Indian research body promotes sweet sorghum as bio-fuel

[JohnWxy]

http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14606300

Sorghum is a kind of grass, mostly used in India as fodder plant and eaten in hilly and semi-arid areas.

Sorghum is the "fifth most important cereal crop grown in the world" and used as food in Africa and South Asia.

Sweet sorghum is a cane-like plant with high sugar content. Sweet sorghum thrives under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops. Most sorghum species are drought and heat tolerant and are especially important in arid regions.
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It requires much less water than sugarcane. Only 4,000 cubic metres (cum) of water is required to produce a kilolitre of bio-ethanol, compared to 36,000 cum required for sugarcane.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit, non-political organization that does innovative agricultural research and capacity building for sustainable development with a wide array of partners across the globe. ICRISAT's mission is to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture. ICRISAT belongs to the Alliance of Centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).




More on Sweet Sorghum by ICRISAT

[Hydra]

1. Why not hemp at that point?

Assuming we wanted to use biofuel.

[JohnWxy]

3. sorghum produces food as well as fuel. Does hemp do that?

[Hydra]

4. Actually it does

And a substitute for logging for paper, to boot.

I don't support biofuel though- I think we aught to be using hydrogen. It would have the side benefit of cooling the climate as well.

[JohnWxy]

6. In the long-run for transportation, I think fuel cells and wind powered plug-in electric cars

are the future. at least that's the way it looks now. Unfortunately, it will take about two to three decades before these technologies will be adopted to the point where they will be able to make a significant contribution to reduced fossil fuel use and CO2 reduction (as well as energy security for U.S. and others).
I just don't think we can afford to sit around and do nothing waiting for fuel cells and wind energy to start making significant contributions to the problem. As for hydrogen, my problem with that is the enormous cost of building the infrastructure to deliver it (unless, of course we develop an economically feasible method of distributed generation. THat would change the picture considerably.)

Anyway, that's how I see it.

(BTW. I think hemp should be researched more. I believe it grows in conditions that are too poor for other plants. THis would be good for people who live on marginal lands.)

[Hydra]

7. Here's my question

Why can't we use the infrastructure in place for natural gas for the hydrogen? How did they do it before when they were building Zeppelins where the cost was "negligible"?

[JohnWxy]

9. the infrastructure necessary to make hydrogen available to general transportation

has to provide thousands (well, According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2002, there were 117,100 gas service stations in the U.S., of which 84,700 had convenience stores.) of outlets to supply the millions of drivers we have. To supply Zeppelins you just had to get hydrogen to airports (or as they called them then: aerodromes) where the Zeppelins took off from and landed. Also, we're talking about thousands of times the quantity of hydrogen than was needed for the Zeppelins.

Regarding the natural gas infrastructure, the problem I at first see there is what do we expect the natural gas suppliers to use if we decide we want to use their infrastructure for hydrogen. Also, you would need to run pipelines to the sources of generation of the hydrogen. It's really a huge complex job building pipelines to get the hydrogen from the source of generation to distribution points to deliver the gas to the filling stations.

Somebody else can probably provide a more informed answer, that's all i'm up to to right now.

[Hydra]

10. Hmm

The reason I ask is various things I've read now and then:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2592352

http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/04/gm-developing-home-based-hydrogen-filling-station/

As to why the natural gas people would allow us to do it, they may not have much choice if the tech becomes available to trashcan fossil fuels entirely. At that point, they have infrastructure that isn't being used. They should be happy to switch over what they are transporting, at that point :evilgrin:

[NNadir]

12. Um, um, um. I'm just wondering. Where do you think hydrogen comes from?

Maybe you have a little pipeline powered by ethanol connected to the Andromeda galaxy?

Do you have any idea how monumentally stupid in a thermodynamic sense it would be to use methane infrastructure for hydrogen?

I already know that like most anti-nuke fundies, you couldn't care less about dangerous fossil fuel use, and I already know that you are thermodynamically illiterate, but really...

[NNadir]

2. Oh good. This should fuel 1 billion cars in India.

I feel so relieved to learn of this.

It's the greatest news ever. The best thing I have ever imagined. Incredible!

Now all of India can live in the suburbs, just like Americans.

[kristopher]

14. What's wrong with the suburbs?

Describe= what an ideal society would look like to you.

[NNadir]

15. Sure...

A bunch of dumb fundies cruise around all day driving around to "solar power festivals" talking about how they can have solar powered electric cars by 2085.

They consume 5,000 gallons of gasoline and 30,000,000,000J of electricity to talk about how noble they are for talking about how in 2050 20% of their cars will be renewably powered.

They produce 1 brazillion links to websites all about the magical Maine Solar House that was built in the 1990's for "only" $400,000.

They spend 80,000,000,000J not talking about the other 80% of the energy which they apparently think will magically quantum mechanically tunnel in from the Magellanic clouds, beginning in 2085.

They talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about cool battery technology they found out about on Wikipedia while the earth's atmospehere accumulates 500 ppm of dangerous fossil fuel waste.

That's my idea of the ideal society.

An alternate ideal society involves the idea of 1.5 billion chinese and 1.5 billion Indians all living like fat, dumb, lazy Americans in a 12,000 watt culture, thereby raising world energy demand to 2500 exajoules from 500 exajoules per year.

That about sums it up. Are we clear?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

[kristopher]

16. We know what you don't want, what DO you want?

[losthills]

5. Halleluhia ! We're saved !!!

[kestrel91316]

8. So much for the price of my molasses..........which I use a lot in cooking,

and to make my own brown sugar..............

[JohnWxy]

17. for your consideration.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x146578

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Mmmmm ... sorghum.

[kristopher]

13. A complete transition from fossil fuels will require significant amounts of biofuels

Energy quantity and energy quality are both important. If I have on of Nnadir's patented nuclear reactors I can produce plenty of energy, but how do I get it to do the heavy lifting work in a pit mining for copper?
The process of brewing biofuels, like any other kind of moonshine, requires heat input. That and much more of the process can come from Nnadir's plant. In the end, perhaps we have an energy input mix of (just for example)a 1 gallon equivalent that's 30% from biofuels, and 70% from clean electricity.

The output, because of great innovations in the technologies of the facility's ability to harness large amounts of solar into the growing process, gives us a return of 2 gal for each one gallon equivalent of input.

This is a cumbersome and energy intensive process, but it is a way of storing energy in a fuel that has a very high energy density, is easily transported, and is stable over time and a range of physical conditions.

Those qualities are going to be required for a lot of applications that direct electricity isn't going to be so good for. I mean, Can you imagine the extension cord that an airline would need to go from NY to LA?