How Grassoline Works

Could switch grass become the car fuel of the future? Learn more about alternative fuel in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how stuff works dot com? You're getting smarter? Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm a
staff writer here at how stuff works dot com and
with me today is my trustee editor, Chris Pallette. Chris

(00:21):
and I don't always see eye to eye on what
should or shouldn't go into the article, but I can
tell you one that we both agree on and find fascinating.
It's an article that I wrote and he edited called
can We Fuel Cars with Grass? So, Chris, why don't
you tell the folks about this article and what it says? Well, basically,
switch grass is one of the feedstocks for a bio

(00:43):
fuel and um. Of course that's something that pops up
in the news all the time. Now is uh ethanol
or biodiesel? UM. But instead of using corn, which is
something of course that that people and animals eat, or
sugarcane um, which is delicious, Oh yes, yes, absolutely um,

(01:04):
but very hard to find in the continental US, UM,
we can use switch grass, which is a great source
of cellulose, which is the substance. I believe you told
me that cell walls are made up of um. Basically,
what they do is they break it down and make
it into a fuel, just like you refine oil into gasoline,
except you can't can't find fossil fuels just anywhere where

(01:27):
you're you know, possibly approaching peak oil, as you mentioned
in another one of your articles. And um, so this
is something that that might be grown all over the
world and lots that aren't good enough to grow crops on,
it might be a really good solution. Well, not only that,
switch grass has the wonderful trait of being able to
improve soil where it grows. So, like you were saying,

(01:49):
it grows in these marginal scrub lands that can't be
used for farming anyway, and it actually improves the soil.
So you grow some switch grass in an area for
about a dozen years and next thing you know, presto chango.
That's arible farmland now. So it would definitely help Africa
out quite a bit, which is one of the regions
where it can grow wild too. So tell us what

(02:10):
switch grass is specifically, Well, switch grass is, as its
name suggests, a grass. Um. It's not particularly pleasant to
look at it's um. You know, I think some people
consider it invasive and more like a weed than anything else. Yes,
farmers especially, Yeah, and it's um. I don't know, can
I I didn't mean find this out to do animals

(02:31):
eat switch grass? Or is it just something that that's
irritating to h I think it's generally irritating. It's used
in some circumstances as an ornamental grass, some types are,
but I think ultimately it was clearly put on the
earth here to be used as a cellulistic ethanol. Well,
I suppose that's it's uh one interpretation of it. UM.

(02:51):
It'll be interesting to to see what happens with it
because UM right now, it's very expensive to refine switch
grass into so eulistic ethanol UM. And of course every
proponent of every different biofuel has a reason why we
should be using theirs UM. But one thing, Josh, that
I found out recently since we publish the article, is

(03:13):
that converting fields to be used for biofuels, for example,
to grow soy or corn or sugarcane or palm or
palm um, can actually be more trouble because in the
conversion process it can release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
I read an article in the New Scientists that said

(03:34):
ten thousand UH square meters of Brazilian rainforests. Converting that
over to UH grow biofuel stock crops um that would
actually release seven hundred thousand um ms of carbon dioxide,
which is amazing. You're have to use biofuels for years,
hundreds of years in some cases to recoup the carbon

(03:57):
debt that you do by converting it. So it's seems
like switch grass might be a great solution to that problem.
Switch grass is an excellent solution, but I don't think
it's the only solution. You know, you can't grow switch
grass in Indonesia. You can grow palm in Indonesia and
make oil from it. And sure, you know, there's a
carbon debt, and that is something clearly that we're trying
to get around, is to put any more carbon or

(04:19):
any other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. But I
think even more than, even maybe more important than than
climate change is uh war and regional autonomy. Imagine if
Indonesia didn't have to import any oil from anywhere else,
they they were energy self sufficient. Imagine if the US

(04:40):
were energy self sufficient? How much more peaceful would the
world be, do you think, Chris, if we all grew
our own um energy supply? That's true, you know it
makes regions more stable. Um. There are a fewer things
to u to have political conflicts over. Sure, And I'm
not pointing fingers, but war is our fought over oil,

(05:01):
oh sure, and all sorts of other resources. Well, thanks
for joining us this week. You can read can We
Fuel Cars with Grass? On how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, This
is how stuff works dot com. Let us know what
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com. M brought to you by the reinvented

(05:24):
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