Eli5 Could rice be used to create ethanol like corn?

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Or is it not worth it since rice is simply best used as a food source?

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16 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You could, but rather than have our fuel compete with our food sources, there are better solutions. Switchgrass, for example, has a relatively high yield and is much easier to grow than Ethanol but in the US where I’m from, the government would rather subsidize farmers to grow something inefficient instead.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Almost every culture which cultivated any food containing majority carbohydrates has made booze with it

Anonymous 0 Comments

Steel mill exhaust can be turned into ethanol https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/27/lanzatech-turns-carbon-waste-into-ethanol-to-one-day-power-planes-cars.html [Chuck Grassley hates this!]

Anonymous 0 Comments

Theoretically, but rice has a low sucrose concentration compared to corn and sugarcane and sorghum. Rice also requires a lot (and I mean a lot a lot) of water. It just doesn’t make sense.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just wait until you learn what rice did for the Great Wall of China.

That stuff is kind of miraculous.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Rice has been used for a long time to produce ethanol. It’s called [saké](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake).