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from the sugar-promotes-heart-disease dept.
Airlines are under pressure to reduce their carbon emissions, and are highly vulnerable to global oil price fluctuations. These challenges have spurred strong interest in biomass-derived jet fuels. Bio-jet fuel can be produced from various plant materials, including oil crops, sugar crops, starchy plants and lignocellulosic biomass, through various chemical and biological routes. However, the technologies to convert oil to jet fuel are at a more advanced stage of development and yield higher energy efficiency than other sources.
We are engineering sugarcane, the most productive plant in the world, to produce oil that can be turned into bio-jet fuel. In a recent study, we found that use of this engineered sugarcane could yield more than 2,500 liters of bio-jet fuel per acre of land. In simple terms, this means that a Boeing 747 could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on just 54 acres of land. Compared to two competing plant sources, soybeans and jatropha, lipidcane would produce about 15 and 13 times as much jet fuel per unit of land, respectively.
Maybe jet fuel is a better use of the world's sugar supply than eating it is...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:24AM (11 children)
This is a meaningless figure. Produced on 54 acres in what time? 10 hours? A year? A decade? A century?
Also, how many hours does a typical Boeing 747 fly per year? And what does that mean for the area of land needed to support one Boeing 747?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:47AM
Also, how does this compare to the current conversion rate of oil.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:54AM (6 children)
Sugar cane takes 12-16months before it is ready to be harvested.
so 16months of organic growth for 10hours of airtime
in 2015 there was 142,000 general flight hours. So that is 14,200 sugarcane plots needed -> 766800 acres dedicated to growing sugar cane for 16months for ONE year of general flight.
There is then the harvest time and fuel, processing time and fuel.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @01:35PM (4 children)
In the United States, 900,000 acres [statista.com] of land is planted with sugar cane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @02:35PM (3 children)
And honestly, using all that sugar for jet fuel instead of putting in into foods is probably the smarter play.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @02:46PM
The submitter said the same thing. Besides turning sugar into fuel, the story is about a genetically engineered sugar cane that contains much more lipids (oils) than regular sugar cane.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @03:36PM (1 child)
Do we really need more wide-bodied jets?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 22 2017, @08:05PM
Have you ever been in a plane? A bit more space is certainly welcome there.
What are you saying, they will cram more seats in? Damn.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:32AM
Throw in depletion of the land, and you have an environmental disaster in slow motion, just to fly rich bastards around.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by lx on Wednesday November 22 2017, @10:55AM (1 child)
"Sugarcane is harvested once per year. The plants are maintained for three years and will achieve three harvests before the field is replanted. "
54 acres for 10 hours of flight per year. Sounds horribly inefficient to me.
source [gardenguides.com]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday November 22 2017, @02:29PM
The bonus is that these plants suck up CO2, then release it when it's burned. Oil just releases it.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:04PM
My immediate guess was one harvest, but IANASCF.