Ethanol is Not an Alternative Fuel

I think there are people trying to promote their programs and agendas as being the only way. It has to be simple to work. Anything will ferment we have an endless supply of solar energy. I think if you made the plant as the place you pump your ethanol, it would really reduce overhead. Every town has vacant heavy industrial compounds

[quote]rainjack wrote:
It’s ADM marm. A…D…M. Archer Daniels Midland.

But yes you are right. ethanol is just a welfare program IMO.

We would have more than enough natural gas available if idiot states like California and Florida would allow drilling and exploration off their coasts. China is about to start drilling in Cuban waters, and Mexico is about to go large in their end of the Gulf.

Maybe the enviro whackos could take extended vacations down in Mexico and Cuba thereby leaving us to be able to drill for the stuff ourselves.

Then again - that just makes too much sense. It will never fly.
[/quote]

NG is not the answer unfortunately.

Conservation is the only option.

One way or another we will end up conserving.

That is the beauty of capitalism.

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Last year the U.S. produced just under 4 billion gallons of ethanol, serving just 1 percent of U.S. fuel needs. Academics say production can?t go much higher.

?If we used all the corn produced in the United States to produce ethanol, it would provide only 7 percent of our total vehicle fuel use,? said Cornell agriculture professor David Pimental.

Here?s another sober way of looking at it: if every car in America was powered 100 percent by ethanol, it would take 97 per cent of U.S. soil to grow enough corn to support it.

And that’s not all. It turns out that it takes more energy to make ethanol than it could ever generate.

?About 30 percent more fossil energy is required to produce a gallon of ethanol than you actually get out in ethanol,? said Pimental.

?All in all, it?s in fact a very inefficient system of converting one kind of fossil energy into another kind of fossil energy,? said Patzek.

this is absolutely retarded. It assumes that our production of ethano will never get more efficient than it is now which is absolutel assinine.

Ethanol production has grown light years in terms of efficiency in the last few year and within the next 6-9 months there is going to be a new technology coming online that will revolutionize ethanol production even more. Watch

Ethanol is combustible, we can put it in our motors, there for it is in fact an alternative fuel.

There was a guy on CNBC that was selling portable Ethanol plants starting around $1300.00 and you can buy plans for $39.95. It would be an easier transition to go small rather than the old fashioned way of producing the product in one location and distributing it through out the country.

Locate your plant by a rail road to supply you with what ever you need for fodder, produce it and sell it from one location.

Ethanol as we know it (from Corn) uses more energy to create than we gain from burning it. To grow the corn takes fuel and energy, we have to make pesticides and fertilizers (both of which use petroleum as a base not to mention energy to create). We then need to power the farm equipment to grow the corn. We then need to power the plants to convert the corn to ethanol.

Ethanol from corn is less efficient than using straight petroleum, it actually uses more petroleum to make the ethanol than is saved by burning the ethanol. The reason companies use it is because people are stupid and it’s good marketing.

I’m not sure about what the Brazillians do, though I suspect they have people working the farms and less machinery and less unnatural fertilizer so this may infact save petroleum.

In the end we are going to have to use Nuclear, it is going to be our only option.

I agree with nuclear power being the only viable alternative.

Let’s face it - conservation only works on paper. No one wants to give up their lifestyle. That’s not just a US problem - it’s a human condition.

And as folks in the developing countries gain more wealth and start buying more stuff, that will negate anything saved by the evil americans’ conservation attempts.

If nuclear is okay with France - why can’t we use it? God - I sound like hspder wanting to be more Euro.

Wanna solve the energy problem? Whenever you see a enviro whacko - shoot him.

Bottom line for the Ludites among us:

We can not grow enough organic material to produce the gallons of ethanol needed period.

Ethanol is not an alternative fuel if it consumes more fossil fuel than it replaces.

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Bottom line for the Ludites among us:

We can not grow enough organic material to produce the gallons of ethanol needed period.

Ethanol is not an alternative fuel if it consumes more fossil fuel than it replaces.[/quote]

There have been competing studies. The latest indicate that the ratio of energy produced to energy consumed in producion is about 1.3:1. (With corn)

Not very efficient. There are other more efficient raw materials (sugar cane etc.)

The land space required to produce enough ethanol to displace gasoline would be up to 90% of our farm land.

We could either eat or drive. We cannot do both.

The best technology appears to be hydrogen. We need new infrastructure to make this work and we need to produce a lot more electricity to produce the hydrogen.

For this nukes appear to be the best option.

[quote]The Dmachine wrote:

I’m not sure about what the Brazillians do, though I suspect they have people working the farms and less machinery and less unnatural fertilizer so this may infact save petroleum.[/quote]

  1. They’re in Brazil, pretty much everything grows on its own down there while we insist(ed) on farming in and around ‘The Dust Bowl’.

  2. My understanding is that they use sugar cane to a much larger degree (nearly exclusively?). Not only is sugar cane more endogenous to that region than corn is to ours, but it is also one of the best solar energy-to-biomass converters on the planet. The differences vary widely, but sugar cane can be anywhere from 2-8% efficient whereas maize is .1-1%.

  3. (I’m not an economist, but…) Brazil’s economy is still climbing out of the toilet. Labor and manufacturing costs are still far below ours, to the point where labor to produce ethanol from cane, in combination with the above, is cheaper than oil. $100/mo. won’t draw too many workers in the US and $830/mo. makes EtOH unprofitable.

[quote]biltritewave wrote:
Ethanol production has grown light years in terms of efficiency in the last few year and within the next 6-9 months there is going to be a new technology coming online that will revolutionize ethanol production even more. Watch [/quote]

This is an excellent point, and one we need to consider when doing our static analysis based on current technologies.

There were only 66 years between the Wright’s first flight at Kitty Hawk and Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon. I’m sure if you asked someone at Kitty Hawk whether we’d get to the moon within a lifetime they would have looked at you as if you were crazed or had been reading too much H.G. Wells.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
biltritewave wrote:
Ethanol production has grown light years in terms of efficiency in the last few year and within the next 6-9 months there is going to be a new technology coming online that will revolutionize ethanol production even more. Watch

This is an excellent point, and one we need to consider when doing our static analysis based on current technologies.

There were only 66 years between the Wright’s first flight at Kitty Hawk and Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon. I’m sure if you asked someone at Kitty Hawk whether we’d get to the moon within a lifetime they would have looked at you as if you were crazed or had been reading too much H.G. Wells.[/quote]

I get what you guys are saying as I believe that the same static analysis is being done wrt nuclear power as well.

But as it stands now - the cost of producing 1 btu of ethanol is 1.3 btu’s of fossil/coal fuel.

If we were to bring nuclear power online first, I think you could see substantial savings in the cost, as well as a more efficient process of manufacturing ethanol.

I don’t think looking for alternative energy sources is being prioritized very well at the federal level.

Just my opinion.

Oh, I definitely think we should bring more nuclear plants online - but that won’t help cars much, or home heating. There are many technologies that should be explored - but we already know nuclear works very well for power generation, and produces 0 greenhouse-gas emissions.

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Oh, I definitely think we should bring more nuclear plants online - but that won’t help cars much, or home heating. There are many technologies that should be explored - but we already no nuclear works very well for power generation, and produces 0 greenhouse gas emissions.[/quote]

cars? try this: a household could have two cars - one electric, one gasoline. electric for in town, gasoline for long distances. Or you could have TWO electric cars and take a train.

heaters? electric heaters. firewood. 'nuff said.

We don’t NEED petrolium, we just THINK we do.

Hydrogen is made with natural gas.

Anyone want to tell me what 1 decatherm of NG is trading at?

This is not an option.

Nuclear + conservation = solution.

[quote]knewsom wrote:
BostonBarrister wrote:
Oh, I definitely think we should bring more nuclear plants online - but that won’t help cars much, or home heating. There are many technologies that should be explored - but we already no nuclear works very well for power generation, and produces 0 greenhouse gas emissions.

cars? try this: a household could have two cars - one electric, one gasoline. electric for in town, gasoline for long distances. Or you could have TWO electric cars and take a train.

heaters? electric heaters. firewood. 'nuff said.

We don’t NEED petrolium, we just THINK we do.[/quote]

it’s a 300 mile drive from my house to get to the nearest passenger train station. If I want to take a bus - it’s a 50 mile drive.

Kinda defeats the purpose of public transportation, no?

Hydrogen can be produced from water. I don’t know why you think that nat gas is required.

If we had a decent nuclear power grid - hydgrogen could be very cheaply produced by nuclear energy.

Conservation is not part of the equation. That is a pipe dream at best.

[quote]rainjack wrote:
Conservation is not part of the equation. That is a pipe dream at best. [/quote]

I’ve agreed with most of what you’ve said so far, but I think this comment is just ridiculous. Conservation has to be the biggest part of the equation, the pipe dream is thinking that ethanol/bio fuels are going to replace our dependence on petroleum any time soon.

I don’t understand the “if we don’t use it China will, so we might as well burn it up in our SUVs and maintain our lifestyle” approach, anyway.

Let?s say we could displace 10% of our demand. Prices on oil would plummet. We need an approach to control that market so the Middle East doesn?t

[quote]rainjack wrote:
Hydrogen can be produced from water. I don’t know why you think that nat gas is required.

If we had a decent nuclear power grid - hydgrogen could be very cheaply produced by nuclear energy.

Conservation is not part of the equation. That is a pipe dream at best. [/quote]

The capitalist structure will force us to conserve one way or another…think about it.

Hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas via steam methane reformation (SMR). Electrolysis costs at least 3 times as much as SMR.

Hydrogen will never happen.

Nuclear plants are very expensive to bring online so the depreciation of that fixed asset greatly increases the true cost of electricity production from a nuclear power plant.