Sweet Potato Out-Yields Corn in Ethanol Production Study

[JohnWxy]

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2008/080820.htm


In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama.

The sweet potato carbohydrate yields approached the lower limits of those produced by sugarcane, the highest-yielding ethanol crop. Another advantage for sweet potatoes and cassava is that they require much less fertilizer and pesticide than corn.

Lew Ziska, a plant physiologist at the ARS Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and colleagues at Beltsville and at the ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory in Auburn, Ala., performed the study. The research is unique in comparing the root crops to corn, and in growing all three crops simultaneously in two different regions of the country.

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The disadvantages to cassava and sweet potato are higher start-up costs, particularly because of increased labor at planting and harvesting times. If economical harvesting and processing techniques could be developed, the data suggests that sweet potato in Maryland and sweet potato and cassava in Alabama have greater potential than corn as ethanol sources.

Further studies are needed to get data on inputs of fertilizer, water, pesticides and estimates of energy efficiency. Overall, the data indicate it would be worthwhile to start pilot programs to study growing cassava and sweet potato for ethanol, especially on marginal lands.

(more)

[TheWraith]

1. Algae beats them both by a mile. nt

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[TheWraith]

7. Nice tin foil hat.

Enjoy your stay.

[nykym]

2. I sometimes wonder

why these are the routes we take to offset or energy needs. They pick an existing crop that has more benefit as a food source and push it to energy, it makes no sense.

Switchgrass!

When you factor in the energy required to make tractors, transport farm equipment, plant and harvest, and so on, the net energy output of switchgrass is about 20 times better than corn's." Switchgrass also does a far better job of protecting soil, virtually eliminating erosion. And it removes considerably more CO2 from the air, packing it away in soils and roots.

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

and it was what covered the Great Plains many many years ago.

[PoliticAverse]

5. Why corn?

"Follow the money".

[JohnWxy]

10. there are people working on taking cellulosic ethanol from laboratory to profitable a business.

They will keep working on it until they succeed. Once we get cellulosic ethanol to economic viabiity .. it won't be supplying one third of our trasportation fuel overnight. It will take probably more than a decade to build production to where we are now with starch based ethanol.

NOte that becoming profitable will require producing it in large enough volume. Guess how you can facilitate and foreshorten the time required to drag cellulosic production volumes to the break even point?... having ethanol production faciliities already in place which can introduce cellulosic ethanol into an already operating ethanol production stream.


Speaking of grass, in general: 80% of the U.S. corn crop is fed to Cows and pigs. Cows evolved eating ... grass, not corn. Hm-m-m-m-m-m-m. Cows actually handle grass better than corn. (corn can cause bowel problems for cows). Hm-m-m-m-m-m-m.

[Tesha]

3. Ahh, but does Archer-Daniels-Midland *GROW* sweet potatoes?

That will determine whether this discovery proves
"feasible" or not, especially if the U.S. Congress
(available now in aisle 9 at the "Supermarket to
the World!") has any say in it.

Tesha

[damntexdem]

4. I yam interested to see that.

(And, yes, I know that the two plants are not actually related.)

;-)

[Viva_La_Revolution]

8. almost ANYTHING beats corn.

the only reason they pushed it was to shovel more $ to giant agri-business.

[Nihil]

9. Whilst that is true as a starting generalisation ...

... using an alternative that is a *food* crop really isn't a good idea ...

:shrug:

[The Croquist]

11. Why?

Food crops are food crops because they tend to contain allot of energy in them. I don't know about switch grass but I know that sugarcane has allot of energy in it. Corn, not so much but I don't know enough to compare it to sweet potatoes which I love but most of my friends aren't big fans of.

To an earlier poster:
Corn is a grass. It has been modified by man, both indigenous and european by selective farming but it is still a grass. I suspect that if corn produced a lower yield of meat from a cow the farmers wouldn't feed it to them. After all, they don't really have the best interests of the cows do they?

[Nihil]

12. It goes back to the old argument of "food vs fuel" ...

Some people are so wedded to their cars/jeeps/whatevers that they see
absolutely nothing wrong with growing a food crop to keep their habit
going - "business as usual".

Still, as another poster said over the weekend, there are also people
who would run their toys directly on dead people if it kept the price
down ...