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Credit: Immersia, GNU Free Documentation License A comprehensive new analysis of water use in biofuel crop production finds that jatropha, an oil-rich plant championed for its ability to grow in arid regions where food crops cannot, is the biggest water hog of them all. Even worse, growing jatropha drives up food prices because it [...] According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the cost of food increased in February for the eighth consecutive month and reached an all time high. You heard a bit of this in the news coverage of the grassroots protests in Tunisia and Egypt. While not even the major cause of the unrest, frustration [...] The EPA has now proposed that all gas contain 15%. They want the subsidies for ethanol to be expanded. Along the way they are going to shorten the life of all the engines we use. Progress? Stupidity?? When ethanol content gets about 10% it apparently can damage engines. Car and engine makers are challenging [...] Not only can clean-burning ethanol be made from sewage waste, cattail marshes are superb ways to filter sewage, and provide biomass for ethanol too. Rather than plowing corn cobs under, Iowa farmers will be able to sell them to plants that will turn them into ethanol and fertilizer. The farmers can just leave the cobs piled in the fields and have them picked up. 25,000 acres of corn fields will be used, generating about a ton of cobs [...] Project LIBERTY is how POET, the largest producer of ethanol in the world, will commercialize the production of cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs. This video explains how it will happen. For more information, go to http://www.projectliberty.com or http://www.poet.com The video is aimed at farmers, getting them onboard with collecting their cobs so they [...] The rising price of corn is forcing ethanol plants to close, and plans to build new plants are being postponed. This could cause a shortfall of 5 billion gallons a year which would in turn force the price of gasoline up as well as pushing corn prices down. We need ethanol and biodiesel. But ethanol [...] Algenol plans to build a saltwater algae plant in the desert in Mexico. Unlike other methods that require the algae be squeezed to product the oil, they’ve GMO’ed algae to create ethanol directly, and claim the output is dramatically greater than using corn or sugar cane. And it doesn’t require using farmland better used [...] Switchgrass yields five times more energy than it takes to grow it and burning it in vehicles 94% less carbon dioxide than gasoline. What’s more, it grows in marginal areas and needs far less fertilizer than corn. Right now, the price is about double than of corn ethanol but technological advances funded by venture [...] |  | ||||
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