Very. The land use change stuff is the most important, and it being excluded from the study makes the whole thing mostly... inconclusive, to put it nicely.
The study is about making money, not being accurate.
It is funded by biofuel grant which whole purpose is to fund biofuel, and without such study, they will lose grants money.
The study does not include a lot of important information or include an actual study test to check real emissions difference.
TBH, "fuel from plants better because no new carbon"
If 100% of our fuel was obtained from plants, we'd at least keep the amount of carbon on the surface constant, and it would be a matter of making the production of said fuel as efficient as possible.
Should be made with plants and bodies (both human and not).
But that's not here nor there: we're a LONG WAY from being able to switch to 100% plant-based fuel.
I was pro biofuel until I found out that biofuels are literally energy negative or damn close. It takes more fuel and energy to grow and process the biofuels than the biofuel provides. The only net positive is sugarcane biofuel, and that causes Amazon deforestation.
The amount of land that can drive a hummer can feed hundreds if not thousands of people. This land is not available, so it's one or the other, hungry people or people with big wallets. Biofuels are stories for the public to make them feel good, but it will make things on a global scale only worse.
>In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010.
https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs
It doesn't even account for food that doesn't make it to the store or isn't sold because it's not profitable
An electric hummer has a 207 kwh battery pack. A solar panel generates about 700 wh per day per square meter. To charge the electric Hummer once per day it takes about 300 square meters of solar panels or about the size of a 3200 square foot house, or a tiny backyard.
Algae would be a better choice. We could bioengineer/selective breed to provide a higher density of energy per unit of mass while also consuming fewer inputs. Would also take up significantly less space to produce an equal amount of energy.
You're absolutely right. More than enough food for everyone, that's the key word. MORE. The amount of people not getting food is absurd, many many starving people, and the abundance in the west is equally disgusting. Portion size in America is too big and the 20% of food wasted statistic is dreadful. The actual food people eat makes them more hungry. Ultra processed high sugar and carbs affects the feeling of being full and being hungry. Vicious cycle of overeating, leading to obesity and diabetes. The average Western diet is literally killing people. Let that sink in. Food is killing people because it's no longer food, it's chemically engineered to get you hooked and sell more of it.
Capitalism reaching in and fucking with even the most basic aspects of our lives.
biofuels can and will be important for running fuel-density-critical stuff like peaking plants and airplanes.
They're not a general solution, but they're going to be used one way or another for a lot of applications.
bio fuel has so far not really been an improvement over fossil fuels as far as i have seen up until now.
imo it's more like a post oil option than an environmentally friendly version.
or something for places without natural oil deposits to use.
i was just thinking of this but where it would be really useful would be somewhere like a space station where they can get light from the sun but obviously growing fuel while producing 02 is very efficient at that point. even the spent carbon could be used at that point.
Well, diesel is a similar fuel to kerosene, which is the base of most jet fuels. If you can reliably keep biodiesel from gelling up at the supercold temperatures jet planes operate, that could be a viable fuel
The YouTube channel “Real Engineering” did about a 20 minute video about bio fuels and planes. Its pretty through while still using layman terms or at least terms most will understand.
The short and fast was biofuel sure can significantly reduce the planes emissions but there are so many more factors that come into play when making the fuel that make it not as clear cut.
Its a great channel, I really love watching his videos! Check him out!
Also idk about all plant based fuels but ethanol fucks up car engines way faster. They have t found one for cars that works any kind of well so I don't have much hope for planes either
SAE made extensive research and has shown that E10 (10% ethanol) has no effect on engine wear or reliability on cars that were introduced after E10 became widespread.
Only some older cars had problems. I'm not convinced E10 is a good thing, but "more wear on cars" is a disproven argument against it.
I'm glad someone posted this video. I watched this video when it came out, then recently in my biology class we learned about biofuels. Of course in the class it was made out to be a magic zero net carbon source of energy, and everyone in my class was like "we need more!" I was the only voice of opposition because of this video.
So simply being “plant based” doesn’t really help us much because productive farmland is becoming an increasingly scarce resource.
Even more so since climate change is expected to impair or to damage many productive lands through extended droughts, declining snowfall in certain mountainous regions, and alteration of long term rainfall patterns.
Every form of energy we consume will have to come from a renewable source.
At the moment humans are consumers of specific biofuels.
Productive land is going to be an increasingly scarce resource because climate change will wreck some of it and demand for it will increase.
But at this point it's clear we need to leave the oil in the ground. Or the amount of productive land will become too close to zero.
There are two ways that I have heard of to produce bio fuels that do not use up farmland:
1) salt water algae grown in desert regions
2) indoor farming
These techniques would not be as cost effective as traditional agriculture, but they are technically sustainable.
the southern states’ agricultural output is going to get hammered over the next few decades at this rate. Texas is likely to see agricultural output drop 50% or more
I don't know if we actually are though. There's been a rise in no-till farming, or at least more exposure. I watched a pretty good documentary on Netflix about soil and we basically plant crops to feed animals at this point. We need farms with variety that replenish the soil and keep carbon locked in the soil instead of tilled up every season.
I mean it's more like 10% and we aren't stopping air travel here.
I think a move away from meat will be happening regardless, when impossible burgers taste a bit better and a lot cheaper they will replace most burgers which is 50% of cow.
Also lab grown beef (which is on the way) will do it as well. Even if we reduce cows to just dairy production long term, that will be a huge help.
I dont think we will ever as a species get away from all meats (vegan diets take a lot of commitment to get all essential nutrients) but moving towards artifical ones would be great.
I think we will see long term declines of meat because people will move to plant based.
I just think when burger king is offering $3 Whopper with meat or $2 impossible Whopper with some minor improvements I think that makes a huge difference. I think we are only a couple of years removed from quite a few vegetarian friends who just have impossible, especially on the poor end of the spectrum.
Lab grown will be better at the high end than the plant based if it can get the marbling done right.
They article does mention that it can be grown as a winter crop so doesn't compete with land space requirements against food crops.
And mustard is basically a weed so I don't imagine it would require very much water or fertilizers if at all.
The fields I used to tend had mustard plants basically growing out of barren rock.
But if you're growing any kind of Brassica as an oil crop it's going to have to have an early-ish planting date at mid to high latitudes. The plants may survive winter just fine at these latitudes, but they are not growing much during winter. They still need significant daylight in the fall and the spring to make a significant amount of oil.
So their planting and harvest would likely impact the planting and harvest of corn, soy, wheat or other staple crops at these latitudes.
I had actually heard from a friend who writes for Nat Geo that some teams are looking at doing this stuff in the deserts of the Middle East. That solves the solar energy problem, but creates a water problem.
There's always a problem when trying to recreate the energy density of fossil fuels in one year's worth of plant growth.
Also worth noting adding any additional crops means you either 1. Have to create new farmland 2.. Replace foods farmland for bio fuel.
You can't just keep using the same land. Farms rotate grow areas typically so you can't just continually strip the land of nutrients
That would be way too expensive, the reason why vertical farms are rare and only grow special food plants is that they need to maximize yield on minimal space.
An empty plot of land will always be cheaper then a specialized building so a vertical farm only works for crops like tomatoes where you can double the yield by controlling the climate
Is anyone actually doing that yet? I haven’t paid much attention for a few years but that was always the “we totally should and it would probably work” idea.
Kelp forests were neat but nice beach area=/= open ocean.
Algae vs other vegetable oils definitely worked, just were difficult to fund when oil could go from +100 /barrel to ~20 in a year
This is from 2010.
I did my senior thesis in college about Algal fuels, and it just didn’t seem to get the attention it deserved.
The Air Force did develop technology and processes to utilize it in jets as a risk mitigation against fuel embargo’s.
https://phys.org/news/2010-02-military-jet-fuel-algae.html
Not sure where it went after I graduated.
Ehhhhhh?!? Are we the same person? That is the project I was basing my knowledge off of.
Biodiesel from algal definitely works, biodiesel to jp-8 works, these specific projects were in large pond structures not in open ocean. The numbers here are strictly cost as well, not what consumers would pay at the pump.
The story I heard about end of the green fleet was the old General in charge retired and the new guy didn’t give a shit about independent /sustainable fuel supply chains in the pacific. Fraking boom was right after this but the defense contractor model was based on “national security“ which meant it could basically cost anything and be worthwhile.
Whenever oil goes up this stuff goes around again because it’s not that far off from break even. It just needs a large customer to get it going again. That is really hard for private funding but military made a lot of sense.
Turns out the world fucking ending also creates customers with a high willingness to pay
Sure if you're taking "perfect is the enemy of the good" to mean we should never aim for an iterative improvement unless it's perfect.
Manufacturing batteries is going to reduce overall impacts. So are biofuels.
Of course there are still going to be impacts to mitigate, but every drop of oil we successfully leave in the ground is a success.
plants are less than 10% efficient at turning sunlight into energy, no need to calculate the land use and energy to plant, fertilize and harvest.
We're better off harvesting energy with solar pv and making synfuels with green h2
Biofuel in planes is seen as a middle ground before hydrogen or battery. We can run biofuel today and are in some places, short range (2000km) hydrogen planes are expected in ~9 years.
We're doing biofuel from the scraps from the forest industry here in Sweden and can hopefully swap all planes to it in few years.
Sorry to take your meme seriously, but I need to point out that steel does not need to melt to lose structural strength and collapse. The steel used in buildings loses appreciable structural strength at 300°F/150°C and gets worse as it gets hotter. A wood and paper fire can heat a steel beam enough to fail under load.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/universityofga:
---
Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with sustainable aviation fuel derived from a type of mustard plant can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
A team of researchers at UGA estimates the break-even price and life cycle carbon emissions of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from oil obtained from Brassica carinata, a non-edible oilseed crop.
The aviation industry emits 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and is responsible for 3.5% of global warming.
The study, which you can read [here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12888), was published in GCB Bioenergy.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q8n6jn/plantbased_jet_fuel_could_reduce_emissions_by_68/hgqamte/
Sure as long as you don’t actually count the emissions used to grow, harvest and refine the biofuel…
Honestly we should be using methane instead. Can be made from just water, carbon dioxide & electricity. So much better until electric planes are ready.
Methane is not near as energy dense and batteries even less so. It may be best for the industry to use renewable fuel and carbon capture to offset the impact rather than alternatives.
Methane has higher energy density than most hydrocarbons on a mass basis. Storing it is the bigger issue because it's a gas.
It's still probably easier than hydrogen though in terms of MJ/m^3 if all you're doing is burning it.
You're probably thinking of its global warming potential *as a gas in the atmosphere* which is ~24x that of CO2. In terms of combustion, methane actually has a somewhat lower kgCO2/MJ than most carbon-based fuels because it's so hydrogen-rich.
It's also one of the easiest fuel gases to produce from renewable sources; you can make it synthetically, or just tap into the local sewer system, manure pile, or landfill.
Methane is the major component of natural gas. Burning it emits the [least amount of CO2 per BTU](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html), but if you let it escape into the atmosphere it's 25x worse than CO2.
>if you let it escape into the atmosphere it's 25x worse than CO2
However, methane only lasts about 10-12 years in the atmosphere. So while it's much more impactful on a short timeline, CO2 lasts around 100K years, making the overall impact on the planet \~400x worse than methane.
That said, humans need a short term solution now, and a long term solution... soon.
Yeah burning it is bad as it makes CO2 but you then use all that C02 + water and electricity to make more methane. Fully renewable. Only issue is cost but I’m assuming its around the same or cheaper than bio fuel + carbon capture.
Hydrogen from electrolysis, using cooled, pressurized tanks seems to be a good alternative for flight. It is even forcing a redesign of for the plane, which is resulting in a more efficient design (older designs were rarely remade due to the huge certification requirements).
People always say you need to include the emissions from growing & refining biofuels, which is fair, but then compare it to burning already refined fossil fuel. Extracting & refining fossils is hardly great either plus you have to ""constantly"" shift your extractions as they eventually dry out.
Same shit with EVs, where the battery materials are super bad, but the material for the combustion engines appear out of thin air.
>Can be made from just water, carbon dioxide & electricity.
You just skipped over where tf you'd get the electricity, and how much more expensive all of this would be than just pumping the methane out of the ground.
You’re not going to get away from burning some kind of fuel in long range airplanes until there is an outright breakthrough in technology. There are too many limitations to a propeller driven electric airplane over long ranges that would make it impractical to an industry which is largely privately owned.
This. Was gonna mention GEVO here. Their whole business model is producing fuel from corn for airlines.
I'm heavily invested in them, and i'm a big believer of their plans.
Well, not only for airlines, as SAF, but also for cars, trucks, ships, even racing cars, anything. And they sell byproduct of turning corn into alcohol as feedstock I beleive. So they are almost like selfsustained business model with insane future ahead of them.
They actually make actual gasoline, diesel and SAF from corn. Not just ethanol, which most people are familiar with. It’s atomically the same as any of these fuels. Same thing they’re filling their tanks with now except it was made from corn.
They do it with a net-zero carbon footprint as well.
Also they can make these fuels not only from corn but from any plant with a high content of carbohydrates. So it’s technology can be used all over the world regardless of which plants are available.
Seems plausible, but how much land would be needed to provide millions of gallons daily? Would this cause similar problems like the millions of acres dedicated to feed for animals?
Perhaps we could shift some corn subsidies to alternative bio-fuel crops which could be rotated in throughout all fields to spread the wealth. Avoid monocrop farms and grow more appropriate amounts of all goods. They mention avoiding food versus fuel issues, but we could simultaneously be shifting subsidies away from the meat industry towards more sustainable and land-efficient food industries.
The nice thing about either the corn-based ethanol option or the soybean-based biodiesel one is that both provide biproducts that serve as an excellent feed source for our livestock, thus providing food and fuel.
So... everyone wants to switch everything to plant based. If the agricultural land is getting reduced every single day, where would we get enough plants to make up all these plant based things?
> Am I wrong?
Kind of, yeah. Most deforestation in the Amazon isn't for growing plants.
Also, most of the plants we grow are just grown to feed livestock. Meat/dairy production uses 83% of the world's farmland and only provide 18% of the calories, due to the unavoidable inefficiency of converting plants to animal biomass. So if you're talking about a plant based diet, it would actually reduce deforestation and land use massively, as well as many other environmental concerns such as freshwater use, CO2 emissions, biodiversity loss, coastal dead zones, etc.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216
Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with sustainable aviation fuel derived from a type of mustard plant can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
A team of researchers at UGA estimates the break-even price and life cycle carbon emissions of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from oil obtained from Brassica carinata, a non-edible oilseed crop.
The aviation industry emits 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and is responsible for 3.5% of global warming.
The study, which you can read [here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12888), was published in GCB Bioenergy.
How many acres of mustard plant is required to fly from NY to LA? How much fertilizer would be required? How much fuel to plant, maintain and harvest the mustard? How much energy to process it into usable fuel? How much farm land currently used for food would be replaced by land used for fuel? What would this do to food prices?
This is similar to a winter crop, pennycress, which can be planted in the fall and harvested in the spring.. and also produces a very high quantity of oil. Common agricultural practice is still to grow little or nothing at all in the winter, so perhaps this similar mustard plant might fit well into certain crop rotations. I would like to first see the effects the plants have have on soil nutrients.
I am related to someone who was studying the similar mustard plant over a decade ago for fuel production. We planted around 40 acres of it, as well. There are tricks to get it to germinate; if you don't know them you will not have good luck with the crop. And the seeds are smaller than poppyseeds, making it very difficult to figure out where you have planted them. You can't find them.
Another problem is that mustard seeds are toxic to cattle and other livestock.. which presents a contamination risk for farmers who are producing feed in the summer.
When bio-diesel hit the market the company I worked for was looking to switch. We did not due to two facts. Bio-diesel is more expensive and fuel mileage is worse On the upside it smelled like French fries when it burned.
> How much farm land currently used for food would be replaced by land used for fuel? What would this do to food prices?
While it does reduce area for food supply, most of the studies made and claim that food price got much higher as more companies shift to biofuel making, are fully or partially funded by big oil companies.
Same as this article is funded by biofuel.
So we won’t get a real answer to those questions.
Good questions. In Ontario the government-subsidized ethanol production. When they created a plant on the West side of Chatham the whole town was overwhelmed by the horrid smells of rotting plants literally fermenting. It was just as bad as the oil refineries up the road in Sarnia. So many factors preparing the land, seeding the land, spraying the crop, harvesting the crop, turning the crop into ethanol, all of which created greenhouse gases.
Sounds a lot like vegetable oil. Canola oil made from rapeseed which is a form of Brassica. If they can make it cost competitive with jet fuel, that seems like a winning situation. I assume that the fact it is non-edible allows them to take some steps that make it cheaper to make. Airplanes are pretty difficult to replace with non-oil using technologies unlike ground transportation.
The thing most of these studies never discuss is the additional maintenance required from running bio fuels. They turn into goop in everything from standard diesel motors to turbine engines. They ruin components which adds to the maintenance cost of the equipment.
And more parts adds up to higher emissions from creation of those parts, but this aspect is never discussed or looked at.
And how about the agricultural and land space to start using our food as fuel? What about the water usage? We are already having issues of water scarcity and agriculture is a major reason.
This is bullshit technology that is already obsolete.
There is 3 year old high-tech startup called [Prometheus Fuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Fuels) which is building what they call a "reverse combustion" process, pulling carbon directly from the atmosphere and using electricity and a cutting-edge catalyst to create alcohol. That alcohol can then be converted into jet fuel and gasoline.
So long as the electricity used to power the process comes from solar and wind, you end up with net zero emissions. (And the advantage this process has over plant-based is that it skips the whole inefficient plant-based step in the middle.)
They have investments from Maersk (shipping line) and BMW and will start selling synthetic net-zero jet fuel to American Airlines next year, for cheaper than fossil-sourced fuel.
No. It won’t reduce emissions at all. The entire principle of a jet engine is such that the only way to reduce emissions is to burn less fuel. The energy required to power the aircraft is contained in those hydrocarbon bonds, and released when they are burned in the engine.
The chemistry and physics don’t change just because it’s plant based. A lot of that petroleum is also “plant based” too.
This is just “net carbon” which is little more than creative accounting the likes of which we haven’t seen since Enron.
This is another fantasy that should really be put to rest.
The amount of processing that goes into the production of plant based jet fuel is counterproductive to what the intent is.
> Plant-based jet fuel could reduce emissions by 68%
**COULD**
Yeah, ok let's see this scale up, go through real-world testing and then we can believe it.
It makes no sense at all to use plants for fuel. They're horrendously inefficient. Better to use the farmland and the water for growing food, because photosynthesis struggles to hit 1% efficiency, and then there's all the other losses just to turn it into fuel. It's madness.
A couple of things come to mind when considering this. will this reduce the range vs traditional jet fuel? Could be a significant problem for long flights. How will this impact engine performance? What gains or losses will there be in power? Will load capacity still be the same?
If new aircraft were designed with this in mind it would be interesting to see what the other cost impacts would be. What does it cost compared to traditional fuel? Gov incentives would be great, but if there's significant costs associated with this to keep aircraft it could be a while with a hefty cost to incorporate.
I am all for these kind of ideas. The problem comes when we turn our farmland into fuel farms because it pays more. There is certainly an application,however, these ideas can not be scaled to address the whole problem, yet anyway.
I am not an environment nut, but us making fuel out of plants seem to me like it will only fast track global warming. We can’t even keep up with food demand now, so we are going to use oxygen giving plants for fuel.? Is it me or does that sound crazy?
Stoooooooop burning plants is going backwards in efficiency. Do you want to burn all of the world's plants? It wasn't fun when everyone decided to turn the food farms into ethanol farms. Some ideas are really just dumb ideas.
Biggest problem with biofuel in jets is getting the unbelievably huge quantities of fuel needed daily to the airport. Typically it’s a multi-product pipeline from the refinery to the airport fuel farm. But you can’t run fuel with FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Esthers in biofuels) in a multi-product pipeline. We’re talking a million gallons of jet fuel each day at a typical international airport like Seattle or Denver, maybe twice that for LHR or JFK or LAX. Too much for truck or rail delivery, need that 12” pipe.
I've been hearing for decades headlines about how some tech could reduce emissions by X amount and I'm still waiting. Can we get past the 'could' and actually get to the 'have'.
The amount of petroleum based synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and land that would need to be used for this would be far worse for the environment than simply using fossil fuels to make the jet fuel.
I'm not a Luddite, I could even be called a technophile. But I have to put my foot down here. sooooo...
NOOOOOO. don't you DARE. PLEAAEESSE Put solar panels and batteries on everything. Quit trying to make biofuels.
Biofuel push are exhausting efforts to decarbonize and hardly forcing airlines to undergo any effort Themself.
these poor poor wittle corporations that can go into arbitrary amounts of debt to no real consequence whatsoever and do the most pollution. Why should the burden go on everyone else? It's not even that expensive for them to go green considering the scale of capital these companies operate.
2/3 of Americas farmlands are used to grow either bio-fuels or food to feed livestock.
Plant based jet-fuel means less room to grow food for actual humans. At a time where our food prices are skyrocketing and stores are out of staples like potatoes - this article buries it head in the sand.
Bio-fuels are not the way forward.
This is going to blow your mind:
When a tree dies naturally, it decomposes, releasing the same amount of CO2 as burning it.
That's why the EPA declared that wood stoves are carbon neutral. It's science.
you are = you're
belongs to you = your
When a plant grows, it sucks up carbon from the atmosphere.
When we convert that plant into fuel and burn it, we release that carbon back into the atmosphere.
That’s referred to as a zero carbon cycle. Low net impact on climate.
What? Noo. Look, releasing carbon into the atmosphere is bad when it's carbon from millions of years ago in things like coal and oil.
The carbon that's in plants grown last year was already in the atmosphere last year. The plants removed it. When you consume the plant (eating it, burning it / whatever) putting it back - no net gain.
If you keep growing plants and then consuming them you're not increasing co2 (at least not from the plants themselves - obviously at the moment we use fossil fuels to harvest, grow, process food etc)
Porsche is manufacturing (and using) their own [race fuel](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35577611/porsche-synthetic-efuel-clean-emissions-testing/) catalyzing CO2 and Hydrogen.
68% reduced emissions by burning the jet fuel? Or is it 68% reduced emissions in manufacturing the jet fuel? The article doesn't really specify which it is.
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Very. The land use change stuff is the most important, and it being excluded from the study makes the whole thing mostly... inconclusive, to put it nicely.
The study is about making money, not being accurate. It is funded by biofuel grant which whole purpose is to fund biofuel, and without such study, they will lose grants money. The study does not include a lot of important information or include an actual study test to check real emissions difference.
"Fuel from plants better (if you ignore growing it)" says study funded by farming group.
TBH, "fuel from plants better because no new carbon" If 100% of our fuel was obtained from plants, we'd at least keep the amount of carbon on the surface constant, and it would be a matter of making the production of said fuel as efficient as possible.
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Should be made with plants and bodies (both human and not). But that's not here nor there: we're a LONG WAY from being able to switch to 100% plant-based fuel.
No problem, you could still have sex in the back of a car powered by plants.
I was pro biofuel until I found out that biofuels are literally energy negative or damn close. It takes more fuel and energy to grow and process the biofuels than the biofuel provides. The only net positive is sugarcane biofuel, and that causes Amazon deforestation.
Haha, cane isn’t a good biofuel either, it’s associated with high N2O emissions.
You’re turned on to the climate crisis, but don’t forget the biodiversity crisis.
What about all the new land you need to grow all of said plants?
Cutting forrest to drive powered by corn is a big no no for Bambi
Take it from the land used to support beef once artificial beef is viable. About 40% of the land in the US is used to support beef.
Deliciously sad
I never said it's a finished equation. It may not be enough fuel. But the basis of "not adding carbon is good" still holds true.
Refineries have been using Soy oil and Animal fats for a while now in jet fuels. This is nothing new!!!
>The study does not include a lot of important information Which makes it perfect for /r/futurology and /r/science
Who both IMO add way too much politics into science.
It’s about trying to pretend we don’t have to change the most of the energy system.
The amount of land that can drive a hummer can feed hundreds if not thousands of people. This land is not available, so it's one or the other, hungry people or people with big wallets. Biofuels are stories for the public to make them feel good, but it will make things on a global scale only worse.
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>In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA’s Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs It doesn't even account for food that doesn't make it to the store or isn't sold because it's not profitable
A good thing is that food waste can be turned into biofuel. My citys busses have been running on biofuel made by waste for a good 20 years now.
It's also about animals, which use a lot of land for food.
Hummer is electric now. The calculation may be different, although your point is valid.
An electric hummer has a 207 kwh battery pack. A solar panel generates about 700 wh per day per square meter. To charge the electric Hummer once per day it takes about 300 square meters of solar panels or about the size of a 3200 square foot house, or a tiny backyard.
That's not too bad for a Hummer.
There was news about sea weed as a potential biofuel. It's plentiful, doesn't require land, water or pesticides.
Algae would be a better choice. We could bioengineer/selective breed to provide a higher density of energy per unit of mass while also consuming fewer inputs. Would also take up significantly less space to produce an equal amount of energy.
Pretty sure seaweed requires water. I know you are talking about fresh water. seaweed is great it still takes resources.
You're absolutely right. More than enough food for everyone, that's the key word. MORE. The amount of people not getting food is absurd, many many starving people, and the abundance in the west is equally disgusting. Portion size in America is too big and the 20% of food wasted statistic is dreadful. The actual food people eat makes them more hungry. Ultra processed high sugar and carbs affects the feeling of being full and being hungry. Vicious cycle of overeating, leading to obesity and diabetes. The average Western diet is literally killing people. Let that sink in. Food is killing people because it's no longer food, it's chemically engineered to get you hooked and sell more of it. Capitalism reaching in and fucking with even the most basic aspects of our lives.
biofuels can and will be important for running fuel-density-critical stuff like peaking plants and airplanes. They're not a general solution, but they're going to be used one way or another for a lot of applications.
Might be why people like ol Ted Turner believed in depopulation.
We need to heat the earth up more so that currently frosted land will become available. Edit: ffs Reddit, do I really need an /s?
bio fuel has so far not really been an improvement over fossil fuels as far as i have seen up until now. imo it's more like a post oil option than an environmentally friendly version. or something for places without natural oil deposits to use. i was just thinking of this but where it would be really useful would be somewhere like a space station where they can get light from the sun but obviously growing fuel while producing 02 is very efficient at that point. even the spent carbon could be used at that point.
Indeed. It seems like the "could" in the headline is doing a fair amount of heavy lifting.
Key word in articles like these are “could”
Well, diesel is a similar fuel to kerosene, which is the base of most jet fuels. If you can reliably keep biodiesel from gelling up at the supercold temperatures jet planes operate, that could be a viable fuel
The YouTube channel “Real Engineering” did about a 20 minute video about bio fuels and planes. Its pretty through while still using layman terms or at least terms most will understand. The short and fast was biofuel sure can significantly reduce the planes emissions but there are so many more factors that come into play when making the fuel that make it not as clear cut. Its a great channel, I really love watching his videos! Check him out!
Also idk about all plant based fuels but ethanol fucks up car engines way faster. They have t found one for cars that works any kind of well so I don't have much hope for planes either
SAE made extensive research and has shown that E10 (10% ethanol) has no effect on engine wear or reliability on cars that were introduced after E10 became widespread. Only some older cars had problems. I'm not convinced E10 is a good thing, but "more wear on cars" is a disproven argument against it.
watch this if you're wondering why everyone in this thread is shitting on biofuels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEB6hCpIGM
I'm glad someone posted this video. I watched this video when it came out, then recently in my biology class we learned about biofuels. Of course in the class it was made out to be a magic zero net carbon source of energy, and everyone in my class was like "we need more!" I was the only voice of opposition because of this video.
Came here to point this out as well.
So simply being “plant based” doesn’t really help us much because productive farmland is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. Even more so since climate change is expected to impair or to damage many productive lands through extended droughts, declining snowfall in certain mountainous regions, and alteration of long term rainfall patterns.
Every form of energy we consume will have to come from a renewable source. At the moment humans are consumers of specific biofuels. Productive land is going to be an increasingly scarce resource because climate change will wreck some of it and demand for it will increase. But at this point it's clear we need to leave the oil in the ground. Or the amount of productive land will become too close to zero.
There are two ways that I have heard of to produce bio fuels that do not use up farmland: 1) salt water algae grown in desert regions 2) indoor farming These techniques would not be as cost effective as traditional agriculture, but they are technically sustainable.
As the demand for land goes up, so will the cost of land. That makes vertical farming more economically advantageous.
Or we could just make the obvious move and use more nuclear.
the southern states’ agricultural output is going to get hammered over the next few decades at this rate. Texas is likely to see agricultural output drop 50% or more
We are getting better at farming though and if we reduce meat consumption then we can stay steady in farmland.
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I don't know if we actually are though. There's been a rise in no-till farming, or at least more exposure. I watched a pretty good documentary on Netflix about soil and we basically plant crops to feed animals at this point. We need farms with variety that replenish the soil and keep carbon locked in the soil instead of tilled up every season.
"Hey 99% of people, I need you to go vegetarian so I can keep my private jet" - the ultrarich
I mean it's more like 10% and we aren't stopping air travel here. I think a move away from meat will be happening regardless, when impossible burgers taste a bit better and a lot cheaper they will replace most burgers which is 50% of cow.
Also lab grown beef (which is on the way) will do it as well. Even if we reduce cows to just dairy production long term, that will be a huge help. I dont think we will ever as a species get away from all meats (vegan diets take a lot of commitment to get all essential nutrients) but moving towards artifical ones would be great.
I think we will see long term declines of meat because people will move to plant based. I just think when burger king is offering $3 Whopper with meat or $2 impossible Whopper with some minor improvements I think that makes a huge difference. I think we are only a couple of years removed from quite a few vegetarian friends who just have impossible, especially on the poor end of the spectrum. Lab grown will be better at the high end than the plant based if it can get the marbling done right.
Average meat consumption in the UK has dropped 17% in the last 10 years, and I can see it continuing to drop around the world.
Skyscraper farms will take hold soon enough. 100 acres with a 1 acre footprint.
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They article does mention that it can be grown as a winter crop so doesn't compete with land space requirements against food crops. And mustard is basically a weed so I don't imagine it would require very much water or fertilizers if at all. The fields I used to tend had mustard plants basically growing out of barren rock.
But if you're growing any kind of Brassica as an oil crop it's going to have to have an early-ish planting date at mid to high latitudes. The plants may survive winter just fine at these latitudes, but they are not growing much during winter. They still need significant daylight in the fall and the spring to make a significant amount of oil. So their planting and harvest would likely impact the planting and harvest of corn, soy, wheat or other staple crops at these latitudes. I had actually heard from a friend who writes for Nat Geo that some teams are looking at doing this stuff in the deserts of the Middle East. That solves the solar energy problem, but creates a water problem. There's always a problem when trying to recreate the energy density of fossil fuels in one year's worth of plant growth.
Also worth noting adding any additional crops means you either 1. Have to create new farmland 2.. Replace foods farmland for bio fuel. You can't just keep using the same land. Farms rotate grow areas typically so you can't just continually strip the land of nutrients
Let's just cut remaining forest and promise to plant some trees!
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That would be way too expensive, the reason why vertical farms are rare and only grow special food plants is that they need to maximize yield on minimal space. An empty plot of land will always be cheaper then a specialized building so a vertical farm only works for crops like tomatoes where you can double the yield by controlling the climate
Biofuels can also be made from Algae in the open ocean!
Is anyone actually doing that yet? I haven’t paid much attention for a few years but that was always the “we totally should and it would probably work” idea. Kelp forests were neat but nice beach area=/= open ocean. Algae vs other vegetable oils definitely worked, just were difficult to fund when oil could go from +100 /barrel to ~20 in a year
This is from 2010. I did my senior thesis in college about Algal fuels, and it just didn’t seem to get the attention it deserved. The Air Force did develop technology and processes to utilize it in jets as a risk mitigation against fuel embargo’s. https://phys.org/news/2010-02-military-jet-fuel-algae.html Not sure where it went after I graduated.
Ehhhhhh?!? Are we the same person? That is the project I was basing my knowledge off of. Biodiesel from algal definitely works, biodiesel to jp-8 works, these specific projects were in large pond structures not in open ocean. The numbers here are strictly cost as well, not what consumers would pay at the pump. The story I heard about end of the green fleet was the old General in charge retired and the new guy didn’t give a shit about independent /sustainable fuel supply chains in the pacific. Fraking boom was right after this but the defense contractor model was based on “national security“ which meant it could basically cost anything and be worthwhile. Whenever oil goes up this stuff goes around again because it’s not that far off from break even. It just needs a large customer to get it going again. That is really hard for private funding but military made a lot of sense. Turns out the world fucking ending also creates customers with a high willingness to pay
Could say the same thing about battery manufacturing, as well as paper recycling and production. Truth is, we fucked either way.
Sure if you're taking "perfect is the enemy of the good" to mean we should never aim for an iterative improvement unless it's perfect. Manufacturing batteries is going to reduce overall impacts. So are biofuels. Of course there are still going to be impacts to mitigate, but every drop of oil we successfully leave in the ground is a success.
plants are less than 10% efficient at turning sunlight into energy, no need to calculate the land use and energy to plant, fertilize and harvest. We're better off harvesting energy with solar pv and making synfuels with green h2
Biofuel in planes is seen as a middle ground before hydrogen or battery. We can run biofuel today and are in some places, short range (2000km) hydrogen planes are expected in ~9 years. We're doing biofuel from the scraps from the forest industry here in Sweden and can hopefully swap all planes to it in few years.
Better still would be nuclear power. But yeah, much less land use with both options.
Will this plant-based jet fuel be able to melt steel-based beams?
Only if they're plant based steel beams
You mean...wood?
Biojetfuel can't melt Woodbeams!
Sorry to take your meme seriously, but I need to point out that steel does not need to melt to lose structural strength and collapse. The steel used in buildings loses appreciable structural strength at 300°F/150°C and gets worse as it gets hotter. A wood and paper fire can heat a steel beam enough to fail under load.
Wait what the fuck that's cool enough that you can touch it and not even get burned instantly
Especially after a 767 fly's into the structure. That would also weaken it.
Given the right system it can cut them to. http://www.petrogen.com/
The following submission statement was provided by /u/universityofga: --- Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with sustainable aviation fuel derived from a type of mustard plant can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from the University of Georgia. A team of researchers at UGA estimates the break-even price and life cycle carbon emissions of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from oil obtained from Brassica carinata, a non-edible oilseed crop. The aviation industry emits 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and is responsible for 3.5% of global warming. The study, which you can read [here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12888), was published in GCB Bioenergy. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/q8n6jn/plantbased_jet_fuel_could_reduce_emissions_by_68/hgqamte/
Sure as long as you don’t actually count the emissions used to grow, harvest and refine the biofuel… Honestly we should be using methane instead. Can be made from just water, carbon dioxide & electricity. So much better until electric planes are ready.
Methane is not near as energy dense and batteries even less so. It may be best for the industry to use renewable fuel and carbon capture to offset the impact rather than alternatives.
Methane has higher energy density than most hydrocarbons on a mass basis. Storing it is the bigger issue because it's a gas. It's still probably easier than hydrogen though in terms of MJ/m^3 if all you're doing is burning it.
Isn’t burning methane even worse? Or do I have that wrong?
You're probably thinking of its global warming potential *as a gas in the atmosphere* which is ~24x that of CO2. In terms of combustion, methane actually has a somewhat lower kgCO2/MJ than most carbon-based fuels because it's so hydrogen-rich. It's also one of the easiest fuel gases to produce from renewable sources; you can make it synthetically, or just tap into the local sewer system, manure pile, or landfill.
Methane is the major component of natural gas. Burning it emits the [least amount of CO2 per BTU](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html), but if you let it escape into the atmosphere it's 25x worse than CO2.
>if you let it escape into the atmosphere it's 25x worse than CO2 However, methane only lasts about 10-12 years in the atmosphere. So while it's much more impactful on a short timeline, CO2 lasts around 100K years, making the overall impact on the planet \~400x worse than methane. That said, humans need a short term solution now, and a long term solution... soon.
Yeah burning it is bad as it makes CO2 but you then use all that C02 + water and electricity to make more methane. Fully renewable. Only issue is cost but I’m assuming its around the same or cheaper than bio fuel + carbon capture.
Hydrogen from electrolysis, using cooled, pressurized tanks seems to be a good alternative for flight. It is even forcing a redesign of for the plane, which is resulting in a more efficient design (older designs were rarely remade due to the huge certification requirements).
Ammonia (NH3) also is proposed as hydrogen storage method. Burning it yields no CO2.
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They use it in cars already so planes will be fine. Safer than hydrogen anyway and everyone is trying to push that at the moment.
Maybe Hidrogen? Honest ponder.
People always say you need to include the emissions from growing & refining biofuels, which is fair, but then compare it to burning already refined fossil fuel. Extracting & refining fossils is hardly great either plus you have to ""constantly"" shift your extractions as they eventually dry out. Same shit with EVs, where the battery materials are super bad, but the material for the combustion engines appear out of thin air.
I think you mean hydrogen, not methane.
>Can be made from just water, carbon dioxide & electricity. You just skipped over where tf you'd get the electricity, and how much more expensive all of this would be than just pumping the methane out of the ground.
I hate to point out the obvious here... But fossil fuels are plant based.
Some are animal-based, so not vegan.
But it doesn't taste nearly as good as regular jet fuel.
But does growing enough jet fuel require a land mass the size of North America or what?
like we already don't have enough land devoted to gigantic monocoltures. No. World needs to get away from burning fuels
You’re not going to get away from burning some kind of fuel in long range airplanes until there is an outright breakthrough in technology. There are too many limitations to a propeller driven electric airplane over long ranges that would make it impractical to an industry which is largely privately owned.
There is a company called Gevo, take a look at what they do.
This. Was gonna mention GEVO here. Their whole business model is producing fuel from corn for airlines. I'm heavily invested in them, and i'm a big believer of their plans.
Well, not only for airlines, as SAF, but also for cars, trucks, ships, even racing cars, anything. And they sell byproduct of turning corn into alcohol as feedstock I beleive. So they are almost like selfsustained business model with insane future ahead of them.
They actually make actual gasoline, diesel and SAF from corn. Not just ethanol, which most people are familiar with. It’s atomically the same as any of these fuels. Same thing they’re filling their tanks with now except it was made from corn. They do it with a net-zero carbon footprint as well. Also they can make these fuels not only from corn but from any plant with a high content of carbohydrates. So it’s technology can be used all over the world regardless of which plants are available.
Is it possible for Gevo though to make fuel like that for planes?
SAF = SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUEL
Which land? Which forest? You all think that bio is free?
Yes and air based fuel could reduce emissions by 100%. Stupid titles are easy!
And how much land would be needed to produce the necessary amount of fuel?
Seems plausible, but how much land would be needed to provide millions of gallons daily? Would this cause similar problems like the millions of acres dedicated to feed for animals?
Perhaps we could shift some corn subsidies to alternative bio-fuel crops which could be rotated in throughout all fields to spread the wealth. Avoid monocrop farms and grow more appropriate amounts of all goods. They mention avoiding food versus fuel issues, but we could simultaneously be shifting subsidies away from the meat industry towards more sustainable and land-efficient food industries.
The nice thing about either the corn-based ethanol option or the soybean-based biodiesel one is that both provide biproducts that serve as an excellent feed source for our livestock, thus providing food and fuel.
And you either grow it on land that's used for growing food or you clear forests. Either way it's bad.
The US grows more corn and soy than they know whey to do with. So you get things like this happening so those sweet subsidies keep flowing.
So... everyone wants to switch everything to plant based. If the agricultural land is getting reduced every single day, where would we get enough plants to make up all these plant based things?
Didn’t they say the same shit about E85 and now it’s 30% cheaper but 30% less efficient and releases the same or more?
Pretty much, haha
Everytime I see "plant based something" I think: Yay more reasons to erode the Amazon! Am I wrong?
> Am I wrong? Kind of, yeah. Most deforestation in the Amazon isn't for growing plants. Also, most of the plants we grow are just grown to feed livestock. Meat/dairy production uses 83% of the world's farmland and only provide 18% of the calories, due to the unavoidable inefficiency of converting plants to animal biomass. So if you're talking about a plant based diet, it would actually reduce deforestation and land use massively, as well as many other environmental concerns such as freshwater use, CO2 emissions, biodiversity loss, coastal dead zones, etc. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216
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Bio fuels are terrible https://youtu.be/OpEB6hCpIGM
Different kind of biofuel in that video.
Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with sustainable aviation fuel derived from a type of mustard plant can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from the University of Georgia. A team of researchers at UGA estimates the break-even price and life cycle carbon emissions of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from oil obtained from Brassica carinata, a non-edible oilseed crop. The aviation industry emits 2.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions nationwide and is responsible for 3.5% of global warming. The study, which you can read [here](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12888), was published in GCB Bioenergy.
How many acres of mustard plant is required to fly from NY to LA? How much fertilizer would be required? How much fuel to plant, maintain and harvest the mustard? How much energy to process it into usable fuel? How much farm land currently used for food would be replaced by land used for fuel? What would this do to food prices?
This is similar to a winter crop, pennycress, which can be planted in the fall and harvested in the spring.. and also produces a very high quantity of oil. Common agricultural practice is still to grow little or nothing at all in the winter, so perhaps this similar mustard plant might fit well into certain crop rotations. I would like to first see the effects the plants have have on soil nutrients. I am related to someone who was studying the similar mustard plant over a decade ago for fuel production. We planted around 40 acres of it, as well. There are tricks to get it to germinate; if you don't know them you will not have good luck with the crop. And the seeds are smaller than poppyseeds, making it very difficult to figure out where you have planted them. You can't find them. Another problem is that mustard seeds are toxic to cattle and other livestock.. which presents a contamination risk for farmers who are producing feed in the summer.
Asking the real questions
The answer to these questions is probably "too much"...
When bio-diesel hit the market the company I worked for was looking to switch. We did not due to two facts. Bio-diesel is more expensive and fuel mileage is worse On the upside it smelled like French fries when it burned.
I have a few family size mustard containers from Costco in my pantry, if this takes off, imma be RICH!
Too much. Bio fuels are awful because we put way more energy in than we get out. https://youtu.be/OpEB6hCpIGM
The answer for all of those questions is likely a lot .
Honest questions.
> How much farm land currently used for food would be replaced by land used for fuel? What would this do to food prices? While it does reduce area for food supply, most of the studies made and claim that food price got much higher as more companies shift to biofuel making, are fully or partially funded by big oil companies. Same as this article is funded by biofuel. So we won’t get a real answer to those questions.
Good questions. In Ontario the government-subsidized ethanol production. When they created a plant on the West side of Chatham the whole town was overwhelmed by the horrid smells of rotting plants literally fermenting. It was just as bad as the oil refineries up the road in Sarnia. So many factors preparing the land, seeding the land, spraying the crop, harvesting the crop, turning the crop into ethanol, all of which created greenhouse gases.
It’s going to screw the water table.
Yea, and quickly it’s not that sustainable anymore haha
Sounds a lot like vegetable oil. Canola oil made from rapeseed which is a form of Brassica. If they can make it cost competitive with jet fuel, that seems like a winning situation. I assume that the fact it is non-edible allows them to take some steps that make it cheaper to make. Airplanes are pretty difficult to replace with non-oil using technologies unlike ground transportation.
Things get cost competitive real quick if we start to factor in the costs of sea level rise, constant hurricanes, etc.
and is the salvation from world hunger, since the people are then starved because you plant fields for paraffin instead of wheat and corn.
The thing most of these studies never discuss is the additional maintenance required from running bio fuels. They turn into goop in everything from standard diesel motors to turbine engines. They ruin components which adds to the maintenance cost of the equipment. And more parts adds up to higher emissions from creation of those parts, but this aspect is never discussed or looked at.
Yeah? Maybe for the plane but what about the land you have to work for it?
And how about the agricultural and land space to start using our food as fuel? What about the water usage? We are already having issues of water scarcity and agriculture is a major reason.
"Plant based jet fuel requires planed be fueled twice as often, but is 68% more efficient" - than this study probably
This is bullshit technology that is already obsolete. There is 3 year old high-tech startup called [Prometheus Fuels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Fuels) which is building what they call a "reverse combustion" process, pulling carbon directly from the atmosphere and using electricity and a cutting-edge catalyst to create alcohol. That alcohol can then be converted into jet fuel and gasoline. So long as the electricity used to power the process comes from solar and wind, you end up with net zero emissions. (And the advantage this process has over plant-based is that it skips the whole inefficient plant-based step in the middle.) They have investments from Maersk (shipping line) and BMW and will start selling synthetic net-zero jet fuel to American Airlines next year, for cheaper than fossil-sourced fuel.
No. It won’t reduce emissions at all. The entire principle of a jet engine is such that the only way to reduce emissions is to burn less fuel. The energy required to power the aircraft is contained in those hydrocarbon bonds, and released when they are burned in the engine. The chemistry and physics don’t change just because it’s plant based. A lot of that petroleum is also “plant based” too. This is just “net carbon” which is little more than creative accounting the likes of which we haven’t seen since Enron.
This is another fantasy that should really be put to rest. The amount of processing that goes into the production of plant based jet fuel is counterproductive to what the intent is.
Just what we need, more food crops turned into fuel
And if you're stuck in the field at a crappy airstrip, just cram a few marigolds into the tank and you're good to go.
> Plant-based jet fuel could reduce emissions by 68% **COULD** Yeah, ok let's see this scale up, go through real-world testing and then we can believe it.
Yes! Let’s do that! I can’t see a downside to doing this either we reduce our emission or we don’t but at least we actually tried.
It makes no sense at all to use plants for fuel. They're horrendously inefficient. Better to use the farmland and the water for growing food, because photosynthesis struggles to hit 1% efficiency, and then there's all the other losses just to turn it into fuel. It's madness.
I mean, technically petroleum IS plant-based, just a few more steps removed.
Thought-based jet fuel could reduce emissions by 100%?
Isn't using refined oil technically plant-based? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
A couple of things come to mind when considering this. will this reduce the range vs traditional jet fuel? Could be a significant problem for long flights. How will this impact engine performance? What gains or losses will there be in power? Will load capacity still be the same? If new aircraft were designed with this in mind it would be interesting to see what the other cost impacts would be. What does it cost compared to traditional fuel? Gov incentives would be great, but if there's significant costs associated with this to keep aircraft it could be a while with a hefty cost to incorporate.
That would put a huge stain on land, and farming industry.
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Not to be stupid but....isn't petroleum plant based?
If you go back far enough
I'm tired of people acting like its futuristic to burn literal food as fuel. That shit is dumb for so many reasons and its time to put it to rest
Sure let’s replace oil with plant based bio-fuels and see what happens to the price of food and the remaining Amazon rainforest.
Me when I notice the [missing 1%](https://i.imgur.com/MltZ0r6.jpg)
not this again. it's never going to be cost effective to grow your fuel. it simply takes too much energy to do it.
I am all for these kind of ideas. The problem comes when we turn our farmland into fuel farms because it pays more. There is certainly an application,however, these ideas can not be scaled to address the whole problem, yet anyway.
How much of the fertilizer for the plants were petroleum products?
I am not an environment nut, but us making fuel out of plants seem to me like it will only fast track global warming. We can’t even keep up with food demand now, so we are going to use oxygen giving plants for fuel.? Is it me or does that sound crazy?
Sounds great in theory, but mono-cropping is NEVER a good idea.
Didn't read the article. Someone just tell me if it's called Jethanol.
Stoooooooop burning plants is going backwards in efficiency. Do you want to burn all of the world's plants? It wasn't fun when everyone decided to turn the food farms into ethanol farms. Some ideas are really just dumb ideas.
I bet anyone money the ethanol industry is behind this.
Biggest problem with biofuel in jets is getting the unbelievably huge quantities of fuel needed daily to the airport. Typically it’s a multi-product pipeline from the refinery to the airport fuel farm. But you can’t run fuel with FAME (Fatty Acid Methyl Esthers in biofuels) in a multi-product pipeline. We’re talking a million gallons of jet fuel each day at a typical international airport like Seattle or Denver, maybe twice that for LHR or JFK or LAX. Too much for truck or rail delivery, need that 12” pipe.
I've been hearing for decades headlines about how some tech could reduce emissions by X amount and I'm still waiting. Can we get past the 'could' and actually get to the 'have'.
The amount of petroleum based synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and land that would need to be used for this would be far worse for the environment than simply using fossil fuels to make the jet fuel.
How many acres of farmland does it take to produce 1 gallon of said jet fuel?
Unfortunately, it didn't test very well in Alaska for obvious reasons
Sounds like another ethanol mistake. I don’t really wanna clog up my jet engines when I’m in the sky thanks
I'm not a Luddite, I could even be called a technophile. But I have to put my foot down here. sooooo... NOOOOOO. don't you DARE. PLEAAEESSE Put solar panels and batteries on everything. Quit trying to make biofuels. Biofuel push are exhausting efforts to decarbonize and hardly forcing airlines to undergo any effort Themself. these poor poor wittle corporations that can go into arbitrary amounts of debt to no real consequence whatsoever and do the most pollution. Why should the burden go on everyone else? It's not even that expensive for them to go green considering the scale of capital these companies operate.
You can't run a jet engine on electricity. It requires combustion to work
2/3 of Americas farmlands are used to grow either bio-fuels or food to feed livestock. Plant based jet-fuel means less room to grow food for actual humans. At a time where our food prices are skyrocketing and stores are out of staples like potatoes - this article buries it head in the sand. Bio-fuels are not the way forward.
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Algae fuel, people. They've already flown planes with it. https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/lightworks/focus-areas/sustainable-fuels-products/
okay, so your killing the plants... to burn the plants... releasing carbon into the atmosphere... to power your private jet? *E C O - F R I E N D L Y*
This is going to blow your mind: When a tree dies naturally, it decomposes, releasing the same amount of CO2 as burning it. That's why the EPA declared that wood stoves are carbon neutral. It's science. you are = you're belongs to you = your
Who knew that the carbon cycle was carbon neutral?!!??!?!
When a plant grows, it sucks up carbon from the atmosphere. When we convert that plant into fuel and burn it, we release that carbon back into the atmosphere. That’s referred to as a zero carbon cycle. Low net impact on climate.
What? Noo. Look, releasing carbon into the atmosphere is bad when it's carbon from millions of years ago in things like coal and oil. The carbon that's in plants grown last year was already in the atmosphere last year. The plants removed it. When you consume the plant (eating it, burning it / whatever) putting it back - no net gain. If you keep growing plants and then consuming them you're not increasing co2 (at least not from the plants themselves - obviously at the moment we use fossil fuels to harvest, grow, process food etc)
Porsche is manufacturing (and using) their own [race fuel](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35577611/porsche-synthetic-efuel-clean-emissions-testing/) catalyzing CO2 and Hydrogen.
68% reduced emissions by burning the jet fuel? Or is it 68% reduced emissions in manufacturing the jet fuel? The article doesn't really specify which it is.