Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: G-MAN
Originally Posted By: Astro14
I am not certain that you're thumbing your nose at anything...it takes nearly a gallon of diesel to make two gallons of ethanol...diesel that had to come from the oil that is both domestic and imported...
You would use the same proportion of domestic/import if you drove gasoline or diesel...but with E85, you will also manage to remove quite a bit of corn from the food supply, raising food prices...
You need to do your homework on domestic ethanol production. What you've written here is utter nonsense.
I've done my homework - simple thermodynamics: have to convert petro to fertilizer, have to fuel the tractor, the combine, the truck to transport the corn and then make the electricity to run the plant to convert it. Lots of energy goes into the production of ethanol from corn.
Net energy gain, when all the factors are added up: pretty close to zero...
It would have been equally effective, not to mention simpler, to just run a diesel vehicle, and left the land in food production. All that's been accomplished is converting one fuel to another, with no real gain in energy...
You're not denying that using food for fuel reduces the food supply, are you? Or that land used for ethanol production isn't taken out of food production? Simple math again...finite number of arable acres...
I do have one question, though, why is a thread on alternative fuel in the passenger car motor oil section?
If you did your homework and analyzed the thermodynamics, you would find from your literature search and compilation by NREL that the claims are widely varied. My read on this is that it is according to who the funding source is...
The well to wheels efficiency has been hashed through MANY times.
Need to quit the blatant political commentary and keep it highly technical, otherwise this will be closed down and some may take a vacation...
