{"id":213,"date":"2009-02-12T13:07:57","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T13:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techfragments.com\/?p=213"},"modified":"2022-08-03T11:29:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T11:29:48","slug":"ethanol-production-could-reach-90-billion-gallons-by-2030","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/ethanol-production-could-reach-90-billion-gallons-by-2030\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethanol Production Could Reach 90 Billion Gallons by 2030"},"content":{"rendered":"

An in-depth study by Sandia National Laboratories<\/a> and General Motors Corp. has found that plant and forestry waste and dedicated energy crops could sustainably replace nearly a third of gasoline use by the year 2030.<\/p>\n

The goal of the 90-Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study was to assess whether and how a large volume of cellulosic biofuel could be sustainably produced, assuming technical and scientific progress continues at expected rates. The study was conducted over a period of nine months.<\/p>\n

Researchers assessed the feasibility, implications, limitations, and enablers of annually producing 90 billion gallons of ethanol sufficient to replace more than 60 billion of the estimated 180 billion gallons of gasoline expected to be used annually by 2030. Ninety billion gallons a year exceeds the U.S. Department of Energys goal for ethanol production established in 2006.<\/p>\n

Four Biofuel Sources<\/h2>\n

The 90 Billion Gallon Study assumes 75 billion gallons would be ethanol made from non-food cellulosic feedstocks and 15 billion gallons from corn-based ethanol.<\/p>\n

The study examined four sources of biofuels: agricultural residue, such as corn stover and wheat straw; forest residue; dedicated energy crops, including switchgrass; and short-rotation woody crops, such as willow and poplar trees. It examines the costs of producing, harvesting, storing, and transporting these sources to newly built biorefineries.<\/p>\n

Using a newly developed tool known as the Biofuels Deployment Model, or BDM, Sandia researchers determined that 21 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol could be produced per year by 2022 without displacing current crops. The Renewable Fuels Standard, part of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, calls for ramping up biofuels production to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.<\/p>\n

The 90 Billion Gallon Study, which focused only on starch-based and cellulosic ethanol, found that an increase to 90 billion gallons of ethanol could be sustainably achieved by 2030 within real-world economic and environmental parameters.<\/p>\n

Ethyl Alcohol<\/h2>\n

Ethanol fuel is ethanol (ethyl alcohol), the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It can be used as a fuel, mainly as a biofuel alternative to gasoline, and is widely used in cars in Brazil. Because it is easy to manufacture and process and can be made from very common crops such as sugar cane and corn, it is an increasingly common alternative to gasoline in some parts of the world.<\/p>\n

This is a renewable resource (can be produced, unlike petroleum which cannot be produced and in time will be gone).<\/p>\n

Ethanol can be mass-produced by fermentation of sugar or by hydration of ethylene from petroleum and other sources. Current interest in ethanol mainly lies in bio-ethanol, produced from the starch or sugar in a wide variety of crops, but there has been considerable debate about how useful bio-ethanol will be in replacing fossil fuels in vehicles. Concerns relate to the large amount of arable land required for crops, as well as the energy and pollution balance of the whole cycle of ethanol production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An in-depth study by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors Corp. has found that plant and forestry waste and dedicated energy crops could sustainably replace nearly a third of gasoline use by the year 2030. The goal of the 90-Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study was to assess whether and how a large volume of cellulosic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}