk on mycology the possibility of using mycelium as intermediates in cellulosic ethanol production, so here is a brief overview of cellulosic ethanol:

Cellulosic ethanol is produced from, you guessed it, cellulose, the fibrous sugar polymer produced found in plant cell walls (think the stringy part of celery). Feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol are primarily waste products from other industries: agricultural residues (stalks, leaves, husks), forestry wastes (woodchips, sawdust, tree bark), paper pulp, and fast-growing prairie grasses. Not only is this resourceful, it also produces a high quality fuel with an incredible energy yield:

Notice the fine print there? Similar to algal biofuel, cellulosic ethanol faces the challenge of developing a cost effective production method capable of making it competitively priced–another great race in the biofuel industry into which a lot (though not enough) money and time is going. But who knows…perhaps mycelium is the answer!

Biofuel: an introduction (Part 2: Biodiesel)

Continuing from the last post, here is part two of Biofuel 101, with a look at biodiesel.

Biodiesel is made of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) produced through transesterification:

Triglyceride + Methanol (catalyst) –> Glycerin + FAME

The most common feedstocks are soybeans, rapeseed (canola), sunflower, and oil palm. 

Besides empirical data, what other factors determine the usefulness of a feedstock?

There are two major ethical concerns with all biofuels: deforestation and the “food versus fuel” issue. How do these affect the feedstocks mentioned above? The high oil yield of palm has created a huge market, largely in the food industry, and to a lesser extent the alternative fuel industry. This has led to massive tropical deforestation in southeast Asia in particular–making palm oil a poor choice for serious biodiesel endeavors.

With regards to the other feedstocks, the food vs. fuel issue is more pertinent, as these are all food commodities and use arable land. How has the biofuel industry addressed these concerns? First, there is a huge surplus of soybean oil in the United States (ever look at the ingredients of vegetable oil? It’s just soy). So a lot of this surplus is being reclaimed as biodiesel.  But soy as the primary feedstock for a competitive, marketable biodiesel is unfeasible, due to its direct competition with food sources and low oil yield. So what are some alternatives being looked at today? Jatropha is a highly toxic, drought resistant plant that grows in tropic and sub-tropic climates. Due to its high oil yield and capability of growing on non-farmable land, it is considered one of the better prospects for the biodiesel industry.

Second only to palm oil, jatropha is a promising feedstock, with biodiesel programs now operational in South Africa. Another possible feedstock, into which a lot of research is being done currently is algae. Algae are extremely oleaginous, very fast growing, take up less space than land crops, and can be fed on sewage water and carbon dioxide. Though still out of marketable price range, the race is on to develop the best commercially applicable production method for algal biofuel. Just to wow you with the oil yield:

Outside of the feedstocks, is there an advantage to using biodiesel over ethanol? The answer is yes. Not only is it more energy efficient to produce, it is also cleaner burning, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 68% compared with gasoline. Hence, in my opinion, the real future of biofuel is algal biodiesel.

There you have it, my very basic intro to biofuels. This is the future, so it is very important that we as consumer understand this technology and keep up to date with developments. We should be critical of the biofuels industry, as with any field of modern science, but a fundamental comprehension is essential. Hopefully this helped!

Biofuel: an introduction (Part 1: Ethanol)

So it occurred to me in writing the last post that I talk a lot about my love of biofuels, and that I mention some technical terms related to them, so I thought I would do a post introducing you all to the basics–Biofuel 101 if you will.

Any of you reading this who knew me in high school know that I really mean it when I say I love biofuels. I love them so much that I spent the entire second semester of my senior year reading about them, writing about them, talking incessantly about them, and even holed up in a lab at Northwestern University under the amazing Professor Justin Notestein doing my own proposed research on novel heterogeneous catalysts from waste materials for application in biodiesel production! But more on that later…

This post is adapted from the final presentation I gave for that project (including original graphics), but I promise two follow up posts to come: 1) A visualization of some key facts on the U.S. corn ethanol industry, done specifically for this class, and 2) Biofuels in LA: a status report (since this blog is supposedly about Los Angeles!)

But for now, here are the basic things you need to know about biofuel:

There are two kinds:

1. Ethanol, which is used in blends/in place of gasoline
2. Biodiesel, which is used in blends/in place of diesel

As there is a lot to say about biofuels, I’ve decided to break this up into a few posts. This first one will just focus on ethanol.

Ethanol is an alcohol produced through fermentation:

Glucose –> Ethanol + Carbon dioxide

The plant sources for biofuels are known as feedstocks. The common feedstocks for ethanol include corn (U.S.), and sugarcane (Brazil). The choice of feedstock makes a significant difference in the quality of fuel produced, in terms of energy yield, cost (both production and to the consumer), and greenhouse gas emissions. Evaluating the quality of a biofuel can easily be illustrated along these lines. So how do corn and sugarcane ethanol compare?

Think about energy yield in these terms: for every unit of energy you put in to make the fuel, how much energy do you get out of the fuel itself? Here’s a breakdown for corn-based versus sugarcane:

So what this show is that for every 1 unit of energy you put in to produce corn ethanol, you only get 1.3 units out of the fuel itself, versus the 8 units from sugarcane. So why are we wasting time, money, and resources on corn ethanol in this country? Good question–go ask the corn lobby (more to come on this in the follow-up post!)

But what about greenhouse gas emissions? Corn is not looking so good there either…

So corn pails in comparison to sugarcane ethanol on scientific terms. But ultimately, for alternative fuel to be competitive in the market, it has to compete with gasoline prices. So how do these two compare on price?

Once again, sugarcane ethanol trumps corn. Plus, sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil runs largely in self-sufficient factories that use the waste parts of the plant to power the ethanol production, how cool is that? Personally, I am pretty against corn ethanol (and we haven’t even gotten into all the ethical implications), and I’ve pretty much explained the visualization I mentioned, so I’ll put that up in a separate post without explanation.

I hope this serves as an easy to follow basic intro to ethanol, please post any questions/suggestions you have!

(Ethno)mycology to the rescue! (Part 2)

As promised, part 2, with my analysis of the talk:

What really amazes me about this talk, aside from the solutions themselves, is that Dr. Stamets reaches into all of the hot topics in modern science, and is a great way of introducing and approaching these pressing issues. Here is my analysis of each of these solutions:

1. This one is a little broad, but ultimately what Dr. Stamets is saying is that fungi have the potential to turn uninhabitable environments into flourishing biodiversity hotspots, home to a wide array of flora and fauna. Anything that promotes biodiversity is obviously of great importance, especially as biodiversity in some many places on earth is disappearing.
2. Essentially, Dr. Stamets is addressing the problem of pollution, and he is proposing a viable, space-conservative, sustainable system for biologically breaking down pollutants, both bacterial and chemical.
3. Not only is Dr. Stamets advocating for the use of fungi in pharmaceuticals (note that he mentions an ethnobotanical record of its medicial properties from 65 AD!), but specifically a huge issue in national security. In fact, this research has been vetted by the Department of Defense, read about it here. The other great thing about this example is that the specific type of fungi he is looking at is only found in the old-growth forests of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, so in promoting the utility and importance of this species, he is helping ensure the preservation of a vital and very endangered ecosystem. This type of conservation philosophy—of preserving an entire ecosystem, not just specific species within it—is becoming the new model worldwide.
4. Now you all know by now that biofuels are of special importance to me, and I’m not going to lie that when I got to this part of the video my jaw dropped and I might have let out a little shriek of excitement…BECAUSE cellulosic ethanol is one of the most promising avenues in biofuel research, and the race is on to find a production method that is both energy and cost efficient—to finally produce a market-viable alternative to fossil fuels! We all know this is one of the biggest challenges to be solved by the scientific community in the 21^st century. Could mushrooms be the answer? I wouldn’t be surprised…
5. How great is this idea? It not only addresses the carbon footprint issue, but also provides a wonderfully creative (and super fun) use for packaging, which plays right into the “green” craze that is everywhere right now.
6. I’m all for harnessing nature’s own biological weaponry to deal with pests, and I think this is an inspired example. While pest control may not seem like a pressing scientific issue, I think Dr. Stamet’s was very smart to include this, because it’s a great and compelling example of all that fungi (and similarly, plants) have to offer us; it’s very relatable and compelling proof of how much we need fungi, which are so often overlooked in the biological spectrum.

(Ethno)mycology to the rescue! (Part 1)

So for all you loyal fans out there who dutifully watched the Prezi I put together on Ethnobotany, I’m sure you’re just dying to know more about Ethnomycology, the newest branch of the coolest discipline in science. I was looking for more about info on modern mycology in general, and I came across this great TED Talk from Paul Stamets, on “6 ways mushrooms can save the world.” First, can I just say, that it is my dream to someday be proficient and important enough to give a TED Talk, if they’re still around, which I hope they will be. Anyways, back to Paul Stamets, what I loved about this talk was that it gave a very broad range of ways in which mycology can improve the world, from medicinal applications to pest control to alternative fuel (another obsession of mine), and made a very strong case for conservation, which is something I talked about in my Ethnobotany presentation. All around, Dr. Stamets seems like a very cool guy doing very cool and important research, and may be getting added to my list of heroes…

Here are the six ways Dr. Stamets says mushrooms could save the world:

1. Fungi produce enzymes that break down hydrocarbons, to produce fungal sugars, which in turn harbors biodiverse communities
2. Mycelium communities can be used to degrade bacterial and chemical runoff from industrial operations, to produce biodiverse communities
3. Mycelium and other fungi are highly active against pox and flu viruses
4. The conversion of hydrocarbons to sugars provides an intermediary mechanism for cellulosic ethanol production, the possible key to truly competitive alternative fuels
5. Fungi coupled with cardboard provides a fertile growth environment that produces carbon credits with microhabitats, and can be used to grow food
6. Entomopathenogenic (remember this word next time you’re playing scrabble!) fungi—those that kill insects—are the frontier of pest control, including carpenter ants and termites

As this post is long, I will be splitting it into two parts, so my analysis of his talk will follow shortly!

 

Ethnobotany: an overview

First, an update on the Santa Ana winds issue from last post: sadly, nothing new to say. I’ve been looking for articles on what caused last week’s unusually strong winds, but alas, nothing compelling has come of it. I will keep looking!

One of the original ideas I had for a blog this semester was ethnobotany, which I think is the one of the most fascinating disciplines out there, and I hope one day to be able to call myself a part of it. However, I thought it was too narrow a topic to squeeze a whole semester’s worth of posts out of without actually doing my own research, but I do want to devote this post to it, as well as a recurring theme I’m thinking of starting which will include ethnobotanical uses of plants. More to come on that…

For my final project in this class I put together a Prezi that gives a basic introduction to the field of Ethnobotany, and although I unfortunately cannot insert it directly into the blog, here is the link: Ethnobotany: an overview.

When I gave the presentation in class, I was narrating, but I hope it will stand alone without me. Please provide any suggestions to make it easier to follow and/or any topics relating to Ethnobotany that you would like to know more about!