lylwik
You might want to see if you can grow sugar beets in your zone.
The energy requirement for converting sugar into ethanol is about half that for corn.
Sugar beet byproducts include beet pulp, which can be sold for animal feed, and molasses, which is also sold for animal feed or further processed to extract more sugar.
Sugar beets have gained a greater share of U.S. sugar production over the past decade, now accounting for 58.8 percent of the nation’s sugar output while sugarcane fell to 41.2 percent. Sugar producers and the members of farmer-owned cooperatives are increasingly interested in new technologies and product markets for their crops, including the growing ethanol market.
I would think that by burning any unused parts of the plant
the ashes could be used as fertilizer.
also this would avoid alot of methane release due to decomposition.
farmers to take ownership of their processing facilities
then you might want to look into these web sites.
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=2751 http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/energy.htm http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=5441 if you grow sugar beets or a small plant you should be able to
make ( M ) shaped structures to place every 10 - 20 feet in a row, you can then cover the plants with plastic sheeting , then place strips of wood or metal on top of the plastic sheeting where the ( V ) part of the ( M ) is to hold the sheeting down.
this should work , and there might be funding available to test it.
this should capture the evaporated water and direct it back onto the plants.
try a row.
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The "M" idea is a neat one, but I don't think it'd work well with tall plants like corn.
Also, about the bubble idea for trapping water....
I don't think you'll ever get down to the dew point temperature (where water will condense) with a heat trapping bubble. Maybe when the temp. got up to 120 F water would start condensing on the plastic, but this would be a whole different ecosystem for the plants and soils affected. Just think of the new pests and diseases that would opportunistically proliferate in that new "climate."
As temperatures cool during the night, some unique system might be utilized to enhance the capture of dew; but overall I think we need to avoid large, resource-intensive, "unnatural" systems.
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...btw: semicolons separate dependant and independant clauses within a sentence, not two complete "sentences."
I rarely know if I'm using it correctly, but that is the definition that I learned.
Spelling and punctuation make expression of ideas more universally understandable, but a more creative writing of the language can often help reveal the context and import of an idea.
...or words to that effect. So while I appreciate the effort and effect demonstrated by a well written post, I also appreciate the diversity that develops. It's all good, but each still is what it is.
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...bot....
Gosh, done on a large enough scale, using bubbles to trap transpired water might even start affecting the weather for areas "downwind" from the bubbled areas. Global dehumidification might result.
I still think we need to get more water up on the dry lands and desert margins, but I think there must be some way to use all these newly generated icebergs to help out with the re-greening of the lands.
Then we can start growing lots of biomass for CO2 sequestration, ethanol production, bio-oil production, bio-char production, food production, etc.
Speaking of biology, plants need oxygen too:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_oxygen_needed_for_photosynthesis"Plants of course do need some oxygen for the same reason that we do. They use oxygen in respiration - the process in which food is 'burned' to release energy. However photosynthesis produces more oxygen than the plant uses up in respiration, so the excess is removed from the plant into the atmosphere."
...and as an example of the cycles that plants go through--having evolved enmeshed in daily (and other) cycles--here is an abstract about the complexity of cycles in the "simplest" of organisms.
Metabolic rhythms of a diazotrophic cyanobacterium, cyanothece sp. strain atcc 51142, heterotrophically grown in continuous darkAerobic unicellular cyanobacteria temporally separate nitrogen fixation and photosynthetic activity to protect oxygen-sensitive nitrogenase. Diurnal metabolic oscillations in the unicellular diazotroph, Cyanothece sp. str. CGD occurred even when cells were grown under continuous dark conditions, as determined in this study. The metabolic processes of nitrogen fixation, respiration, carbohydrate storage, and nitrogen storage all remained highly synchronized during heterotrophic growth, despite the absence of light signals. This shows the importance of circadian regulation in this unicellular cyanobacterium. The nitrogenase complex is apparently tightly regulated at the transcriptional and post-translational levels. Carbohydrates accumulated during the subjective light phase were metabolized in a burst of respiration in the subjective dark phase. The utilization of carbohydrates occurred at the same time as the intense period of nitrogenase activity and downregulation of the capacity for photosynthetic oxygen evolution. Abundance of the D1 protein of photosystem II in Cyanothece sp. str. CGD remained relatively constant under continuous darkness, but the psbA transcript was more abundant in the subjective light phase. Accumulation of the psaAB gene products in photosystem I was highest in the subjective dark phase. The storage of fixed nitrogen as cyanophycin granules also exhibited periodic changes, with the amount of cyanophycin being greatest after the peak of nitrogenase activity. These results strongly implicate a circadian regulatory mechanism operating on these metabolic processes, independent of light cues, and stress the importance of circadian rhythms in global metabolic regulation in this unicellular cyanobacterium.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119036384/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 While I think the genetic modification of life--to create a cellulose digester/ethanol producer--is a very creative idea, I worry about the consequences for a world also dependant on cellulose for its integrity.
Cellulose digesters currently live in the microclimate of the gut of ruminants; hopefully they won't be modified to start living in room conditions.
As with plastic digesting bacteria, I wonder how they know when the material has been "trashed" and is "ready" to be digested?
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I think solar pyrolysis of cellulose might be a better route to pursue, over the production of cellulosic ethanol. This still leaves room for sugar-based ethanol, and is much more carbon negative, simple, and doesn't rely on genetic modification--and the ensueing "big-business" implementation models.
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