Ravi Challa/Week - 4

I am aware of carbon credits but I never read anything that mentioned about carbon debt and it was interesting to know how land conversion over a period of 50 years contributes for the CO2 release (Tilman et al., 2008). The findings in the manuscript emphasize on biomass production from degraded cropland to decrease the green house gas (GHG) emissions. Large carbon debts result from converting natural ecosystems and this further strengthens the argument that biofuel production from crop lands would have an adverse affect on the environment with increased GHG emissions. Brazil is the leading producer of ethanol from sugarcane but sugarcane ethanol contributes for carbon debt. It will be interesting to know the crop land distribution in Brazil and which state or geographical region contributes for the cultivation of high yield sugar cane. It would be handy to have land distribution for sugar cane crop production across Brazil to find the carbon debts accrued from sugar cane ethanol production. We can use this data to evaluate the claims made in press release on Zero Discharge Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Process Development (Cincinnati, Aug 2010). AdvanceBio LLC, seem to generalize their lab/pilot scale findings applicable to the entire United States of America because if sugar cane production is only possible to be grown in crop lands suitable for corn then sugar-based ethanol production contributes for higher carbon debts and more GHG emissions. Billion-Ton study showed the brighter side of biomass production but it didnt address concerns that are considered critical to make bioenergy as a true alternative for fossil fuels. As research is being done in mass production of perennial crops, Tom L. Richard (2010) analyzed the challenges in scaling up of biomass infrastructure. Transportation of biomass is not cost effective considering the amount of biomass needed to produce a gallon of biofuel. Techniques such as pelletizing and baling hay still need to be proved as cost effective. Pelletizing biomass is not cheap and it is involved with several operational problems such as moisture in biomass clogs the holes. Clogging can be avoided by supplying heat which makes the whole process energy intensive and definitely not help to lower the biofuel production cost. Practice of small biomass energy facilities (Richard. 2010) operated by independent local feedstock suppliers seems attractive but farmers in the United States of America own thousands of acres of land and I doubt if it fits into the model. I just got to hear in our departmental (ABE) seminar (dated 09/17/10) that it is difficult to get drivers during the harvesting season. It is only one of many practical problems involved with biomass transportation. More research has to done to balance the carbon debt, to minimize the transportation of biomass and make bioenergy cost effective and energy efficient.