FuturePundit: Soy Better Than Corn For Biomass Energy:
"CIA Factbook:
US Land Area: 9.2*10^8 ha
Arable Land in US 18% or 1.7*10^8 ha
Table 822 Cropland:
In Crops: 1.4*10^8 ha
U.S. Census Bureau:
Land in Farms 2002: 3.8*10^8 ha (1953 4.9 10^8 ha)
US Annual fuel consumption: 6.7*10^11 liters
JourneyToForever website:
Crop liters oil/ha
------------------
corn (maize) 172
oats 217
cotton 325
hemp 363
soybean 446
pumpkin seed 534
rice 828
sunflowers 952
peanuts 1059
rapeseed (canola) 1190
olives 1212
jatropha 1892
avocado 2638
coconut 2689
oil palm 5950
==========================================
If we could increase the land in crops by about 20%, we could devote about 3*10^7 ha to oil crops. If we could average 1,000 l/ha*, we would have 3*10^10 of oil. That is about 5% of our current use. In order to run our transportation system on bio-diesel, we must bridge a gap of at least 4 doublings.
Could we bridge the gap? Pushing as hard as we can on automotive technology, we could certainly double fleet efficiency. We might even be able to quadruple it.
1,000 l/ha* is not a stretch. But, of the crops with good oil yields, the only ones on the list above that have any promise and which are not tropical or sub-tropical, are rapeseed and sunflower. However, we have increased corn yields by over 8 times in the modern era. So we might be able to close the gap that way.
*1l of raw oil=~800ml of bio-diesel
Clearly, the algae approach, if it does not interfere with agriculture would be preferable to plowing up that much additional land.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz on July 14, 2006 07:35 AM
1 comment:
we need a comparison to switchgrass, here, as that's getting all the buzz, of late. if hemp is significantly better than switchgrass, that would be a major boost to using hemp for biomass energy.
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