ethanol out of molasses

They have to break down the lignin of the plant to release the sugar from it. This requires an enzyme. Current enzymes are real poor at doing this. Most of the research is in improving the enzyme to do a much better, more efficient, and quicker job of this. Right now it takes more energy fooling around with the enzymes than what is recovered in ethanol. They need better, faster enzymes. We can get to the sugar in switchgrass, so the process works. We need a way to do it much simpler, using less energy (heat & time).

Once you have a sugary water mash, pretty much the same machinery would be used, corn or ethanol.

So, you could convert a corn plant to switchgrass. But, the grain bins would need to be replaced with bulk storage of some sort.

Another thing they are doing with corn ethanol plants - squeezing the corn oil out first, and converting that to biodiesel. There is not much oil in corn, but enough to improve the overall efficiency of a corn plant.

This is all still new technology, they are learning a lot yet. When they started out, the corn ethanol plants were trying to get near 2.5 gallons of ethanol per bu of corn. Now some of the best plants are getting 3.1 gal per bu of corn. Still learning, improving. That .6 gal is a _huge_ improvement in efficiency. Five years from now, they may be looking at 3.5 or more gallons per bu???

This is why some 'reports' about corn ethanol using more energy that it produces come out - they are using old data, bach when 2.3 or 2.4 gallons was average.

New industry, lot of innovation & new ideas and improvements. This is why there are govt grants & subsidies to corn & fiber ethanol - still a new industry, takes a lot of trial & error yet, a lot of improvement along the way. Govt is providing seed money to help it all improve. Right or wrong? Improvement is happening, fuel and better air quality is happening. It's not just rich corn farmers or ADM getting more govt money. It's about trying to make a better fuel source & better air.

Maybe it will all fall on it's face. But I'm glad folks are trying.

--->Paul

The only problem with making ethanol from sorghum is the shelve life of sorghum.

You only have about 30 days from the time the sorghum is cut till it is made into ethanol.

Same is true for sugar cane.

But making it from molasses would give you a source with with a longer shelve life.

If it was feasable you would think that ethanol would be made from molasses and we would all be growing sorghum.

Just my thoughts.

Gary

Braxil is using sugar cane, which grows very very well in part of their country, and few other things do grow there so it is a perfect crop for them. It certainly outyields corn, but if you can't grow much sugarcane in your country you have to use what is available.

Switchgrass has fiberous sugars. They are worse than corn, which has starchy sugars, which is worse than sugarcane,which is sugar sugars.

Sugar gets turned into ethanol.

Starch needs an extra step to make sugar & then ethanol.

Fibers - like switchgrass or cornstalks or wood waste - takes several steps to break down the fiber, release the sugary items, and make fermentable sugars.

At this time, the fibers option shows great promise, but it actually loses energy. they hope & think they will perfect it in 4-10 years and get positive energy returns.

Corn they gain close to 1/3 energy over what is used to get the ethanol - this inculdes growing & hauling the crop.

Sugarcane I don't know the number, but returns something like 2 units of energy for every one used to make it.

So, switchgrass is just a working theory at this point in time. When we tried to land on the moon, we first had to get into orbit & find out if we could even do that much. Eventually we landed on the moon several times.

Switchgrass, we are just getting into orbit. Have a ways to go before we get to try landing on the moon.....

Another issue with these fiberous crops it the HUGE volume of material we have to store & handle. Just unbelievable piles of grass, or cornstalks. Transporting, storing, and handling that much stuff is a serious issue that needs to be figured out.

One experiment in South Dakota involves collecting & using corncobs - another fibery source of sugar.

There are many theories out there, and I hope several of then work with more research. Currently, corn beats them all to heck for better performance in the real world.

--->Paul

They hope to burn the residue from switchgrass to help power the plant. There are several issues to get there from here, but seems the best possible route at this point. It sounds like it does not make much feed value after all the cooking & enzyme action.

Tennesee has really ramped up the switchgrass research, as Minnesota had done with ethanol a couple decades ago. We do better with corn up here with 200 bu per acre yields - my understanding is switchgrass will grow better in southern regions.

--->Paul

Only advantage of switchgrass is, switchgrass can be grown on more marginal ground than what corn can. You could grow it on hills that are straight up and down and the soil would not erode.

Gary