Apr
23
Food Plus Fuel Answers
April 23, 2009 | 4 Comments
The food vs. fuel crowd lives in ignorance and plays off the ignorance of the media to scare folks and generally just make trouble. Reality is a very different thing. Almost a complete reversal from the popular concept now so well sold.
I was triggered to write today by a headline for a press release from the popularly obscure Agricultural Research Service at the United States Department of Agriculture. They are busily figuring out ways to use the byproducts left over from making fuels from biomass sources.
The ARS has broken through the toughest barriers in the biodiesel – using the glycerin left over to feed poultry and swine. Soybeans are used in a large way for the seed’s oils to make biodiesel with the glycerin left over. The glycerin in its turn has some methanol and salts and is difficult to meter and apply into the foods for the animals.
The story began as ethanol production from corn yields a large quantity of ‘distillers grain’ the proteins and fiber left over from the fermentation. When used the animals, cattle by the largest share, emit extra volatile organic compounds (lots of extra protein will do that) that smell rather pungent. In an effort to dilute the protein the scientists sought to use the carbohydrate of glycerin. That leads to other animals.
Distillers grains don’t work well in the swine or poultry critters. Too much fiber, too much protein, and more active metabolisms need higher proportions of carbohydrates. So the testing went over to using the glycerin. The results were satisfying.
Piglets Get Glycerin
Piglets, the little ones, were able to use some glycerin instead of corn for their carbohydrate portion of the diet successfully. Over five study groups the results led to concentrations of up to 10% of the diet as glycerin. This is a great relief, as glycerin is getting rather abundant.
On the poultry front four studies over egg laying chickens and broiler chickens for meat were done. No significant difference in animal performance was exposed.
The press release says, “Overall, the data indicates that crude glycerin is an excellent source of energy in swine and poultry rations and can be used without harming animal performance, carcass composition, or meat quality.”
What isn’t said is that the glycerin makes more corn available for fuel production so relieving some price pressure. Good news for consumers of food and fuel.
Next up is to revisit the methanol and salt matter. These naturally occurring parts of the leftovers from biodiesel production need further study to assess the levels that are safe for the animals and the humans that make use of them. Knowing will allow setting standards that animal food producers can use in producing the feed. More research could be in store to reduce the quantities of the methanol and salt.
That solves in part the issue of biomass to fuel. The part that matters for fuel, carbohydrates, can be extracted and used to make fuel and the proteins and fiber can be still be used for animal feed. And so many innocent consumers believe there is some tragedy in progress. One could be angry with the press and media for being so dopily misled and then misleading everyone else. Carbs, protein and fiber are all still there, just in different forms with the excess carbohydrates used for fuel.
But not every biomass comes from food products. Wood and even the trash can be made into fuels. While human have little food use for termites and other woody consumers, the wood after fuel extraction could be very useful.
Instead of biological processes such as fermentation wood products might likely be gasification candidates. Gasification has its own wonderful leftover product, char or a form of charcoal.
Char was first used in the Amazon by the indigenous people who would burn forest to form a clearing. They’d burn at low oxygen so that they had a supply of char to integrate into the poor Amazonian soils. The char has the property of being very rich in carbon in a form that takes up nutrients and releases them to plants in an optimal way. The chemistry is complex and we’ll breeze over it here, but the result was intensely high quality soils that would produce foods far in excess of simply cleared land.
That means that humanity could, if it so chooses, to produce wood, make fuel, return the char to soils and increase the available land suitable for high yield high quality food production. It would over time increase the amount of quality land for food production. A true earth-changing event. A very good idea that some will surely figure is a bad thing, but the results are just astonishing, that char is really good stuff.
The agronomy and horticultural crowd already know that char or carbon content is an important element to great growing conditions. If you are able, take a tour of the American Midwest, where great swaths of territory are soils of black earth suitable for growing nearly anything. A trip across Iowa where black earth as much as 10 meters deep, rich in carbon, is the envy of the world.
This post covers just the two likely paths to foods and fuels in the synergistic view. Biology based processes will give both the fuels and foods we need, just a little adjustment is needed to change and improve our situation. The chemical processes also yield worthwhile products that offer even more and better potential to raise more food and fuels.
By no means is the effort over. There is still more innovation to come with pleasant surprises, reduced costs, better qualities and an improved standards of living.
A little knowledge puts to rest the screwy idea that there is a Food Vs. Food debate. OK, there is a ‘debate,’ but it isn’t a debate of the well informed.
That’s the good news for today. The bad news for the future is that the time will come there isn’t enough CO2 to go around. You heard it here first!
Comments
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Having once worked for a burboun distiller I am aware of the limitations of distillers grain. It makes an excellent protien supplement, especially for cattle. But it’s too concentrated to use as a complete feed.
As for glycerine, here is a link to an article about a company using it as a boiler fuel.
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=3257
Nice article, Brian. It is easy to get frustrated with the low quality of media reporting on energy topics. If it makes you feel better, media reporting is quite poor on all topics of coverage — not just energy and environment!
I have long maintained that in order to get into journalism school, a person must first flunk at least one standard IQ test.
Matt is correct that DDGs cannot be seen as a complete animal feed for most livestock. That’s not a problem.
A novel idea would be to let livestock owners locate the best source of feed, and let biofuels producers find the best source of feedstock, and let grocers and food producers find the best source of human food, all the while allowing the free market to function without restraint. It should all work out fine.
Nice article, Brian. It is easy to get frustrated with the low quality of media reporting on energy topics. If it makes you feel better, media reporting is quite poor on all topics of coverage — not just energy and environment!
I have long maintained that in order to get into journalism school, a person must first flunk at least one standard IQ test.
Matt is correct that DDGs cannot be seen as a complete animal feed for most livestock. That’s not a problem.
A novel idea would be to let livestock owners locate the best source of feed, and let biofuels producers find the best source of feedstock, and let grocers and food producers find the best source of human food, all the while allowing the free market to function without restraint. It should all work out fine.
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!
BTW, as you can see from the link on the April 24 1:05 AM post above, the duplicate post under my name was actually posted by someone else.
Is this a new kind of spam going around? I’ll have to keep an eye out for this sort of thing. In this case, nothing substantive seems to have been altered.
As far as the DDGs and their inferior nutritive content, naturally I would expect the price to livestock owners to be adjusted accordingly. Good ranchers are quite sophisticated on the topic of livestock nutrition. They know when to supplement and with what.