Bioenergy : Corn Infractions

I spent a few hours today going over some old notes from one of my favorite classes. Now, I don’t usually sit around and study class notes from over two years ago, only occasionally, when I am not hunting zombies. Actually, the reasoning behind this is that I have decided to digitize all my old school notes and I just so happened to stumble upon a very interesting section entitled Bioenergy.

Bioenergy refers, in very simple terms, to renewable energy that is supplied from biological processes. Another term that is commonly used in place of bioenergy is biofuels. Unless you have been living under a rock in a very deep hole that had no ladder for escape, you probably have heard and know a little about biofuels. It probably started with the hype about their great potential, then information on government subsidies for those who will produce biofuels from form, and finally the debates on the objections to using such fuels as a replacement of oil. These objections focus upon the use of corn crop as the providing stock of biomass for energy retrieval and how much land area is needed to provide for the average daily energy demands. All of which were included in my notes that were based off a few studies from back in 2002.

These notes of mine detailed a very complex sustainability problem that derives and explains how to determine the required acreage per year per person of corn which would be required to provide the energy necessary for our current energy demands. To save some time, the data from two years ago showed that corn would require 6.81 acres per person per year, which mind you is a lot. Let’s look at my current state of residency, South Carolina, and see just how much land is available per person. There is about 30,109 square miles of land, approximately 4,167,183 people in the state. By running the proper calculations this would give a total of 4.6 acres available per person. Not nearly enough to provide for the necessary fields of corn. Also, remember that the 6.81 acres required is based on the condition that we utilize the whole plant, both the grain and stover, to provide for our food and liquid energy needs. In reality the 6.81 acres would be much higher since we can’t use 100% of the stover because if we did we would run the land “to death”, in a sense, by not allowing proper nutrients to decay back into the soil.

Here is another interesting calculation that was included in my notes; it has to do with the total energy demanded per person. It uses carbon from grain as the source of 40% of the total energy and methane from algae as the source of 60% of the total energy. The results showed that in order to produce 40% of the energy from carbon grain it would require 5.25 acres, while in order to produce 60% of the energy from methane derived from algae only 0.7 acres. The methane from algae sure sounds like the better deal if you ask me.

I have seen a lot of good things come from algae and have actually spent a year working with a species of algae, Thermatoga n., for a senior project. I believe algae, as a whole, has lots of potential as an energy source, especially if it is combined with wind and solar energy generation. Perhaps, I should not have thrown out the plans to that power plant that obtains energy from solar panels, wind turbines, and massive algae tubes. Well have a good weekend.