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Mar. 26, 2005 World petroleum consumption amounts to about 26,900,000,000 barrels a year. A barrel of petroleum (as of anything) is equal to 42 gallons, but yields only 19.5 gallons of gasoline when refined. So if all the petroleum consumed were used to produce gasoline and its by- products, it would mean that 12,500,000,000 barrels of gasoline were being used annually on a worldwide basis. Gasoline yields 111,500 British thermal units per gallon optimally, whereas ethyl alcohol yields only 75,600 British thermal units per gallon. This means that it takes 1.47 barrels of ethyl alcohol to produce the heat or energy that is produced by 1 barrel of gasoline. Multiplying the above supposed annual gasoline consumption by this factor, one finds it would take 18,400,000,000 barrels of alcohol to do the work done by 12,500,000,000 barrels of gasoline. In Louisana, which I have taken as an example merely because the figures on sugarcane and alcohol production were readily available, the annual sugarcane crop amounts to 53 metric tons per hectare and this crop yields 3500 liters of ethyl alcohol per hectare. A gallon is 3.785 liters, so 3500 liters per hectare amounts to about 925 gallons a hectare or 22 barrels a hectare, there being 259 hectares in a square mile. Thus, we see that the Lousiana sugarcane crop could produce about 5700 barrels of ethyl alcohol per square mile. To calculate the amount of land needed to grow enough sugarcane to produce the ethyl alcohol necessary to replace all the gasoline that could be derived from the annual world petroleum consumption, then, all we have to do is divide 18,400,000,000 by 5700, which comes to about 3,230,000 square miles, an area about the size of the entire US. World arable land amounts to about 12,000,000 square miles. The accepted meaning of the phrase 'arable land' is land immediately available for plowing, which is approximately the same as land already under cultivation. This choice of the word 'arable' is puzzling. The phrase 'potentially arable land' is used to include all land that could eventually be turned to agriculture, and may be 2 or 3 times as great in area as 'arable land'. But there are degrees of potentiality. Some lands, like those in Malawi, are practically ready to go. Others would require deforestation or mammoth irrigation projects. As it stands, 3,230,000 square miles could hardly be devoted to sugarcane for alcohol without putting a big dent in the world food supply, but in the future that may be the best solution to the energy crisis, which would require making more land arable. Brazil was the pioneer in growing sugar to supply alcohol for automobiles. To do this, bagasse (plant trash from sugar cane) is burnt to provide the energy to distill alcohol, there being an excess of energy, which is used to generate electricity. For some reason, though, perhaps because of pressure from petroleum suppliers, Brazil has been backpedaling a little in recent years. Now Brazil requires that gasohol contain only about 25% alcohol. It's been estimated that, at the present rate of consumption, world petroleum reserves will suffice for only about 50 years. Using E25 (gasohol with 25% alcohol) on a worldwide basis would increase world petroleum longevity from 50 years only to 67 years. That's not enough. E85 (gasohol with 85% alcohol) would increase longevity to 333 years, without considering factors like population growth. That would give a much more favorable breathing period during which to seek alternative energy sources. As I mentioned in my article, "Solar Gold: The Prodigal Sun', the Sun generates enough energy to power over 2 billion planets like Earth. It's a real tragedy to see all that energy being dissipated into outer space. Ultimately, harnessing solar energy on a massive scale would solve all the energy problems that this planet could ever have. In the meantime, alcohol from sugarcane seems to be a tolerable option. Incidentally, the scientific name of sugarcane is Saccharum officinarum, and it belongs to the family Poaceae, of the order Cyperales, of the class Liliopsida. Members of the family Poaceae, including bamboo, sugarcane and all the cereals, are considered kinds of grass. Liliopsida are also called monocotyledons or monocots, for short. They can almost always be distinguished from dicotyledons in that the veins in the leaves are more or less parallel, like grass, instead of forming a network, like maple or oak. Sugarcane probably originated in New Guinea. Processing cane to make sugar was developed in India around 500 BC. Arabs introduced sugar to the West. Sugar won't grow any farther north than the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, so any land devoted to sugarcane would have to be subtracted from the fertile humid tropics. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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