Plastics from Corn?!

[Lionheart]

I was watching a documentary tonight on History Channel. They were showing how we can now create plastic products (plastic materials) from Corn now. Everything from food containers to t-shirts...

Incredible.. And all raised in fields, which create oxygen when they are growing, and we do not have to drill for it in other countries.. Natural plantlife...


Wild...


Bill

[IVANOW]

I watched a program 2 nights ago where they were talking about experiments to make fuel from corn.

[Wing_Z]

Biofuels are unsustainable.
Growing corn to supply energy instead of food will simply mean more people will starve, because the price will go up accordingly.
This apparently has already started to happen.

[demorier]

I know someone has made packing foam from rice. I wouldn't recommend it but you can actually eat the stuff....I tried some of it once, just tastes like cooked rice.

[Cazzie]

But when we get through making all those other items from corn, what's gonna be left to make liquor? :friday:

Caz

[Moparmike]

Biofuels are unsustainable.
Growing corn to supply energy instead of food will simply mean more people will starve, because the price will go up accordingly.
This apparently has already started to happen.

I'll add a few words to your phrase Wing_Z,
Biofuels...in their current state...are unsustainable.

You are correct that corn as a source of ethanol fuel isn't the answer. It's rather clumsy and has poor finished product yield. But there are other methods being worked on now to use non-food organics as a source of alcohol fuel, such as switchgrass or pampas grass or corn fodder (the stalks leftover after the seed is harvested). We will see more non-petroleum based fuels in the future, and like everything else as the technology matures cost will come down and more people will benefit from it.


Back to the topic at hand of plastics developed from corn. It sure can be done. Heck, we've had plastic materials made from soybeans since at least the 1920s. They kinda fell out of favor since petro plastic was cheaper to produce but I suspect they'll make a comeback again.

[OBIO]

They make carpet out of corn. Not all carpet, but some of the eco-friendly stuff. Kind of neat idea.

OBIO

[Cratermaker]

I see corn prices have dropped almost 60% since May/June of last year. I also see that E85 is not worth it in a lot of markets now, compared to regular gasoline. In some places, it's costing more again. I'm sure the two are linked.

[Moparmike]

I see corn prices have dropped almost 60% since May/June of last year. I also see that E85 is not worth it in a lot of markets now, compared to regular gasoline. In some places, it's costing more again. I'm sure the two are linked.

Yup, here in the US there was this big push to produce more corn ethanol...and a big surge in interest in building ethanol plants. A lot of this came from a little craze about "sticking it to the (oil) man" that popped up a while back. In my area, this kinda made a large number of farm acres that would've been planted to other crops get stuck as corn ground. Due to some politics (part of it was the then-in-the-works energy bill, part of it was the big speculation in corn on the futures market that overinflated the prices, plus a few other things) a lot of these ethanol plants got put on hold due to the fact that they calculated their profitability from the pre-inflated prices and would've lost money big time if they would've had to purchase corn at the higher prices. Boom...all of a sudden we have this big corn surplus with no place to go except the usual markets so the price has started to come back down to the pre-E85 fervor levels.

Not sure how it has been worldwide though, I haven't been following the non-US tale of this fuel source lately.

Personally, I kinda like ethanol as a fuel and I hope we do see it continue to be developed. It's cleaner than petro-fuel and I've gotten good results using it in some of my vehicles...mainly older carbed engines, but a couple of new fuel-injected cars/trucks too. In particular, I've got an early 70s 340 Chrysler 10.5:1 compression engine that just loves running E85 after just minor carb and ignition tuning. Was planning on installing that engine into my 65 Valiant project until the E85 all but disappeared in North Dakota...I can still buy E85 in South Dakota, but I don't get down there as often as I used to anymore.

[stansdds]

Corn is great for food, not so great for fuel or plastic. Another reason for pushing corn as a fuel source was all the lobbying activity on Capitol Hill. As pointed out, there are grasses that are much better when it comes to producing alcohol fuels. Sugar cane is probably the best source, but it requires a warm climate.

As for cars running on alcohol, sure they can, but to be truly efficient they must be set up for alcohol. Alcohol deteriorates the common rubber fuel lines and gaskets found in most gasoline powered cars. You really need lines and gaskets designed for alcohol fuel. Alcohol is also very hygroscopic, it absorbs water from the atmosphere, so keeping alcohol water free can be a challenge.

Engines must also be set up to properly burn alcohol. Alcohol burns much cooler than gasoline. Moparmike's 1970 vintage 340 can make good use of alcohol because it has a high compression ratio and plenty of intake valve opening time to allow for lots of air and alcohol vapor to fill the cylinders. Low compression engines just can't develop the combustion pressure to burn alcohol efficiently. That's why flex fuel engines get lower gas mileage when running E85, it is a compromise engine built to run on gasoline, but can use E85 if required.

[JoeW]

Down here in Central Florida there are sugar cane fields all over just south of Lake Placid. They use it now for Sugar. But Big sugar is shutting down and a whole industry is going out the door.
Here in Lake placid there iare several springs that are natural and they are talking and signing contracts for building Alcohol plants for the cane. This going to happen ..... no doubt about it.

[Panther_99FS]

The downside is the amount of habitats (rainforests, etc) being cut down at an alarming rate to make room for industrial grade corn ....:kilroy::engel016::kilroy:

(Time to break out the risk-management calculator here)

[Chacha]

Can't we produce energy from our waste products... like left over foods .... and convert them to energy... say gas.... we placed all our waste to a huge dig up container and convert those waste products to some energy that we can use :focus:

(we are talking about corn... yeah.. throw the corn cobs in there too!)

Eli

[Brian_Gladden]

Can't we produce energy from our waste products... like left over foods .... and convert them to energy... say gas.... we placed all our waste to a huge dig up container and convert those waste products to some energy that we can use :focus:

(we are talking about corn... yeah.. throw the corn cobs in there too!)

Eli


Several of the landfills here in VT are being harnessed for energy They have hooked up Gas Turbine generators (Think big turboprop) and are running them off the methane released from the decaying garbage.



Brian

[Donnybrooke]

Can't we produce energy from our waste products... like left over foods .... and convert them to energy... say gas.... we placed all our waste to a huge dig up container and convert those waste products to some energy that we can use :focus:

(we are talking about corn... yeah.. throw the corn cobs in there too!)

Eli

Why! We've been doin' that fer years around here, son! Course, there was an outhouse on top of that... :toilet:

[Odie]

The downside is the amount of habitats (rainforests, etc) being cut down at an alarming rate to make room for industrial grade corn ....:kilroy::engel016::kilroy:

(Time to break out the risk-management calculator here)


Not only that, Mr. P, but the amount of farmland that is being turned into sub-divisions for houses. Since we moved up here from Texas, we've seen acres and acres of farmland slowly sold off and made into housing sub-divisions. What used to be working corn/soybean fields are now row after row of houses.

[Wing_Z]

All comes down to energy density. Gasoline carries more calories than just about anything else because it's had milennia to get squeeeezed and heated, just the right amount.
Biofuels just aren't in the same league. As P points out, you'd have to lose all the rainforests to plant enough to meet energy supply, and meantime the rest of the world will starve.
The energy map of the future is quite a short and easy one. It's just amazing that it's a technolgy hurdle in both cases that stubbornly refuses to be cracked.
First, the power has to come from hydrogen, of which there is a largely unlimited supply.
Technology hurdle: Commercial fusion reaction not yet available. (fission is not an option.)
Second, high-density portable storage to power the fleets of cars and ships and aircraft.
Technology hurdle: nobody's made the right battery yet.
I hope we see both sorted out before we break the planet.

[Moparmike]

Corn is great for food, not so great for fuel or plastic. Another reason for pushing corn as a fuel source was all the lobbying activity on Capitol Hill. As pointed out, there are grasses that are much better when it comes to producing alcohol fuels. Sugar cane is probably the best source, but it requires a warm climate.

As for cars running on alcohol, sure they can, but to be truly efficient they must be set up for alcohol. Alcohol deteriorates the common rubber fuel lines and gaskets found in most gasoline powered cars. You really need lines and gaskets designed for alcohol fuel. Alcohol is also very hygroscopic, it absorbs water from the atmosphere, so keeping alcohol water free can be a challenge.

Engines must also be set up to properly burn alcohol. Alcohol burns much cooler than gasoline. Moparmike's 1970 vintage 340 can make good use of alcohol because it has a high compression ratio and plenty of intake valve opening time to allow for lots of air and alcohol vapor to fill the cylinders. Low compression engines just can't develop the combustion pressure to burn alcohol efficiently. That's why flex fuel engines get lower gas mileage when running E85, it is a compromise engine built to run on gasoline, but can use E85 if required.

Yup, that 340 (and any of the older musclecar engines) is an excellent platform for an ethanol/methanol fuel platform...and the same principles can be applied to petro-fuel engines too. The higher compression improves the efficiency to work with the lower BTU/caloric output of the fuel. I still see it as a decent way to ease the transition from our current petro-fueled vehicles to whatever becomes "normal" in the future.

Hygroscopic...that is a problem for storage. But once in the fuel tank, this allows the water to be carried through the fuel system and removed as the engine runs instead of pooling in the tank until there is enough accumulated to cause problems. Same principle as using gas-line anti-freeze in a cold weather area in the winter time except it's at work all the time instead of just when you have a problem.

As for the ethanol attacking rubber fuel system components...that all depends on the materials used. E10 has been around for quite a few years now, E85 not quite as long but hearing the naysayers speak of fuel systems disintegrating from ethanol is mostly marketing propaganda loosely based on some accelerated lab studies. I had 3 vehicles (90 Nissan truck, 93 Ford Tempo, 80 Chrysler) running on an exclusive diet of E85 for four years and the fuel system hasn't fallen apart on any of em. That 80 has been in storage for 2 years now with a 1/2 tank of E85 in the system. Still fires up just fine once every couple months with no problems even though it's going on 6 years with nothing but 85% ethanol in it.

I still stand my my opinion that as we develop a better, cheaper, more readily available raw material source and process then ethanol is still a very good alternative fuel for the transition period.

Hydrogen (volatile as it is) would be another good alternative, as is methane...but the gaseous fuels have inherent safe storage problems that can be pretty dangerous in a motor vehicle. Again, another good place to concentrate improving the technology in coming years.

[Lionheart]

It seems that the documentary on Corn last night continued when I had thought it was over. They also use some corn for making medications, and they need to be exact types of corn, so they raise it in controlled chambers in huge caves in Indianna. (Yep, go figure).

They also talked on Hybrid corn, where they take a strain that grows super high (fast) and another that grows the biggest corn cob pods.. and mate them together creating a hybrid that is HUGE and has a fat crop of ears of corn. (That was pretty interesting, and they are trying to increase that output by another leap soon).

All the containers you see in Walmart for food in the produce and deli departments are mostly corn based plastics. I recognised a few of them.

Carpet! lol... amazing.. That is too cool.

If they could start using other types of plants for such things as fuel and plastics, then this would be better then going to foriegn 'middle east' countries for fuel when we would be sitting on it here all the time. Perhaps the day will come when we have an infinite resource, extremely inexpensive, that actually rebuilds the atmosphere instead of using it up and poluting it, and... 'inexpensively....!' which I think is one of the bottom lines..


By the way. I also hear people say how much it costs to make fuel from corn and other materials. But this is all experimental, like building 20 cars instead of building 20,000 cars. It costs to make oil too (crude oil, drilling it, pumping it from the ground, storage, shipping to another country, refinement, storage, shipping, dispersement to outlets, corporation costs and executive bonus' heh heh).


Just saying, everything costs. I am sure they can find an inexpensive way to make a raw material into a super fuel that is right here, right now.



Bill

[GT182]

I know someone has made packing foam from rice. I wouldn't recommend it but you can actually eat the stuff....I tried some of it once, just tastes like cooked rice.

We used rice for packing years ago when I was a kid... and you can buy it in the grocery store pre packaged. It's called Puffed Rice. You have to pack it in just to get full for breakfest. About 4 bowls of it usually fills ya up. ;)

[Helldiver]

Why is this so suprising? Plastics have been made from corn and soybeans since the 1930s. Henry Ford made a 1936 Ford, four door sedan all out of plastics made from corn and soybeans, including the upholstery.
However, making them out of metal was cheaper.