Ethanol revisited

[wantin150]

Recently, a company announced plans to build an ethanol plant in ABC town in SC. The townsfolk chased them out so they are looking at another site in ABCD town. This plant looks to consume 2 million gallons of water DAILY to produce 100+ million gallons of ethanol YEARLY. I'm sure I'll get a lot of flack but WHY, again, are we looking toward ethanol as an alternate source of fuel? Are we not currently paying our farmers to reduce production of some crops? If ethanol is less efficient energy wise per gallon, but costs more to produce, what's the point? Would we not just spend the same in extra fuel per mile driven for the loss of MPG?

 

[Kestas]

You and I think alike. Unfortunately, the unwashed masses can't grasp the whole picture and only get the sound bites fed to them, such as "reduce dependency on foreign oil" and "help our American farmers". They don't understanding that ethanol will compete with the food industry for corn, raising our food prices, or that much of this ethanol is subsidized by the government and thus paid by us. It's either pay up front, or pay through the back door. Either way, we're paying for this ethanol, and it may cost more than we realize.

The big push is politics. Any politicians who push this through will gain favor with the farmers and ethanol producers, and look like heroes to the hoi-polloi. A winning situation for them; a losing situation for you and I.

 

[MarkC]

Not to mention that to grow corn in the first place requires massive amounts of petroleum products.

 

[oilyriser]

The goal is not to leave *you* with more money in *your* pockets...

 

[Lex94]

Of course Ethanol is a good idea. CNN told me it is.

 

[JHZR2]

the question is, do you want less dependence on foreign oil, or do you want something else?

There can be ethanol production in a sustainable, albeit not very efficient manner. But it is the end result that you are buying. It is a stopgap solution. People who think they have the world figured out in being anti-ethanol are just as dumb as those blindly buying onto the ethanol bandwagon.

Have you considered the well to wheels efficiency of crude oils??? Not that much better in the real, final analysis, unfortunately there is so much spin, that even decent engineers dont always get the full calculation.

If the bandwagon says to buy less oil from the mid east, and the investment/timeframe to use tar sands or whatnot is too great (remember, big pushes usually flop in a few months/years, and sometimes results in lack of investment from a corporate standpoint), then perhaps those in the know and in control of money found ethanol to be the best intermediate-term stopgap solution, which it seems to be. Couple that with the loss of MTBE, and the requirement at least in most areas for an oxygenate for the fuel, and you have a requirement to make it.

personally, I desire to refrain from having to use ethanol, and I would prefer 100% gasoline when I buy it by the gallon - the only ethanol I want in my tank is what I buy and put in myself... But I desire this for other reasons than because of politics or because of some numbers with so much spin and assumptions put on them that they have no more real validity... But politics and whatnot says otherwise, so we use ethanol. As much as we might dislike this current status quo, we also tend to like our right to buy 8 MPG vehicles, stomp on the go pedal at green lights, and living 100 miles from work. we dont do much in the end all to reduce our consumption, and really not much either to reduce our pollution levels, we want it all and dont want to pay for any of it, and all at the same time want to complain because we think we are so smart and magically became experts on different areas.

I suggest that those who seem to think they are so smart and have everything figured out find a solution, and refrain from driving (or go serve in Iraq) until they do...

JMH

 

[Kestas]

I HAVE seen the well-to-wheel efficiency of different technologies. Looking at the amount of energy/effort needed to bring a certain amount of energy to your wheels, over anything else, petroleum wins by at least an order of magnitude, hands down.

 

[wantin150]

Thank you to whomever moved this to the correct location!

 

[JHZR2]

Quote:

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I HAVE seen the well-to-wheel efficiency of different technologies. Looking at the amount of energy/effort needed to bring a certain amount of energy to your wheels, over anything else, petroleum wins by at least an order of magnitude, hands down.

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Yes, but it still is a relatively inefficient process, the only thing going for it is that the chemistry to produce the energetic feedstock was done for free and so is not in the equation... something that ethanol or anything else cannot contend for.

It still comes down to a question of what the populous wants... and apparently it is 10 MPG, stomp the go pedal, war in Iraq is bad, less foreign oil, thermostat at 80F in the coldest day of winter, blah blah blah, cheap widgets from wal-mart...

Oxygenates for fuel aside, it is the lowest cost/risk/quick turnout PC solution to what the uninformed public wants. Simple as that.

And those who think they know something and are "informed" dont seem to offer a better solution, so what is the point???

JMH

 

[oilyriser]

96/4 Ethanol/water mix is cheap, since it comes straight off the fractionating column. Make cars that can use that, with two fuel tanks, and maybe you'll have a winner. The gasoline tank could be one or two gallons, for warmup, and the ethanol tank could be 18 gallons. Use ~16:1 compression ratio, with electronic throttle control to keep it from detonating during the gasoline warmup phase. The same fuel injectors can handle both fuels.

 

[wood_e]

I don't mind ethanol, but it does cost me MORE to run that #@$%! through my Audi... and the worst part is I don't have a choice... thanks Iowa...

 

[Lonnie]

If ethanol is the answer, what's the question? If you want to put it in everyone's car we better start looking for some more farmers. Lets call ADM and see if they like the idea. You can reach ADM through their sales force, our government. But don't worry, it's not a conflict because they work strictly on comission only.

 

[heathenbrewing]

Quote:

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If ethanol is the answer, what's the question? If you want to put it in everyone's car we better start looking for some more farmers. Lets call ADM and see if they like the idea. You can reach ADM through their sales force, our government. But don't worry, it's not a conflict because they work strictly on comission only.

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Actually, corn is not the only (or most easily converted) choice for biomass. Anything containing carbon is a possiblity. Sugar, sewage sludge and ANY plant material are just a few of the possible biomass.

My company is looking into switchgrasses which yield as much as 25 times the biomass per acre as compared to corn.

 

[wood_e]

Ethanol is a band aid fix... its more expensive to run in non flex fuel vehicles... so why do some push it so much? The reason is subsidiaries by government to farmers. It isn't an efficient fuel, but due to politics it's all the rage.

 

[oilyriser]

Petro diesel is the most efficient fuel for cars and trucks. Put biomass first to stationary uses where the weight/volume penalty doesn't matter. Pour the corn, or just starch after extracting the germ and protein, into the coal fired generating plant, and bypass all the ethanol processing losses. Make the switchgrass into pellets for pellet stoves, and you get a much bigger CO2 reduction than by trying to make it into a liquid fuel. Use the money you save in processing costs to make cars more fuel efficient, so they won't need the extra ethanol you're trying to make, in the first place.

 

[JohnCT]

As it takes more energy to produce ethanol from corn (Unlike production of ethanol from sugar cane, which is very energy efficient), the more ethanol we produce the more energy we use. How does that help our energy efficiency?

Buying cars that get 35 to 40 mpg rather than 8 to 10 mpg would help a lot.

Ethanol is NOT renewable as it takes as much fossil fuel to generate the ethanol as energy in the ethanol. It is not green as when the lower mileage is considered, burning ethanol generates as much CO2 as burning gasoline.

There is no free lunch for ethanol from corn, other than for the farmer growing high priced corn and ADM. Subsidy will be paid at the pump and at the grocery store.

Thank you congress and W.

 

[Terry]

"the question is, do you want less dependence on foreign oil, or do you want something else?"

John or is it Alex

, I'll take "something else" for $500 please.

I don't want to be paying in blood and money to be the uninvited police force for a gaggle of tribal idiots in and around the Persian Gulf any longer. That price is too high. Paying more for any alternative fuel is better than that.

TD

 

[JohnCT]

Ethanol from corn will not change our foreign energy dependence. There is no generation of net energy for corn to ethenol, so it can not reduce imports. The only way to calculate that ethanol from corn is energy efficient is to ignore energy inputs to the process. That does not change the fact that the more ethanol you produce from corn, the more energy you use.

 

[oilyriser]

There's a better place for ethanol than mixing it with gas for normal cars.
http://www.swri.edu/4org/d03/engres/spkeng/sprkign/pbeffimp.htm

40% thermal efficiency

 

[Terry]

JohnCT,
I don't think anyone here is arguing specifically for corn sourced ethanol. I want to see ANY transitional and diversified alternative to the current setup and that kind of policy change should have happened in earnest back in the first oil embargo 1971. Cellulistic powered and based fuels are a short term possibility.

We have not had enough will from any recent government to take technology to the point past the oil interests and thus we are still arguing the finer points of a flawed policy and it is costing us all blood and money.

JohnCT, what do you suggest as an answer?