Switchgrass has become one of the buzzwords of the biofuel industry, especially in light of the growing food versus fuel debate.
Interest in the crop has been building since U.S. president George Bush mentioned it in his 2006 state of the union address as a potential feedstock for cutting edge ethanol production.
The perennial crop has received plenty of media attention as one of the answers to what some perceive as the ethanol industry’s biggest dilemma – that it takes food out of the mouths of the world’s poor.
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Switchgrass delivers a large amount of biomass that could be used as a primary feedstock ingredient in the cellulosic ethanol plants that are being built in North America.
The crop’s attraction is that it uses little water and fertilizer and can be grown on marginal land rather than prime farmland that has traditionally been used to produce food and feed crops.
But for all the hype surrounding switchgrass, there is little commercial production in North America.
“It’s not really a crop at this point,” said Richard Mallinson, engineering professor at the University of Oklahoma.
The university is participating in a research study involving the world’s largest commercial plot of switchgrass – at the Oklahoma Bioenergy
Center – where 1,000 acres of the crop were grown in 2008 to experiment with production, harvest, collection and transportation techniques.
The fields will provide material to the Abengoa Bioenergy cellulosic biorefinery in Hugoton, Kansas, which is expected to be operational in 2010, producing 49 million litres of cellulosic ethanol a year.
Another major U.S. research project recently wrapped up. The five-year study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln concluded switchgrass grown for biofuel production produces 540 percent more energy than is needed to grow, harvest and process it into ethanol.
The study also found that greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass were 94 percent lower than estimated greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline production.
“This clearly demonstrates that switchgrass is not only energy efficient but can be used in a renewable biofuel economy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance rural economies,” said Ken Vogel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist and one of the study’s authors.
Vogel and his colleagues believe perennial grasses, crop residue and forestry waste could create enough cellulosic ethanol to displace 30 percent of current U.S. petroleum consumption.
The U.S. renewable fuel standard calls for 61 billion litres of cellulosic biofuel by 2022, or 44 percent of the nation’s total biofuel mandate, a large portion of which is expected to be derived from switchgrass.
However, for now there is minimal commercial production of the crop, and development is even further behind in Canada. Don Knott, a farmer from Clinton, Ont., is believed to be the nation’s largest switchgrass farmer. He is planting 326 acres of the crop in 2008.
“I’m definitely one of the few growers.”
Knott said it takes three years to get a full crop. In the first year there is no production and the second year it yields about 40 percent of its potential.
This will be the third year of production for Knott. He cuts the crop in the fall, lets it lie in the field during winter and bales it in spring when it is dry.
He grinds the resulting material and processes it into small pellets that are sold to greenhouses in southern Ontario that burn the pellets in their furnaces.
Knott said the cellulosic ethanol industry may still be a few years away, but the existing bioheat market could easily consume “thousands and thousands” of acres of the crop if every greenhouse in Ontario switched to this form of fuel.
“We’re not even worried about cellulosic ethanol,” he said.
“That may be something that comes down the pike and may be viable, I don’t know. But right now the most efficient use of (switchgrass) is to burn it.”
