The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 412
As expected, Mr. Bryce foresees absolutely no circumstances in which the
“Dune Saga” scenario wouldn’t happen. He doesn’t consider that desalination
plants or technological advances could mitigate the problem. Nor does Bryce
consider that there is a fairly large variety of raw materials that could be used
instead of corn that require less water and/or provide much greater yields of
ethanol. Bryce, and people like him are completely wrong. Here are some facts
from POET ETHANOL, one of the largest producers of ethanol in America:
"The first plant that POET purchased took in 17 gallons of water per gallon of
ethanol in 1987. Today, POET averages less than 3 gallons of water, an 80
percent reduction from where it started. But we're not done yet. POET believes
that water is a precious resource and is committed to using as little of it as
possible in our ethanol production process. So we have set a goal...of decreasing the overall annual water intake at our plants 22% by targeting an average
usage rate of 2.33 gallons of water taken in per gallon of ethanol produced. This
will reduce our total annual water use by one billion gallons based on POET's
2009 production capacity of 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol."
"POET engineers have invented a new way for its facilities to use water which
results in a decreased intake with a reasonable economic payback. Named Total Water Recovery, it ensures that our facilities don't have to choose between
profit and planet. As of December 2011, 18 POET plants had installed Total
Water Recovery."
"Most of the lifecycle water used in ethanol production is for growing the feedstock. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, almost all of
that is from rainfall as less than 5 percent of corn used for ethanol production is
irrigated. Still, water requirements of the feedstock represent the vast majority
of the total lifecycle water use for ethanol production. POET is working with our
feedstock producers to understand the amount of irrigated corn coming into our
facilities in order to identify opportunities to collaborate for additional water conservation."
To support POET’s comments, consider these comments made in 2011 by Forrest Jehlik, Research Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory:
"The amount of water used to make ethanol has declined dramatically.
Today, producing one gallon of ethanol requires about 3.5 gallons of water. That’s a little more than it takes to process a gallon of gasoline. Much
of the criticism about ethanol’s water requirements stem from the need to
irrigate feedstock crops in drier climates. But most ethanol is produced
from rain-fed crops grown in the Midwest."
