Food v fuel debate – biorefineries can give us both

February 14, 2009 · Filed Under competition from biofuels 

There has been much heated debate about using good cropland to grow biofuel . Many people believe that this will push up the price of food while others believe that it is essential for the west to grow biofuels to make us less dependent on imported oil and also to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

So far as reducing emissions, some biofuels are much better than others. Ethanol made from sugar cane in sunny Brazil with the waste being used as the process heat source compares very favourably with Ethanol made from Corn in Iowa where coal or gas is used for heat. When the energy used to grow and transport the crop is taken into account, the energy gain is not very high and without subsidies, this would not be economical.

However, just because some poor systems have evolved, we shouldn’t forget that plants are by far the most important collectors of solar energy and well planned and executed systems could provide plenty of food as well as lots of fuel. As the fossil energy needed to grow our food will inevitably become scarce and unreliable at some time it is crucial that such systems are developed quickly.

At the recent National Non-Food Crops Centre conference, Prof. Bruce Dale of Michigan State University pointed out that in the main we don’t grow food for humans, we grow feed for livestock, whose calorie and protein demands are, respectively, 6 and 10 times those of humans.

Advances in technology can allow that animal feed to be produced more efficiently in bio refineries making biofuel.

Studies at MSU’s Biomass Conversion Research Laboratory show that the area needed to generate large amounts of fuel from biomass-and the overall cost- can be significantly reduced by recovering protein.

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