Sunflowers: A Fuel of the Future?

Written by Ariel Schwartz
Published on September 12th, 2008
6 Comments
Posted in Alternative Fuels

sunflower

Sunflowers are already used for oil production and to make biodiesel— now scientists want to look into their viability as ethanol producers in the state of Georgia and beyond.

Over the next few years, University of Georgia scholar Steve Knapp will study silverleaf and Algodones dune sunflowers, both of which  are woody-stemmed species that grow as tall as 21 feet. The species have the ability to produce significant amounts of cellulosic biomass, which can be converted into ethanol.

But both the silverleaf and Algodones dune sunflowers are wild species, and domestication takes time. Knapp plans to tackle the problem by studying each of the sunflower’s 40,000 to 50,000 genes to determine what they control in the plant. Obviously, this is an undertaking that could take years.

However, Knapp does have plentiful funding to get him started—he has received $1.2 million from the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense, $500,000 from seed companies, and $400,000 from the USDA Plant Genome program.

Whether or not the sunflowers emerges as a serious contender in the ethanol race remains to be seen, but its commercial use could easily provide some extra income to Georgia farmers.

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6 Responses to “Sunflowers: A Fuel of the Future?”

  1. Berkana Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 1:03 am

    No, sunflowers aren’t the fuel of the future—the sun is.

    Sunflowers aren’t anywhere near as efficient at photosynthesis as miscanthus grass, but miscanthus achieves an efficiency of 1% at converting solar energy into biomass. The nearest competitor to miscanthus is switchgrass:
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/miscanthus-field-trials.php

    Guess how much energy you get out of an acre of regular old 12-15% efficiency solar panels (not even the recent high efficiency ones) compared to an acre of switchgrass? This much:
    http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1454/70/

  2. emi420 Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Sunflowers are for people to eat, but not to make fuel. Berkana, you´re right, the sun maybe is.

  3. brutek Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    We need to change our economic policy to help farmers in a different way. We need to be growing food, not fuel. Fuel should come from non-land farming. When climate change occurs, we may see a wiping out of our land farming and if the remaining farmers are growing fuel for profit, they may not want to switch to food! In addition, we could be selling food overseas if our economic policy incentivized this activity! Help us, help the world!

  4. JAck Frapp Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 9:53 pm

    I dunno, all I know is oil prices are DROPPING at record pace yet PUMP PRICES keep going up. Why?

    Jiff
    http://www.anonymize.us.tc

  5. Jiff Mason Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 10:00 pm

    I love sun flowers. I knew there had to be a good use for them other than their seeds.

    Jiff
    http://www.anonymize.us.tc

  6. website design Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 12:21 am

    Now I’m hungry for sunflower seeds.