U.S. residents consume roughly 10 million barrels per day of gasoline for transp
ID: 1710177 • Letter: U
Question
U.S. residents consume roughly 10 million barrels per day of gasoline for transportation fuel. Identify the ethanol yields projected to be attainable from advanced fermentation technology (gallons per acre, cite your source), and calculate how many acres need to be devoted to cellulosic biomass production to supply 10% of the miles traveled on gasoline using formation ethanol as the automotive fuel? Note that ethanol provides roughly 2/3 the miles per gallon attainable from gasoline. Compare your answer with the total area of France and of the state of California. Comment on how practical this is.
Explanation / Answer
The consumption of 10% of 10 million barrels per day is 365x106 barrels per year, which is 1.50x1010 gallons per year at 42 gallons per barrel. Since ethanol has only 2/3 the energy content per gallon of gasoline, we would have to supply 2.24x1010 gal/yr of ethanol to provide the same amount of mileage
905 gallons per acre for cellulosic ethanol using advanced fermentation technology. At this rate we would need (2.24x1010 gal/yr) / (905 gallons/yr/acre) = 2.48x107 acres = 3.87x104 mi2, assuming one crop per year. (There are 640 acres in one square mile.)
The land areas of California and France are 155,973 mi2 and 210,669 mi2 respectively. The area required for production of cellulosic ethanol to supply 10% of the US gasoline demand would require 24.8% of the area of California or 18.4% of the area of France.
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