Welcome back everyone to my last blog about biorenewable resources! It’s been a long journey but we are in the home stretch. For this last blog, the topic was Bioenergy, but I want to focus on a specific type of bioenergy, which is biofuel. First, we should get out of the way what bioenergy is before diving into what biofuels are. Bioenergy is using biomass materials like corn to make things like electricity, heat, and transportation fuels. This bioenergy includes biopower and biofuels. As stated before, we will be discussing biofuel. Traditionally, we use things like petroleum or crude oil to fuel various things we use. like coal and natural gas, petroleum is made from the remains of dead organisms, which were formed long ago. But because these remains take a large amount of time to make, we have a limited supply. So what can we do to combat the issue of running out of these remains? We could produce and make biofuels, which we could produce more in our lifetimes and not worry much about ever running out. But what are biofuels? Biofuels are a type of fuel derived from biomass. This fuel can be used as a replacement for petroleum, reduce reliance on other countries’ transportation fuels or energy, and reduce GHG emissions. An interesting statistic from Energy Information Explained shows how much we biofuels we consumed, produced and imported in the US. In particular, how much ethanol, which is made from corn, and how much biodiesel we consumed, produced and imported. These stats prove one of the benefits of using biofuels in the United States could reduce our dependence on other countries’ production of oil and petroleum.

(1)

One of the largest out of the various biofuels is corn-based ethanol. But what would the large production of corn-based fuel do to the use of corn for other products? The production of corn-based fuel is capped off at around 15 billion gallons. This may still seem like a lot but this is a well thought through limit so that the production of corn-based fuel doesn’t not hurt the environment and the production of other products that use corn. Also, there are biofuels made from different types of biomass, which could help to reduce the large use of corn-based fuel. These include biodiesel made from things like soybeans and canola, advanced biofuels made from algae and waste crops, and cellulosic fuels made from cellulose. The image bellow is how much reduction of GHG (greenhouse gasses) the types of biofuels can have.

(2)

All in all, crude oil and petroleum are rising in price day by day and people are starting to switch to the use of biofuels so that they can save money. Currently prices of biofuels and crude oil are around the same. But the overall future benefit of using biofuels instead of things like crude oil and petroleum could be cheaper overtime because they could both help your engine run longer and better, which reduces the amount of money spent on repairs.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey and I hope all of you have learned something new.

Sources

 (1): https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard-program/overview-renewable-fuel-standard#pathways

(2): https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/#renewable

Welcome back to my fourth blog about my class, Biorenewable resources. For this essay, I will be focusing on products derived from herbaceous biomass, or in other words, products made from plants that have a non-woody stem. I will first discuss how to extract sugar from starchy and lignocellulosic biomass, then converting those sugars into desired products, and finally some of the products we could make.

Before We get into what bioproducts we could make form the sugar, we need to know how to first extract the sugar. The sugar we use to make bioproducts first comes from various plant material, which includes things like sugarcane, corn kernels, and corn stover. Let’s take sugarcane for example. Sugarcane is first cut into several pieces, the leaves, tops, and stalk. The tops and leaves are burned or left in the field, while the stalk is brought to a sugar mill. IN the sugar mill, the stalk is cut and then washed in hot water to produce a sugar-rich juice. This juice is filtered and then evaporated until sugar and molasses are leftover. The sugar and molasses can finally be converted into things like biofuel or bioproducts. Below is a chart of this process.

(Flowchart)

Now that we got the sugar from the herbaceous biomass, we could use it to make our desired biofuels or bioproducts. For this writing, we are going to use the process of fermentation as an example of how to get our desired biofuels and bioproducts from Herbaceous biomass. Fermentation is the process in which substances like sugar are chemically broken down by bacteria, yeasts, or other microorganisms. Let’s see the process of fermentation in producing ethanol. In ethanol fermentation, we add yeast to corn mash so that the corn mash could serve as a source of glucose. We also give is things like nutrients, oxygen, and proper PH and temperature. This produces ethanol and when the ethanol reaches a certain concentration, fermentation stops. Then the ethanol goes through a process called distillation, where the solution is heated to different temperatures to separate the ethanol. The first distillation yields us 55% ethanol and the second distillation yields us around 95% ethanol (statistic from Video Tour of an Ethanol Plant) Then the ethanol is pressurized through a molecular sieve where water is taken out from the ethanol. Now we finally have a biofuel. The image below is the process of this fermentation.

(Flowchart)

Now that we know we could make some products form the sugar in herbaceous biomass, we could explore some other products that could be made with these processes. For example, biodegradable plastic. These plastics could be degraded naturally with the help of things like natural bacteria and fungi. These plastics might seem like an obvious solution to plastic pollution but actually might not be as good as they sound. The reason is that some of these biodegradable bags don’t even degrade well and take a long time to decompose. This area is still in the research phase and could possibly be a solution to lower plastic pollution.

To sum up this blog post, lots of the products that we use every day are made from herbaceous biomass. For example, ethanol. But using these processes to make bioproducts like biodegradable bags might be a bright idea, in that it may help us solve some of our environmental problems, but still needs some more research.

Works cited:

Sugarcane Flowchart:

https://www.intechopen.com/books/biofuel-s-engineering-process-technology/advances-in-the-development-of-bioethanol-a-review/

Ethanol Video:

Ethanol Flowchart:

How is Ethanol Made?

Biodegradable bags:

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/03/why-biodegradable-polymers-don-t-solve-the-plastic-problem/

Welcome back everyone to my third blog! Unit three in my Biorenewable Energy class at the University of Minnesota has been such an interesting unit so far. In this unit, I dove deep into understanding what wood is made of, how it’s adjusted for various uses, and how the wood absorbs and releases carbon. One thing that caught my attention in this unit was the use of wood for construction. So for this blog, I plan to discuss the good, the bad, and the neutral parts of using wood for construction.

The Good:

To start this section, let’s have a scenario of you cutting timber to make a frame for your garden. After you are down cutting all the timber, you collect the sawdust and small pieces and throw it all away without thinking twice about it. However, companies have found a way to use the extra scraps and sawdust to make wood products that are more valuable and useful. This is known as engineered wood. There are many different types of engineered wood and they are all used for various things. For instance, cross-laminated timber (CLT), which a type of engineered wood made from gluing solid-sawn lumber together. This type of wood in construction is predicted to be the solution for large amounts of CO2 emissions because wood can store lots of carbon, unlike concrete and steel. One cubic meter of wood can store one ton of carbon, which is based source (1). An acre of forest is expected to store .5 to 5 tons of carbon, which is based on source (2). CLT is already being used to build large buildings. For example, the Mjøstårnet building is the largest building made out of CLT. More are more builders are thinking about using CLT to build buildings because it’s more environmentally friendly than using steel and concrete and is easy to use to construct buildings. To sum up this section, some good parts of using wood for construction is that it’s more environmentally friendly than concrete and steel and makes use of wood scraps.

*Image of the tallest building made from CLT based on source (3)

The Bad:

Though wood used for the construction of big buildings sounds like a good idea, we have taken into account the dimensional changes in the wood and the drying process. The wood used for construction needs to be dried properly. If the wood isn’t dried properly, it could be subject to changes in dimensional sizes. The wood could shrink or swell in all directions based on the environment it is in, which could cause problems in the future. For example, if we take wood from a humid place and put it in a less humid place, the wood will result in a loos of moister and the wood will shrink. Another negative thing about the use of wood is drying costs. Drying wood is expensive and if most of the building is made out of wood, the cost of drying the wood will be high. To summarize this section, some bad things come with constructing a building primarily out of wood, which includes dimensional changes and the cost of drying.

*Image of dimensional changes in wood outside based on source (4)

The Neutral:

The use of primarily wood for constructing buildings to reduce carbon levels is a great idea. Wood is said to hold the carbon for 100-200 years if it’s used for construction, which is based on (lesson 18) source (5). Where does the carbon go after the 100-200 years you may ask? After those years have passed, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere over a varying period. If we keep on using wood for construction, we could take back that carbon and other carbon in the atmosphere to store it in wood. This process of releasing carbon and then storing it is known as carbon neutrality. To some up this section, wood for construction could be used to store carbon for a while but eventually, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

*Image of carbon cycle from source (6)

Summary:

The use of primarily wood for construction will be more environmentally friendly than using steel or concrete. But we also need to take into account the varying dimensions of wood based on its environment and the cost of drying it. Finally, wood is a great way of storing carbon for a long period and if we use more and more of it, we will be able to better balance our carbon footprint on the planet.

Sources:

• Source 1: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers?language=en

• Source 2: http://www.sicirec.org/definitions/carbon-capture

• Source 3: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/19/mjostarne-worlds-tallest-timber-tower-voll-arkitekter-norway/

• Source 4: http://ccspainting.com/deck-refinished-signs/

• Sources 5: Lesson 18 “Is Wood Good?”, BBE 1002, UMN

• Source 6: https://foresteurope.org/sfm-criteria-indicators2/#1472654622790-134bceef-8021a184-c9ce5d80-64e0

Hello again everyone! In the last blog, I discussed the various types of resources, our consumption of those resources, and the impact of the extraction of those resources. This time I will discuss plant growth, the different growing methods, and conventional farming.

As discussed in the last blog, biorenewable resources are resources deriving from a living or recently living thing. For example, plants. But before discussing what plants could be used for, we need to acknowledge the process of how these plants become biomass, which is another word for a biorenewable resource. This process is known as photosynthesis and is what makes biorenewable resources renewable. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use the sun’s energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into biomass. This prosses is particularly special because, through the process of photosynthesis, biomass can be made with very little energy input. The process of photosynthesis also benefits us by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So photosynthesis is the process of what makes the plant renewable but how does the plant grow? For a plant to grow all of its cells and structures, it needs glucose, which is made during photosynthesis. Glucose molecules are like building blocks and could be moved around to make bigger molecules and then those molecules could be arranged to make cells. From those cells, bigger structures could be made and then all of those structures could be put together to make a plat. But why does this growth pattern matter? These growth patterns determine what we could make of a plat. For example, furniture from the tree could be made from a tree structure named xylem but not from the bark. This whole process of how a plant grows is what classifies a plant as a biorenewable resource.

Now that we know how a plant grows, we could move on to how do people produce them. For this part, I will be discussing some types of production of trees. Our woody biorenwable resources come from three main types of foresty, which are natural forests, plantation forests, and short-rotation coppicing. The first is the natural forest system. This system focuses on natural regeneration and is harvested between 40-80 years. 90% of forests in the US are natural forests (Statistic from Woody Biomass Production Video). Next are plantation forests, which are planted and managed to maximize the production of wood. Here, harvesting occurs after about 25-40 years (Statistic from Woody Biomass Production Video). Though plantation forests only make up 3% of forests worldwide, 27% of the total wood harvested in the world come from these forests, which shows how significant they are (Shmulsky & Jones, 2011). Lastly, comes short-rotation cropping, which is where trees are selectively bred to maximize the growth rate and be able to harvest in a short period of time.

Now that we know a little bit about some types of growing methods, we could finish off this blog discussing conventional agriculture. Conventional agriculture is industrial farming that uses things like pesticides and GMOs. This type of farming could be done to try to increase the gains and lower the cost of farming. Though this may seem good, conventional farming negatively impacts the environment by doing things like taking away organic material and natural organisms through pesticide use. Another thing to note is the high use of fossil fuels for the production of fertilizers, running tractors, and irrigation. Though these impacts might seem bad, we can’t just stop agriculture because we need to constantly provide food, clothes, and energy to all the people on earth and dealing with the increasing population. So now through my course and through this blog, we both know a little more about our biorenewable resources. 

Works Cited:

1. Woody Biomass Production Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=229&v=7LiviVO2NSA
2. Forest Products and Wood Science An Introduction, Sixth Edition by Rubin Shmulsky & P. David Jones 

This blog Is for the general public.

         Before I started my Biorenewable course, I knew little to nothing about the different types of resources, our consumption of those resources, and the impact of the extraction and consumption of those resources. There are two main types of resources. One type is non-renewable resources which regenerate slow or don’t regenerate at all. An example of this is metallic minerals like copper or iron. The other main type is renewable resources which are resources that can regenerate quickly and could be used efficiently to not run out in the future. For example, solar energy. There is also a subset of renewable resources called Biorenewable resources, which are resources that comes from living things. An example of this is wool. All these resources are used daily by us but that raises a question, will we run out? This question has been asked for a long time. In 1980, we predicted that we will only have 27 years left of oil. Right now it’s 2019 and oil doesn’t seem to have run out yet, why is that? Over time, our technology and changing economics help us gain more access to the oil that is deeper in the ground and in 2010, we predicted we have 40 more years left, as mentioned in the book “The Irresponsible pursuit of Paradise”. So now we know the different types of resources and how they are used but how about the impact of the extraction and use of those resources? Before you use a product, the resources to make that product need to be extracted, processed, manufactured into the product, and then the product needs to be distributed. Then after use, it’s either fixed, disposed, or recycled. In each of these stages, there is an environmental impact. These impacts may include disruption of land by the means of mining or tilling fields, water quality impacts, and air quality impacts. Let’s take a deeper look at the impact of air quality. In pretty much all of these process stated above, carbon dioxide is released. Carbon dioxide is natural and is part of the carbon cycle, but through these processes, we contribute more than the natural amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide has risen around 30% over the past 100 years and this could change the climate. This statistic was from the ‘A year in the Life of Earth’s CO2’ Video. This carbon travels to the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases. All these greenhouse gases create a blanket in the atmosphere and the more amount of greenhouse gases released like carbon, the thicker the blanket. This means more heat is trapped in our atmosphere and the earth heats up causing global warming. Global warming could have many different negative impacts. Some impacts are a rise in sea level, stronger hurricanes, and the arctic ocean is expected to be ice-free by 2050, which was from the Nasa Climate Change Page. So how can we avoid global warming? We could do things like walk or take public transportation to work, eat less meat, and turn off electronics when not in use. Companies have also been using an assessment called the Life-Cycle Assessment or LCA that help them see the impact on the environment when making their product. With this information, they could take a different approach to make their product so it could suit the environment better. To conclude, our environment is changing rapidly and we should do all we can to try to protect it for our future generations through various things like educating others about the impacts of the large dispersion of carbon and doing better ourselves.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton