A tree that can reach 90 feet in six years and be grown as a row crop on fallow farmland could represent a major replacement for fossil fuels.
Purdue University researchers are using genetic tools in an effort to design trees that readily and inexpensively can yield the substances needed to produce alternative transportation fuel. The scientists are focused on a compound in cell walls called lignin that contributes to plants’ structural strength, but which hinders extraction of cellulose. Cellulose is the sugar-containing component needed to make the alternative fuel ethanol.
In 2005 ethanol accounted for only 4 billion gallons of the 140 billion gallons of U.S. transportation fuel used – less than 3 percent. About 13 percent of the nation’s corn crop was used for that production. Purdue scientists and experts at the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Energy say corn can only be part of the solution to the problem of replacing fossil fuel.
“If Indiana wants to support only corn-based ethanol production, we would have to import corn,” said Chapple, a biochemist. “What we need is a whole set of plants that are well-adapted to particular growing regions and have high levels of productivity for use in biofuel production.”
Using hybrid poplar and its relatives as the basis for biofuels has a number of advantages for the environment, farmers and the economy, they said.
“Poplar is a low-maintenance crop; plant it and wait seven years to harvest it,” Meilan said. “You’re not applying pesticides every year; you’re not trampling all over the site every year and compacting the soil. You’re allowing nutrients to recycle every year when the leaves fall and degrade. In addition, you are more likely to have greater wildlife diversity in poplar plantings than in agricultural fields.”
“We need a bioenergy crop that can grow many places year-round,” Meilan said. “The genus Populus includes about 30 species that grow across a wide climatic range from the subtropics in Florida to sub-alpine areas in Alaska, northern Canada and Europe.”
Researchers believe that using the hybrid poplar in its present form could produce about 70 gallons of fuel per ton of wood. Approximately 10 tons of poplar could be grown per acre annually, representing 700 gallons of ethanol. Corn currently produces about 4.5 tons per acre per year with a yield of about 400 gallons of ethanol. Changing the lignin composition could increase the annual yield to 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, according to experts. Planted on 110 million acres of unused farmland, this could replace 80 percent of the transportation fossil fuel consumed in the United States each year.
I’ve followed hybridization experiments with poplars for a couple of decades, now. It’s always been a wonder tree for fast-growing deciduous plantations.
These guys are proving what I always expected would be possible. Given appropriate economic circumstances, scientists would get the opportunity to run right past the know-nothings who want to stay with extractive, dead-end solutions.
Yes, I’m talking about long-term solutions. Think our politicians can handle that?
This is similar to coppacing, a practice common in Europe. In coppacing, limbs are harvested from trees and the tree is left so it can regrow more limbs or the tree is taken and stump sprouts are ready to harvest in just a few years.
One downside is that any fast growing tree packs less energy in a log than does a log from a slower growing denser species.
I live in Maine where wood burning for heat is common. It is very labor intensive and not for the old or physcially challenged. I have given it up in favor of a wood pellet/corn stove.
All this is fair more carbon neutral than burning oil, but not entirely so, as considerable oil is used in corn production, wood harvesting and transport of the fuel.
“Plant Hemp for Victory”.
Corn has more value as a food stock than a fuel stock. Penn State researchers are working on a fuel cell that uses corn stover to power water treatment plants. 5% of all electricity is used for water treatment processing. We could have a corn shortage if we continue to use it for fuel and it can’t replace petroleum. I believe it takes 26 pounds of corn to make a gallon of ethanol which sells for less than three dollars. You are better off making corn whiskey or growing organic corn that sells for three times more. You can grow less corn organically and get the same return in dollars at market using less land and doing less work. Ethanol requires huge investments and you still aren’t going to get anywhere near the size of the oil companies and be competitive. You are better off bottling the corn than barreling it. Less is more sometimes. You can grow a little corn and build a distillery and make a living. If you can sell off the rest of the corn plant to fuel cellers, more power to you.
Here’s the Penn article URL http://www.psu.edu/ur/2006/cornstover.html
for those interested. With 250 million tons of corn stover, you don’t need to wait for trees to grow. We already have stockpiles of the material going to waste.
If lignin provides the structural stregth of wood, and they reduce the lignin in the cells, isn’t that going to mean a lot of trees blowing down on windy days? Sounds a lot like the effect osteoporosis has on human bones.
Trees being downed by wind could be considered green technology. That way you won’t need chainsaws which need gasoline. You have to harness the wind, so the wind does most of the work. It’s a wind sawmill. So that isn’t a problem, it’s a solution.
Ed, once again you have come across a great idea. The best part of it is that it is doable.
If this project becomes a reality, will the EU ban ethanol from these trees because they are GM trees?
Plus, I wonder why it’s taking so long for ecoterrorists to spray malathion to these experimental trees in the lame excuse that the pollen from these poplars will mix with the wild populations and screw up the environment faster than the lifespan of a Jessica Simpson song.
The government should be able to screw the whole thing up beyond repair well ahead of the ecoterrorists and at 5,000 percent greater a cost, both environmentally and financially. If it makes any sense at all, you’ll have people chained to the trees protesting it because somebody is making a living doing it. The people chained to the trees make a living out of doing this sort of thing somehow. They are always complaining the government isn’t doing enough. That’s where they come in, to wreck your tree harvesting business because they care. Then they get enviroterrorist lawyers to file injunctions so you can’t cut your own trees down. You end up buried in paperwork and you know where paper comes from. Trees!
Jim — that is a strange and paranoid little world of unreality you live in. You really should consider walking into a gathering of mainstream environmental activists sometime. Well, once, anyway.
H.F. — my biggest surprise was that this came from Purdue. I admit it’s my Northeastern woodsman bias [in younger years] that sort of expects developments like this to come from Cornell and Points East.
Every Boilermaker I knew really was an engineer. I’ll bet the Purdue and Cornell forestry departments have a healthy competition going.
I favor the Native American environmental approach, which isn’t in tune with current reality. Call it unreality or whatever. California is loaded with environmentalists, smog and all sorts of other crud. I’m not paranoid, as far as I know. There’s a whole lot I don’t know but I know me. We have plenty of environmentalists in my area and the environment sucks. Most of what they do is hold meetings, apply for state grants and form new organizations. They are bureaucrats.
Try understanding trees by understanding Native American culture. It was figured out long ago. The roots are there. It could take root, knock on wood.
Tree trends reports, “The city council of Havering, East London, has allocated funds to replace dozens of fruit-bearing trees along city streets. The trees, including flowering crab and pear trees, will be replaced with trees that don’t bear fruit. Why? The council is afraid the city might be sued if trees drop fruit onto pavement (sidewalk or street) and someone slips on the fruit!”
Fruit is out I guess. We’ll all be growing fruitless trees that are 90 feet high and will replace oil soon. Enough to make Johnny Appleseed cry. One problem with the fast growing tree plan is fast spreading fire. One big fire and there goes all our fuel. What are you smoking Eideard?
Eid — you seem to have acquired the non sequiturus americanus from the Pluto post.
His responses and comments both sound like he lives in some tiny egregious transparent box. Hands firmly planted against an unyielding surface, he cries for attention and ignores anyone else working at changing the worst of this world.
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I say anything that makes more renewable energy is a good thing. It can’t be worse than oil at least. (and eventually those petroleum costs to bring the renewable energy to market will be replaced by renewable energy sources – what happens when the market truck burns ethanol?)
Heavens, Bruce. You’re looking beyond the next 2 quarters. You’ll never succeed in American politics.
i think corn whisky is less than gas and that farmers get more money for selling it to make corn whisky than selling as corn.I also believe it benefits our economy.
p.s
Im only 14.
#10: I went to Purdue and have an Chemical Engineering degree from there. It’s an Agriculture school too, so what’s surprising about combining the two disciplines to get a better solution to the energy problem? Gotta think outside the box.