Corn takes about 1.5 bushels/acre to produce one season crop of 100-120 bushels/acre, or 250-300 gal/acre in ethanol at a F&D rate of 2.5-3 gal/bushel.
Mustard takes 1 bushel/acre to produce 500 bushels/acre with a 40% oil extraction. If my math is correct - and I don't mind anyone's correcting me, a bushel is about 8 gallons and a 40% extraction rate = 3.2 gallons/bushel or about 1600 gallons of expressed oil per acre. Blend the oil with the ethanol from the F&D of the hulk and average the same 2.5 gallons/bushel as with corn and you'd have about 2300 gallons of fuel blend per acre or almost ten times that of the corn.
Also, mustard can have two production seasons per year when grown on America's farms, thus the yield disparity with corn is even greater.
NVDave said:"There’s a whole family of mustards we’ve not completely explored as oilseed feedstock."
Quite right. Who, how, and where the R&D is done will determine whether crude dependency in America is truly combatted. The field is wide open.
Your corn yield is low. This past year it was 151 bushels per acre.
Your mustard yield is WAY high. This past year it was 10 bushels per acre.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-01-11-2008.pdf
at a F&D rate of 2.5-3 gal/bushel
What is a F&D rate?