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Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

Unread postby shortonoil » Mon 29 Jul 2019, 16:18:45

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]"Westerners with their belly full shouldn't point fingers at the Chinese." The dictator Xi Jinping

Maybe he knows? Maybe he doesn't? But it's too late now.


In China when a ruler fails (and not being able to feed his people is failing) they put his head on pole. He has no place to run too; unless he goes to Tibet, and moves in with a Yeti. The CCP is going to get a technical lesson on the working of the old Chinese Finger Trap. In the US we just ship them off to Martha's Vineyard. But if anyone should have been aware of the stupidity of basing your entire civilization on one depleting resource it should have been the Chinese. But apparently their war lords moved in, and their philosophers moved out.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

Unread postby Yoshua » Wed 31 Jul 2019, 16:37:55

Maybe the Communist Party just saw the population grow, despite the one child policy, and didn't know what do?

In the end they are just Mandarins trying to run a nation.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 4

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 09 Jul 2020, 10:21:38

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'A')t 147 bushels per acre and 2.8 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, corn wins on the biofuel front. But even if we turned every bushel of corn (2017 14.6 billion bu.) into fuel it would only replace 2.7 million barrels of gas per day of the 10 mbpd presently supplied.


Not even close, Ohio grows tons of sugar beets and they yield more than double the ethanol per acre than field corn produces. The only reason the USA focuses so much on Corn is federal subsidies organized by the Corn Growers Association lobbyists. Even sweet potatoes and white potatoes yield more ethanol per acre than maize.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 4

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Thu 09 Jul 2020, 11:00:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'A')t 147 bushels per acre and 2.8 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, corn wins on the biofuel front. But even if we turned every bushel of corn (2017 14.6 billion bu.) into fuel it would only replace 2.7 million barrels of gas per day of the 10 mbpd presently supplied.


Not even close, Ohio grows tons of sugar beets and they yield more than double the ethanol per acre than field corn produces. The only reason the USA focuses so much on Corn is federal subsidies organized by the Corn Growers Association lobbyists. Even sweet potatoes and white potatoes yield more ethanol per acre than maize.

If you get a good crop.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')o say the 2019 sugarbeet season has been rough is putting it mildly. Knutson said, "Yes, the struggles were real and took their toll on growers. No ton came through the gate that did not have sweat and blood involved. Many went above and beyond what was expected to get the crop in." Knutson added that during this growing season "we had snow, rain, frost, flooding and a freeze; about the only thing we didn't have was locusts."

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/a ... sugarbeets
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 4

Unread postby Subjectivist » Thu 09 Jul 2020, 22:34:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'A')t 147 bushels per acre and 2.8 gallons of ethanol per bushel of corn, corn wins on the biofuel front. But even if we turned every bushel of corn (2017 14.6 billion bu.) into fuel it would only replace 2.7 million barrels of gas per day of the 10 mbpd presently supplied.


Not even close, Ohio grows tons of sugar beets and they yield more than double the ethanol per acre than field corn produces. The only reason the USA focuses so much on Corn is federal subsidies organized by the Corn Growers Association lobbyists. Even sweet potatoes and white potatoes yield more ethanol per acre than maize.

If you get a good crop.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')o say the 2019 sugarbeet season has been rough is putting it mildly. Knutson said, "Yes, the struggles were real and took their toll on growers. No ton came through the gate that did not have sweat and blood involved. Many went above and beyond what was expected to get the crop in." Knutson added that during this growing season "we had snow, rain, frost, flooding and a freeze; about the only thing we didn't have was locusts."

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/a ... sugarbeets


Congratulations! That has to be one of the most blatent examples of cherry picking of all time!

Face facts, Sugar Beets along with potato, yam and cassava all of which happen to be root crops are far higher yield in terms of ethanol per acre ON AVERAGE than field corn ON AVERAGE. Picking a bad year or even a bad decade for one crop has a moderate impact on the average yield which has been growing for all regularly farmed crops for decades as agronomists and farmers have learned how to squeeze the most production possible out of a plot of land. Heck just in my lifetime (at 53) I can tell you the planting interval for seed corn in a field has dropped by about half since the 1970's because modern farmers pour on the chemical fertilizer needed to support high density planting patterns. When you combine breeding to increase cob length and therefore seeds per plant and plants per row/Acre of land the yield for field corn is somewhere between three and four times what it was in 1970. However unless we start substantially modifying the genes of maize we are up against a set of limits at this point. Failure to fertilize at the right time and protect the dense corn rows from pests with the modern pattern actually leads to reduced yields because fungus and insect damage spreads a heck of a lot easier in a dense pattern field of monocrop and without the fertilizer and petrochemicals that field suffers badly.

Less work has been done on making root crop planting of greater density because most root crops react differently to high fertilizer loads than grain crops which are all subspecies of grass. If you fertilize a root crop too much you get voids in the core of the tuber, something potato farmers learned the hard way decades ago. Consumers who get what looks like a great Baked Potato and then discover a discolored void space in the core leads to bad sales in the future. The potatoes are still perfectly healthy to eat, but they look unsightly to modern consumers who have certain expectations. However if the crop is being grown specifically as an energy crop visual appearance is totally irrelevant. This is one of the reasons sugar beets have such a high average yield, the consumer never sees the actual beets, just the refined sugar made from them. To process a sugar beet it is first washed and scoured to remove the dirt and debris stuck to the tuber, then it is sliced in wafer thin sections and sprayed with boiling water to wash out the sugar. If you are using it for an ethanol crop the boiled slices are then ground into paste, mixed with water and enzymes to break down the starches into glucose and fed to a batch of yeast to produce ethanol. That can be done with or without extracting the table sugar which just adds to the yeast feedstock if you are growing it as an energy crop or sold separately as a cash side line.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 10 Jul 2020, 00:46:42

That all looks nice on paper but the fact is that few sugar beets are being grown for ethanol production in the USA. I can't even find an accounting for sugar beets not grown for straight sugar production. That cherry was the first thing that popped up when I looked for 2019 production figures.
Edit to add:
Here is an industry paper on current trends. The words sugar beets apparently can't cross their lips.
https://ethanolrfa.org/wp-content/uploa ... utlook.pdf
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 10 Jul 2020, 15:35:26

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', 'T')hat all looks nice on paper but the fact is that few sugar beets are being grown for ethanol production in the USA. I can't even find an accounting for sugar beets not grown for straight sugar production. That cherry was the first thing that popped up when I looked for 2019 production figures.
Edit to add:
Here is an industry paper on current trends. The words sugar beets apparently can't cross their lips.
https://ethanolrfa.org/wp-content/uploa ... utlook.pdf


Gee lets see, do I grow the crop that produces the most ethanol, or do I go the crop with the biggest subsidies straight to me pocket? Gosh I will have to spend about 3.2 nanoseconds on that one as a corporate farmer.

Face it, the subsidies are not to produce ethanol specifically, they are to produce ethanol from corn as a sop to the Corn Growers Association and their powerful lobby in Washington D.C. In Brazil they use sugar cane for ethanol production and in France they use sugar beets because their federal policy in each is to produce the maximum ethanol yield practicable, not satisfy the corn growers association lobby.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/france-b ... KL8N29X3DA

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')ARIS, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Ethanol sales in France should continue to rise sharply this year after reaching a new record in 2019, mostly boosted by tax breaks and a wider availability in petrol stations, French ethanol producer group SNPAA said on Tuesday.

A decline in diesel demand and the growing use of so-called “flex-fuel” kits that allow cars to run on high-ethanol fuel have also contributed to an increase in its use, SNPAA Secretary General Sylvain Demoures told a news conference.

Consumption of ethanol, made mostly from sugar beet, should rise by some 1.3 million hectolitres in 2020 from an initial estimate of 11.3-11.5 million hectolitres last year and around 10 million in 2018, Demoures said.
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Re: Is EROEI Important Pt. 5

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 10 Jul 2020, 18:41:34

A USA farmer has to deal with the laws of the US if he wants to survive. Perhaps Sugar beets would be a better choice if different laws, laws, and regulations were in place but they are not, so for now it is a corn majority industry.
Actually as long as the fracking industry produces plenty of tight oil I think the whole ethanol industry and it's subsidies are a waste of time and the tax payers money.
I have already moved beyond fossil fueled cars in my future buying plans and all my replacement vehicles will be electric powered and charged by solar panels on my property.
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