Reduced Ethanol??

On November 15th 2013 USA Today came out with an article explaining the changes in recent Ethanol use regulations and how this once championed bio-fuel law of 2007 has not been working as had once been expected.  In fact for the first time, officials are planning to reduce the amount of ethanol in the US's fuel supply.  At the beginning, the law had hoped to address climate change concerns while encouraging homegrown bio-fuels that would burn cleaner than gasoline.  The ethanol cut back, would require approximately 3 billion gallons less ethanol to be used.  The variable that had not been considered during the initial bio-fuel discussions, was the possibility for such fuel economy improvements as what has taken place over the last several years.  "Bio-fuels are a key part of the Obama administration's 'all the above' energy strategy, helping to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, cut carbon pollution and create job," stated EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.  This proposed ethanol reduction could bring some flack, when reflecting on statements of the past.  In addition the ethanol mandate has caused quite a stir amongst both oil companies and environmental groups.  As the market continues to fluctuate and technology undoubtedly progresses, what will be the future of bio-fuel vehicle use?

Baudoinia??

The mycologists tell us exactly what it is:

"Baudoinia are cosmopolitan colonists of exposed surfaces subjected to large diurnal temperature shifts, episodic high relative humidity and wetting, and ambient airborne ethanol. Morphologically B. compniacensis resembles some anamorphic Mycosphaerellaceae in possessing dark brown, nonseptate or uniseptate conidia with coarsely roughened walls that are borne acropetally in unbranched chains and released by schizolytic dehiscence. Analysis of partial nuclear rDNA SSU sequences positions B. compniacensis in the order Capnodiales and reveals that it is most closely related to the microcolonial genus Friedmanniomyces."

Now that you know technically what it is, I'll tell you what it really is. It's that sooty-looking black gunk that coats the outside of homes, spreads over porch furniture, blankets car roofs, covers plants and lawn shrubs, and is ever-present and annoying everywhere in the world where whiskey and other alcoholic beverages are distilled, stored and/or bottled.  It's been dubbed the "Whiskey Fungus".

Until 2007 when researchers published a scientific study no one really knew what it was, but everyone disliked it equally.  The NY Times has done an expose on it now that there have been five class action law suits filed in Kentucky against the distillers in that region.  By the way, the distillers are none too happy about it either.

Seems it is a very old fungus that germinates on ethanol when the temperature and moisture conditions are favorable - yes, it needs relatively moist (humid) conditions in the ambient air to really get going, but not all that much ethanol - just a few parts per million will do the trick.  In fact, much of the problem it appears is the normal distillery process evaporation which is surprisingly low.  So, if you have water in your air, you'd better keep the ethanol out of the area.  You've been warned!

Now I'm wondering about my neighbor who drinks a bit and keeps his house too warm.  Could those age spots he keeps complaining about be....?   Nah!   We're too dry for that!

Energy Beets?

I see now there is a push in North Dakota on growing energy beets for ethanol production rather than corn.  The pitch:  Energy beets:  help the soil in that they use less nitrogen than corn; are tolerant to saline soils; deep rooted so they mop up nutrients escaping from shallow rooted crops; require only 1.5 gal water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol compared to corn's 2.5 gallons; produces twice the ethanol per acre than corn; and irrigated yields are 41 tons per acre.

What the article I am reading never says is how much irrigation water it takes to grow a 41-ton per acre crop.  While I can appreciate the fact that the processing water is significantly less for beets than for corn, this has never been the real issue for me as a water manager.  What is the issue is the irrigation water requirement - which for corn, is significant.  I suspect it's considerably more significant for beets, but I've looked for about an hour now and nobody's fessin' up to how much water it does take. This likely means it's a boat-load! 

I guess one could argue that even if beets take twice as much irrigation water as corn, the studies report you only need one-half the acres of beets for the same amount of ethanol produced from corn.  This could be good, right?  At least no worse!  But in the business world I'd be very surprised if the ethanol production (economic returns) won't be maximized if the land and water are available.  Besides, these guys are talking about pretty significant new acreages of beet production.  My guess is that in North Dakota water conservation is not very prominent on the radar screens of those promoting ethanol production from beets.   And this is fine - if you've got the land and water.  But, if water conservation is important, or necessary, to you, looks like it'll have to happen some other way if you jump on the beet ethanol wagon.

The Way I Figure it...

Much has been argued about the water budget for ethanol production.  The industry argues that it's not that bad - a mere 3 to 4 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol.  Well, like everything else, it depends on what you account for.  The way I figure it...

Corn in our area (Northwest Kansas) will take an average of 150 AF of water to grow an average of 225 bushels on a 120 acre circle - a very typical arrangement - here.  But only about 80% of that pumped water is consumed in the growing process (the rest returns to the aquifer system - yes, this is the consumptive water use mantra AGAIN!!)  This means that 48,877,650 gallons of water are pumped, of which 39,102,120 gallons are used.  With our average yields of 225 bushels of corn per acre, this means that 27,000 bushels of corn are produced for the 39,102,120 gallons of water.  This is 1,448 gallons of water for each bushel of corn.

The industry reports about 2.75 gallons of ethanol are produced by each bushel of corn, meaning that it takes .36 bushels of corn to produce each gallon of ethanol.  This means that it takes about 525 gallons of water to grow the .36 bushel of corn it takes to make 1 gallon of ethanol. 

Our local ethanol plant here in NW Kansas is efficient and uses 3.6 gallons of water in its process to make each gallon of ethanol.  This means it takes about 150 times the amount of water to grow the corn it takes to make 1 gallon of ethanol than it does to process that .36 bushel of corn into ethanol.

However, one has to ask whether or not the corn would be grown if ethanol were not being produced?  Probably a very high percentage of it would be, so what's the difference?  Moreover, even if no corn would be grown, it's just as likely that some other irrigated crop would be grown with the same water.  Again, what's the difference?  So, while I personally think the water use needed in corn production for ethanol is significant, I'm also thinking that ethanol is NOT the cause of our water dilemmas here in GMD 4.  We had regulations in place before the ethanol push, so no new land and water use came into production because of the push.  It's the new irrigated land that would have made our water supply problems worse.  Of course, it didn't help matters much, either. 

I guess what I'm saying is, if you're concerned about the water use associated with ethanol, the only way to truely save this water would be to revert these irrigated corn acres being used for ethanol back to dry land production.  I'm also saying that this is highly unlikely to happen, so maybe the chore of figuring water use is pretty pointless.  But it does bother me a bit to listen to the pro and anti ethanol factions discuss water use numbers that are so very far apart. And it confuses everyone who is trying to understand the issues.

Yeah, I know the real water footprint of ethanol production is even more complicated than this, but it seems to me to be an unsolvable argument when no one has any idea what the production choices will actually be otherwise.  These new production choices will be the key to making our water supply problems better or worse, and they'll vary from place to place based on local economics and regulations.