What Steven Chu - the next? Secretary of Energy has to say about Corn Oil and Biodiesel."Corn is one crop US is growing and the US is subsidizing its farmers $1-3 billion a year. What one needs to do is to convert corn to corn oil and then convert corn oil into bio fuel."
WOW - Sorts of sounds like what a COES does!
Biological solution to the Energy Crisis - p.9 from a 2005 speech
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Dr. Chu’s marquee work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is the Helios Project.
From the Helios Project website:
Welcome to Helios
The Helios effort is a solar energy initiative at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and UC Berkeley. The primary goal of this effort is to develop methods to “store” solar energy in the form of renewable transportation fuel. Several approaches under investigation include the generation of biofuels from biomass, the generation of biofuels by algae, and the direct conversion of water and carbon dioxide to fuels by the use of solar energy.
The Helios effort is a solar energy initiative at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and UC Berkeley. The primary goal of this effort is to develop methods to “store” solar energy in the form of renewable transportation fuel. Several approaches under investigation include the generation of biofuels from biomass, the generation of biofuels by algae, and the direct conversion of water and carbon dioxide to fuels by the use of solar energy.
What the Wall Street Journal says about Helios:
Helios has focused largely on biofuels—but not the bog-standard kind made from corn and sugar. The Energy Biosciences Institute, a joint effort funded by BP, is looking to make second-generation biofuels more viable. Among the approaches? Researching new ways to break down stubborn cellulosic feedstocks to improve the economics of next-generation biofuels, and finding new kinds of yeast to boost fermentation and make biofuels more plentiful while reducing their environmental impact.
Like just about everyone else Chu sees corn as a stepping stone. The first step. He uses time frames of 5 - 10 years to move to the next generation. Here are some of his reasons why:
"We can indeed make fuel out of crops. Corn is not the right crop. The reason it’s not the right crop is because the amount of energy you put into making a fuel and growing the corn and fertilizing the corn fields and plowing the fields is within ten or 20 percent of the amount of energy you get by making it into the ethanol that you can put in your car. Also, the amount of CO2 you create by growing corn is again within 20 percent of the amount of carbon dioxide you make by drilling and refining oil and putting into your car."
SkunK
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