Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/29/tequila_a_great_biofuel/
World needs needs Tequila power: report
Agave a better biofuel than sugar cane
Posted in Science, 29th July 2011 01:30 GMT
Agave produces a highly-efficient intoxicant, as anyone who’s woken up “Wasting Away in Margaritaville” can attest. According to a joint Sydney University / Oxford University study, the plant could also be a highly-efficient feedstock for biofuels.
It makes sense, really: the fermentation of sugars is what gives us the ability to forget the working week on the kind of Friday lunch that ends on Saturday, so a plant that produces good booze has to have the sugars to start with.
Agave’s trick is more than that, however: it’s an arid plant, which means it’s suitable for regions where food crops are at best marginal. Sydney University senior lecturer Daniel Tan told [1] the Sydney Morning Herald: “In terms of producing ethanol, agave is about the same as sugar cane – but the advantage over sugar cane is that they can survive in very dry areas on little water.”
By moving ethanol feedstock away from high-quality farmland, agave-driven ethanol production would therefore solve one of the conundrums of biofuels: the accusation that corn- or sugar-based ethanol production displaces food production.
Tan also says land-use changes driven by the biofuel industry can be counterproductive in CO2 terms, with crops displacement releasing more CO2 than is offset by biofuel production.
Study of a trial plantation near the regional Queensland town of Ayr has found that costs and profits should be similar to the sugar cane industry.
The report is published [2] in Energy and Environmental Sciences. ®