Sugar Beets = Biofuel?

It won't work anywhere if there is no money in it, which there will not be at the present time considering the current oil prices.
 
I think it would, beets produce more gallons of ethanol per acre, but they seem to be more focusing on cellulosic ethanol at the present time!
 
Up here in the Dakota's trying to get use of the by product of producing corn, which would be cellulose ethanol they are working on. I always wondered why they wouldn't use sorghum, as it has a high sucrose content. but I also believe that the sugar beet would be great to use also. A lot more ethanol per unit of raw material.
 
Big issue with making eth from other than corn is to develop the right enzymes to produce it economically.
 
I believe that ethanol from corn is made by converting the starch to dextrose, then ethanol. I would think beets would skip a step, and also thing that corn is selected because of the infrastructure in place to produce it.
 
Correct, beet sugar doesn't need the conversion step.

However, beets are more of a specialty crop, only growing and easily harvested in select small areas of the country.

I'm all for using them where it works, but it is a smaller deal.

Paul
 
This morning the EPA is importing biodiesel from Argentina, while they still don't have the RFV set for 2014, much less 2015 for domestic production.

Sorta like, saying we need to shut down American oil wells, but we need to import crude oil only from Vensiualia, Iran, and Russia.

As anti American and as un eccinomical as you can get.

I'm grumpy today, I best go crawl in the shop for a while.

Paul
 

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