I just stumbled onto this thread....good to hear you have been boning up on alternative fuels....
so what is the low down now on ethanol ? I have seen many GM ads in magazines touting the yellow cars and this fuel.
IS it something that can provide an alternative while a permanent fuel replacement is found ? OR is it like the Prius...costing more in money & fuel upfront , and thus not a real cost effective idea ?
It may have a very limited audience in the midwest. They will run out of corn long before they make a dent in the fossil fuel usage. It still takes as much energy to grow and distill as you gain. It would be a dead monkey if not for the subsidies. CA is getting screwed as usual. It costs too much to bring what is needed just for oxygenation.
Its just not cost effective. Even with its lower cost (which is subsidized) its not as cost effective as 100% gasoline due to the fact that on average a car will get 25% less mileage.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I'm not sure of the future of E85 and acknowledge the decline in mileage. However, I think people should at least consider the possibility that the $2.50/gal we're currently paying for gas may seem cheap a few years from now. It's quite possible we could be paying $4 or $5 per gallon gas fairly soon. Alot of it has to do with the future level of economic growth in Asia, particularly China and India. If this happens, ethanol becomes more and more viable.
What I have not heard discussed on this board is the potential switch from corn to switchgrass. A study out of Auburn University in Alabama which I heard on NPR right after the State of the Union Address indicated switchgrass produces 4 gallons of ethanol for every one gallon's worth of energy used to produce it, compared to a ratio of 2.5 to 1 for corn. Given that switchgrass is native, grows well in a larger area of the country, requires far less intensive management, holds the soil better and would generally be better for the environment than corn, it has potential to become a major crop.
Ethanol from Cellulose (e.g. switchgrass or corn stover) The energy balance from corn, then, is slightly positive. However, ethanol can also be derived from another source, namely, cellulosic feedstocks such as corn stover or switchgrass. In this case, the energy balance is much improved, as shown in Table 1 of this paper by McLaughlin and Walsh. Their data show that while the energy gain from corn grain is 21%, the energy gain from converting switchgrass to ethanol is 343%! The downside, of course, is that conversion technologies are not ready for primetime yet, as shown in the the USDA-DOE study mentioned above--the cost per gallon of ethanol from cellulose fermentation is about $1.50.
The main worry here is that corn stover will be promoted as the cellulose source, rather than perennial grasses, and that's a big concern. Growing corn is already an environmental problem, but removing all stover (analgous to harvesting corn silage--but that's another topic!) will really leave the land open to wind and water erosion. All this adds up to the fact that using perennail grass crops, such as switchgrass, makes environment sense. More work on conversion technologies is needed, but when it is available, it will mark a substantial advance over the current corn ethanol industry.
Now that sounds like something that makes sense, if it really can result in more than 3 times the energy inputs.
What about the acreage needed? For corn I think it works out to be something like the entire land area of the US would need to be planted with corn to generate enough ethanol...is this figure better for switchgrass?
sounds like we would be spending much money upfront, interms of water and other resources...and then getting less mileage out of each gallon ? That does not sound like it is a real good solution. Almost like spending money to save money?
I remember once using $3 of gas to save $2 for filling the whole tank of gas...stupid of me.... :sick:
It is still pretty much a Midwestern crop. Limited realistic market. I sure don't care for the gas formulas we get stuck with in CA. Is Ethanol another MTBE boondoggle? I get the distinct feeling we are all be used as guinea pigs by CARB & the EPA.
I am surprised that none of you have mentioned that Brazil will not have to import ANY more fuel this fall. I believe it was on the one of the networks earlier this week. They have been working on this for over 20 years to give themselves energy independence. ALL of there gas pumps have used E10 for years (decades). Now, E85 and E100 is the norm and E10 is the odd man out (just the opposite here).
Now you can pooh-pooh all day long about how they are only the 5th most populous country in the world and how nobody drives cars down there but that doesn't hold water. They've turned off the tap. They won't be competing with China and India for energy...they will be selling it to them (we can't truck ethanol easily here but BRAZIL can seas barge it?).
I will agree with gagrice that more pumps need to get out to justify the purchase of an E85 vehicle. I will also agree that the way we are creating our fuel needs to be improved, expanded and updated.
You cannot tell me we cannot do it. We've been aced by a country known for Rio, beaches, thongs and rainforests. While it hurts, it should be a heads-up to a country that can put men on the moon.
It's just been too easy to import the liquid gold and too much work to grow it ourselves. Then again, the third world is always ready to sell to fat & lazy americans.
I understand what you mean...if Brazil...bless their carnivale , can make wide spread usage of ethanol...then maybe we , the best and strongest nation in the world...can .....must .... try to do the same or better.
I wish we can all have some nice transportation that is easily accessible and used renewable resources....
I think GM is a major player in Brazil selling FFVs. That was one reason they bought into Fiat. Brazil was a leader in Ethanol in the 1980s, until sugar became more valuable than ethanol. It would be nice to be free from foreign oil. Not too likely though.
If you consider global warming, it is a loss. You must burn Petrolium products equivalent to about .75 gallons of gasolene to produce the corn to be fermented into one gallon of ethanol. By this process about twice the carbon dioxide is produced.
One thing to consider, if we took the entire US production of soybeans and convert it to biodiesel we would have about 6.5% of our diesel needs. If we put every last square inch of farmland to producing soybeans for biodiesel we still wouldn't make enough. Its simple, biodiesel is not a solution, only a small stop gap until the true solution comes along.
The biggest problem is that we can only make about 90 gallons of biodiesel fuel per acre of farmland from one growing season. Not very efficient, in my humble opinion! :mad:
A better solution is to grow old-laden algae in vertical tanks, fed by the exhaust of a nearby coal-fired or natural gas-fired powerplant. Just one acre of these vertical tanks could make 15,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel each time we harvest the algae, and we could harvest the algae maybe every three weeks! A 200-acre farm of these tanks of oil-laden algae harvested every three weeks could mean we could make several million gallons of biodiesel fuel per year just from this one plant alone, and you can imagine just how much biodiesel fuel we could setting up these tank farms in 50-200 acre sizes next to every coal-fired and natural gas-fired plant in the USA. We might produce enough biodiesel fuel so we can substantially cut the amount of crude oil needed to make diesel fuel, freeing up the crude oil for refining into other products (like way more gasoline).
seems to me that like everything else , the amount of moeny we pour into making e85 more efficent , the sooner we get it more efficent. We need to do something as I highly doubt the gas prices are going to go down in the next 10 years. It will only go up ... up alot
Yes Brasil, after 30 years of investing in alcohol only fuels it has finally paid off. They have effectively taken themselves off the oil grid and can sell alcohol to other countries. They surely didn't want to be held hostage like in 1973 which started them on alternative fuels. Of course, most of the oil the USA buys is from anti-USA countries and one day it will surely kick our fossil dependent arses. Also, all cars/common trucks in Brasil use 96% alcohol and 4% water. The cost for them for Alcol is far cheaper than gas so they all have had a lot of incentive to use Alcol(as it's called in Brasil). They get their alcohol from sugarcane the highest return for any alcohol fuels. In the USA corn, wheat, soy, peanuts etc could be used if a real commitment was made to actually build an infrastructure of having E85 in the states. Now if a country like Brasil can break away from the fossil fuel grid and can not be ever held hostage again, why can't the USA push forward in alternative fuels? because if we don't we will surely pay dearly in our future!
They have effectively taken themselves off the oil grid
Brazil has found enough oil they do not need to buy from other countries. Ethanol is still a small part of their overall usage.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's booming ethanol industry has won international acclaim, but recent supply and pricing problems suggest that it's not the grand solution to tight oil supplies and ever-rising prices that had been hoped.
Brazilian ethanol producers are struggling to keep up with domestic demand for ethanol, which is projected to grow by 50 percent over the next five years. Yet a 15 percent jump in prices earlier this year sparked a sharp drop in consumption. Even so, suppliers are struggling to plant enough fields of new sugar cane, from which ethanol is produced here, to keep up with the anticipated growth in demand.
Some energy experts say this has revealed the limits of Brazil's ethanol program and that it is an unreliable energy source, one that can't be depended on to make much of a dent in worldwide use of fossil fuels.
"Here is the classic dilemma of biofuels," said Tad Patzek, geoengineering professor and biofuels expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "They fight for space in the environment, they fight food production and they fight consumption trends. They are not the answer to the energy crisis."
Such hard lessons come as unwelcome news for U.S. consumers, who are encountering record high prices at the gas pump and threats to oil supplies in politically troubled countries.
In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush asked Americans to look toward alternative fuels such as ethanol as a way out of their energy crunch.
Yet if Brazil is hitting bumps on the ethanol road, Americans, who consume more than 10 times as much oil as Brazilians, face a minefield.
Replacing a year's worth of U.S. gasoline consumption with sugar cane-based ethanol would require a swath of farmland a little smaller than California. Replacing that gasoline with less efficient corn-based ethanol, which the United States produces lots of, would require farmland the size of Texas.
"Biofuels will not make any kind of impact on Americans, the way they're consuming now," Patzek said.
Backed by enormous subsidies, Brazil's ethanol industry flourished during the 1980s, prices were low, and Brazilians bought millions of ethanol-powered cars.
However, those cars became all but useless by the end of the decade when rising sugar prices turned growers away from producing ethanol as oil prices fell.
Hmmm...early corn alcohol experiment kicked up a notch for the animals. Heck...maybe we were ahead of the Ethanol experiments...chuckle!
What was the seepage from the silo full of corn ensilage that made the cows and pigs drunk (ruined milk shipment for a couple of days). Was that Ethanol...it seemed to have quite a kick to it? Should have mixed it with the gas in the Allis Chalmers! ...darned AL seems to be visiting more lately..!
1) Being Canadian doesn't give them credibility. 2) U.S. produces about 33% of all the corn in the world. We can just rely on our own resources and not put money into the hands of people in the Middle East. How does that not enhance energy security??? 3) Ethanol can continuously be reproduced as long as we have maize. So only if we lose all of our maize will this become an issue. The fact that it's not a renewable energy source is erroneous because we will probably have maize for as long as the U.S. will be in existence. 4) Yes, it’s true, it won’t produce clean air and it causes environmental degradation. Not any different than gasoline!!! 5) Finally, yes, I agree with John. Show me an actual white paper! I can just as easily write up nonsense in my own document and post it to start a following. I want to see all the cited references of environmental damage caused by the use of oil/gasoline as well.
Sorry, my previous message was in reference to this message:
How much more would you like? Here is what the Canadiens think of Ethanol corporate welfare.
ethanol production does not enhance energy security, is not a renewable energy source, is not an economical fuel, and does not ensure clean air...its production uses land suitable for crop production and causes environmental degradation."
Ethanol can continuously be reproduced as long as we have maize.
I don't think anyone is arguing that we cannot raise corn and make ethanol. The problem is the amount of fossil fuel that is used to grow the corn and distill it into ethanol. So it is only renewable until we run out of fossil fuel. If the US is so set on ethanol they need to find a better crop than corn to produce it. So far it is all talk and no production as it pertains to Switchgrass, tree stumps or pollywogs.
Currently Ethanol is just corporate welfare worse than that given to the oil companies. What is so great about that?
In addition to the fossil fuel used to grow it, it is infeasible to replace all or a significant portion of the oil with corn ethanol because of the amount of land required to grow enough corn to do this.
Even for more efficient crops, the land requirements are huge. One estimate here says:
As for the land required to support significant biofuel production from a dedicated energy crop, switch grass offers a basis for estimation. It grows rapidly, with an expected harvest one or two years after planting. Ignoring crop rotation, an acre under cultivation will produce five to 10 tons of switch grass annually, which in turn provides 50 to 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass. Thus the land requirement needed to displace one million barrels of oil per day (about 10% of U.S. oil imports projected by 2025), is 25 million acres (or 39,000 square miles). This is roughly 3% of the crop, range and pasture land that the Department of Agriculture classifies as available in the U.S.
So, based on this, replacing all imported oil would take 30% of land.
The message from the corn and ethanol lobbies that ethanol from corn is "renewable" is an absolute joke. Sure, we can grow as much corn as we want, and the energy equation might be a slight positive, but let's get real here. Corn is sucking the Ogallala Aquifer dry in the Great Plains -- check out all the maps and stats from the U.S. Geological Survey. Agriculture, predominantly the irrigation of corn, accounts for more than 95 percent of all water use in the Midwest. That is anything BUT renewable. Corn ethanol boosters also conveniently forget the amount of fossil fuels needed to (1) fertilize the corn; (2) get the corn to the ethanol plant, and (3) process the ethanol. Indirectly, ethanol gets SIX subsidies from the government -- one for overproducing the corn, one for incentives and tax breaks for building the plants, one at the gas pumps, and three others that go with its fossil fuel consumption. Ethanol backers love to point out the subsidies that go to oil, but they forget that ethanol CONTRIBUTES TO THOSE SUBSIDIES because it also uses oil and natural gas. By the way, keep an eye on the price of natural gas. The higher up it goes, the more ethanol plants will go to coal. And we all know what coal does for our air. In this scenario, making ethanol is a lose-lose proposition. Only when ethanol gets away from the destructive growing of corn will it become viable in the long term. That is apparent to everyone outside the corn lobby, ethanol lobby, Congress and some hare-brained environmentalists.
I think the best solution is to grow "farms" of vertical tanks filled with oil-laden algae that are fed by the exhaust gases from coal-fired or natural gas-fired powerplants. The resulting algae can be processed into biodiesel fuel and heating oil, and the "waste" from the processing can be processed into ethanol itself.
check out all the maps and stats from the U.S. Geological Survey. Agriculture, predominantly the irrigation of corn, accounts for more than 95 percent of all water use in the Midwest. That is anything BUT renewable.
Welcome to the discussion. Good point on the water. Not only are they doing a lot of irrigating of corn. They are flushing much of the fertilizers into the streams and rivers in the process. I do not see how any credible environmentalist could be in favor of ethanol in its current state of production. If they figure out a process for some less invasive crop like Switchgrass it may change the picture.
The groundwater problem becomes twofold as the aquifer gets drawn down. Those chemical fertilizers, as you mention, eventually get into the groundwater. Because there is less groundwater, there is less dilution and a higher degree of pollution. I am not certain how long it takes for corn fertilizer to make its way down to the groundwater -- I'm sure it depends on the porous nature of the soil (or sand, in western Nebraska) -- but we are already paying a price. Many small communities in Nebraska (population 10,000 or less) have been forced to seek new wells with clean water several miles outside of town because of the nitrate contamination. That's why some city managers in such communities are outraged by the over-irrigation and overproduction of corn, and the sales job that's going on for corn ethanol. What also is sad is the politicking. Already a Nebraska senator is running TV ads for the fall campaign: He says, "I envision Nebraska corn fields replacing Mideast oil fields." It is amazing how many people buy into that. That's the nature of the political beast -- if you say anything perceived as anti-ethanol or anti-agriculture in the Midwest, even though it may be true, you are committing political suicide. That suits the National Corn Growers, Farm Bureau, etc., just fine, even though they know (deep down inside) that the viability of corn ethanol is questionable at best. If, as I've read in places, corn has only 3-5 more years as the main fuelstuff for ethanol (thanks to farm state lobbies, politicians & subsidies), I am wondering if these dozens of corn ethanol plants can be retrofitted to accept switchgrass or other materials? If not, have we jumped into this too quickly?
"I'm not convinced of ethanol as a solution either. It can, however, provide some relief from total reliance on crude oil. To obtain ethanol, one must ferment corn or some other sugar-containing material. Fermentation releases CO2. The amount of CO2 released must be considered when selling ethanol as a fuel."
I believe that the resultant CO2 is captured...but the real savings is the corn or switch grass that converts naturally fixed CO2 from our environment to the Oxygen given off by al of these plants Most green plants convert CO2 to oxygen -- except for a moldy fast-food burger long forgotten under the passenger sear
757Below is a list of fueling facilities that have installed E85 since issuance of our last NEVC newsletter, May 8, 2006.
The following 35 facilities are or will soon be carrying the clean burning, alternative – E85, bringing the total number of public and privately accessed E85 fueling locations to 757:
PS Energy 340 Whitehall Street SW Atlanta GA
East Central Iowa Cooperative (Cardtrol) 1144 Highway 63 North Hudson IA
Kum & Go 141 S. Jordan Creek Parkway West Des Moines IA
Fuel Time (Cardtrol) 426 4th Street Mason City IA
County Line Mart 609 East Broadway Keota IA
Citgo/Minuteman #14 4901 South Central Avenue Stickney IL
Meyer Oil Company 1505 West Main Teutopolis IL
Gas City #59 900 Brookforest Drive Shorewood IL
Mach 1 Food Shop 1701 Philo Road Urbana IL
Meijer Gas #129 5349 Pike Plaza Indianapolis IN
Crystal Flash 545 South Rangeline Road Carmel IN
Meijer #201 606 Greenville West Drive Greenville MI
Mussers Service, LLC 106 South Main Street Nashville MI
Pacific Pride (fleet cards) 1939 Cooper Street Jackson MI
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24 24886 Highway 36 Bucklin MO
Break Time Convenience Store 1405 North Bluff Fulton MO
Break Time Convenience Store 163 West Simon Holts Summit MO
Break Time Convenience Store 300 Washington Chillicothe MO
Break Time 1105 Main Street Boonville MO
MFA Oil - Petro Card 24 803 North Highway 151 Centralia MO
Break Time 4 Business Loop 70 West C Columbia MO
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24 1845 East 9th Street Trenton MO
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24 1608 East Liberty Mexico MO
Break Time Convenience Store 1901 North Highway 763 Columbia MO
Pit Stop 2203 Highway 70 SW Hickory NC
Huey's Mart 1591 N. Decatur Boulevard Las Vegas NV
Flamingo Stop 8615 West Flamingo Las Vegas NV
Vogelbilt Corp. 1200 Wellwood Avenue West Babylon NY
Oregon State Motor Pool 6400 N. Cutter Circle Portland OR
"Replacing a year's worth of U.S. gasoline consumption with sugar cane-based ethanol would require a swath of farmland a little smaller than California. Replacing that gasoline with less efficient corn-based ethanol, which the United States produces lots of, would require farmland the size of Texas.
Sugar Cane can only be grown in two places in the USA, South Florida and Southern Louisiana. I doubt if cane sugar will ever be put into ethanol production -- but then Castro may have a need to do it!. The need to have lands equivalent to California and Texas for ethanol production is humorous, irrelevant and without foundation. Please stick to facts, not sandwiches!
seems to me that like everything else , the amount of money we pour into making e85 more efficient , the sooner we get it more efficient. We need to do something as I highly doubt the gas prices are going to go down in the next 10 years. It will only go up ... up alot
I agree, walking around denying we have a problem is what canada and Mexico does...not these United States...negative pessimism does not solve any problem. Right NOW ethanol appears to be a viable mix with gasoline (either E10 or E85) AND diesel fuel (E95 or Biodiesel).
If you have credible documents to refute what is presented by others you should feel free to post. So far you have only posted your opinions with nothing to substantiate them. I did not write that article. I only posted it as a point of reference. If you have disputing evidence you should send it to the author:
By Jack Chang Knight Ridder Newspapers
PS I don't think Castro will start making ethanol from sugar until he has gotten all the oil that sits in the water 45 miles off of Key West Florida. The Cubans are poor and cannot afford to throw money away on get rich quick schemes like ethanol.
An unlikely political figure is willing to fight for lower gas prices. His name: Fidel Castro.
He's working with foreign investors, including China, to find oil off the Cuban coast, close to American waters.
In contrast, American companies aren't looking for oil off the Florida coast, because it's part of the 85 percent of the nation's offshore areas where drilling's not allowed. In addition to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast, much of the Pacific and offshore Alaska is also restricted. Only the central and western Gulf, off Louisiana and Texas, has a green light to produce oil.
These federal restrictions were imposed many years ago when oil was cheap and the need for additional drilling was considered insignificant. Fears of environmental damage have kept them in place, though technological improvements have greatly reduced those risks. All new drilling would have to comply with strict safeguards and wouldn't even cause aesthetic harm, as it would occur too far offshore to be seen from land.
Florida and California lawmakers have done the most to obstruct any pro-drilling measures - which is unfortunate, since they are two states with tremendous offshore energy resources.
The gist of the article is that based on the most likely outcomes, they conclude that traveling a kilometer using corn ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline. However, further analyses showed that several factors can easily change the outcome, rendering corn-based ethanol a greener fuel.
Ethanol from corn, why don't we make ethanol from lets say sugar cane, sugar beets, not just corn. Worst idea ever, now our food prices are or have been going up, so I would say it already is doing more harm then good. The only thing we have going for us if we reach that point, is PHEV vehicles. (plug-in hybrid vehicles) It will be environmentally friendly if we use the wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear in which we have technology for today, but we don't have PHEV's, and we use coal instead. Also electric energy today's equivelent to gasoline is $0.50-$1.00 a gallon. This is only good for commuters because ranges are about 40 miles on Electric only, but would come with a back-up generator that could be run on a fuel to increase range.
You gotta wonder how much thats going to cost, you know. Probally a lot more then what an avg. American can afford. I guess when I said 40 mile range I meant something GM could come out with, we'll see.
True, that one is $90-100K, but they claim second model is planned and will be 1/2 that. So if they get to a third one, maybe it will be 1/2 yet again...which would be $20-25K.
That would be awfully nice, 250 miles to a charge, w/ electricity being equivalent 0.50-1.00 per gallon and only about 25k. Couple years ago you would be dreaming, but today it definetely is plausible. But I feel we still have a few years yet to go for economical production. I also wish the gov't would get it out of their heads that Ethanol is the answer, it isn't in any way, shape or form. Electricity is easier to make than ethanol and can be done in an environmental fashion (wind,solar,hydro,etc).
Does everyone agree that PHEV's are the answer and not Ethanol?
"Does everyone agree that PHEV's are the answer and not Ethanol?"
Well, I'm new to this particular thread but I certainly agree.
I do see now that the price guarantees on corn have created the biggest year for planting corn since 1944. Naturally that means less soy and cotton are being planted. Wait for the unintended consequences there.
We're throwing an awful lot of money at this thing which is likely to be as big a boondoggle as it was 30 years ago.
2015 Mazda 6 Grand Touring, 2014 Mazda 3 Sport Hatchback, 1999 Mazda Miata 2004 Toyota Camry LE, 1999.
Does everyone agree that PHEV's are the answer and not Ethanol?
IMO, ethanol from corn is foolish. Ethanol from waste products might someday have a role as fuel.
For us even one electric only and one PHEV would work. Typically each of our cars is driven less than 25 miles per day. There is no reason that both cars need to be capable of making a long trip. A range of 50-60 miles would be adequate most of the time...but it'd need to have that range even when it's below zero here in WI.
I'm trying to make sense out of this as much as anyone else, so I contacted a friend of mine who's a professor of agronomy and is much better informed than I about the facts and figures. His reply to my questions makes for interesting reading. Check it out on today's entry on my blog, the Alternate Route
Comments
Greenhouse gas issue bebunked (from Berkely no less)
UC Berkely News
OOOOOOh, now (THE Journal) SCIENCE weighs in...
Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals
I'll let you guess how long it took to find some actual, factual, information thanks to Google.
Cheers,
Boiler
I just stumbled onto this thread....good to hear you have been boning up on alternative fuels....
so what is the low down now on ethanol ? I have seen many GM ads in magazines touting the yellow cars and this fuel.
IS it something that can provide an alternative while a permanent fuel replacement is found ? OR is it like the Prius...costing more in money & fuel upfront , and thus not a real cost effective idea ?
cheers !
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
What I have not heard discussed on this board is the potential switch from corn to switchgrass. A study out of Auburn University in Alabama which I heard on NPR right after the State of the Union Address indicated switchgrass produces 4 gallons of ethanol for every one gallon's worth of energy used to produce it, compared to a ratio of 2.5 to 1 for corn. Given that switchgrass is native, grows well in a larger area of the country, requires far less intensive management, holds the soil better and would generally be better for the environment than corn, it has potential to become a major crop.
The energy balance from corn, then, is slightly positive. However, ethanol can also be derived from another source, namely, cellulosic feedstocks such as corn stover or switchgrass. In this case, the energy balance is much improved, as shown in Table 1 of this paper by McLaughlin and Walsh. Their data show that while the energy gain from corn grain is 21%, the energy gain from converting switchgrass to ethanol is 343%! The downside, of course, is that conversion technologies are not ready for primetime yet, as shown in the the USDA-DOE study mentioned above--the cost per gallon of ethanol from cellulose fermentation is about $1.50.
The main worry here is that corn stover will be promoted as the cellulose source, rather than perennial grasses, and that's a big concern. Growing corn is already an environmental problem, but removing all stover (analgous to harvesting corn silage--but that's another topic!) will really leave the land open to wind and water erosion. All this adds up to the fact that using perennail grass crops, such as switchgrass, makes environment sense. More work on conversion technologies is needed, but when it is available, it will mark a substantial advance over the current corn ethanol industry.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~brummer/ag/biomass2.htm
What about the acreage needed? For corn I think it works out to be something like the entire land area of the US would need to be planted with corn to generate enough ethanol...is this figure better for switchgrass?
sounds like we would be spending much money upfront, interms of water and other resources...and then getting less mileage out of each gallon ? That does not sound like it is a real good solution. Almost like spending money to save money?
I remember once using $3 of gas to save $2 for filling the whole tank of gas...stupid of me.... :sick:
Now you can pooh-pooh all day long about how they are only the 5th most populous country in the world and how nobody drives cars down there but that doesn't hold water. They've turned off the tap. They won't be competing with China and India for energy...they will be selling it to them (we can't truck ethanol easily here but BRAZIL can seas barge it?).
I will agree with gagrice that more pumps need to get out to justify the purchase of an E85 vehicle. I will also agree that the way we are creating our fuel needs to be improved, expanded and updated.
You cannot tell me we cannot do it. We've been aced by a country known for Rio, beaches, thongs and rainforests. While it hurts, it should be a heads-up to a country that can put men on the moon.
It's just been too easy to import the liquid gold and too much work to grow it ourselves. Then again, the third world is always ready to sell to fat & lazy americans.
Cheers,
Boiler
While it hurts, it should be a heads-up to a country that can put men on the moon.
Sounds to me like the Brazilians have 4 things up on us....
You've really got to admire the comments that make you fall off of the podium...laughing.
Boiler
I understand what you mean...if Brazil...bless their carnivale , can make wide spread usage of ethanol...then maybe we , the best and strongest nation in the world...can .....must .... try to do the same or better.
I wish we can all have some nice transportation that is easily accessible and used renewable resources....
I'll try to walk more...
The biggest problem is that we can only make about 90 gallons of biodiesel fuel per acre of farmland from one growing season. Not very efficient, in my humble opinion! :mad:
A better solution is to grow old-laden algae in vertical tanks, fed by the exhaust of a nearby coal-fired or natural gas-fired powerplant. Just one acre of these vertical tanks could make 15,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel each time we harvest the algae, and we could harvest the algae maybe every three weeks! A 200-acre farm of these tanks of oil-laden algae harvested every three weeks could mean we could make several million gallons of biodiesel fuel per year just from this one plant alone, and you can imagine just how much biodiesel fuel we could setting up these tank farms in 50-200 acre sizes next to every coal-fired and natural gas-fired plant in the USA. We might produce enough biodiesel fuel so we can substantially cut the amount of crude oil needed to make diesel fuel, freeing up the crude oil for refining into other products (like way more gasoline).
but due to the demand , the overall trend will be up...
we can count on it.
There has not been any really large oil fields discovered in the past 5 years....
but there are major users of gasoline , in the form of China, Mexico, and India.
Also, all cars/common trucks in Brasil use 96% alcohol and 4% water. The cost for them for Alcol is far cheaper than gas so they all have had a lot of incentive to use Alcol(as it's called in Brasil).
They get their alcohol from sugarcane the highest return for any alcohol fuels. In the USA corn, wheat, soy, peanuts etc could be used if a real commitment was made to actually build an infrastructure of having E85 in the states. Now if a country like Brasil can break away from the fossil fuel grid and can not be ever held hostage again, why can't the USA push forward in alternative fuels? because if we don't we will surely pay dearly in our future!
Brazil has found enough oil they do not need to buy from other countries. Ethanol is still a small part of their overall usage.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's booming ethanol industry has won international acclaim, but recent supply and pricing problems suggest that it's not the grand solution to tight oil supplies and ever-rising prices that had been hoped.
Brazilian ethanol producers are struggling to keep up with domestic demand for ethanol, which is projected to grow by 50 percent over the next five years. Yet a 15 percent jump in prices earlier this year sparked a sharp drop in consumption. Even so, suppliers are struggling to plant enough fields of new sugar cane, from which ethanol is produced here, to keep up with the anticipated growth in demand.
Some energy experts say this has revealed the limits of Brazil's ethanol program and that it is an unreliable energy source, one that can't be depended on to make much of a dent in worldwide use of fossil fuels.
"Here is the classic dilemma of biofuels," said Tad Patzek, geoengineering professor and biofuels expert at the University of California at Berkeley. "They fight for space in the environment, they fight food production and they fight consumption trends. They are not the answer to the energy crisis."
Such hard lessons come as unwelcome news for U.S. consumers, who are encountering record high prices at the gas pump and threats to oil supplies in politically troubled countries.
In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush asked Americans to look toward alternative fuels such as ethanol as a way out of their energy crunch.
Yet if Brazil is hitting bumps on the ethanol road, Americans, who consume more than 10 times as much oil as Brazilians, face a minefield.
Replacing a year's worth of U.S. gasoline consumption with sugar cane-based ethanol would require a swath of farmland a little smaller than California. Replacing that gasoline with less efficient corn-based ethanol, which the United States produces lots of, would require farmland the size of Texas.
"Biofuels will not make any kind of impact on Americans, the way they're consuming now," Patzek said.
Backed by enormous subsidies, Brazil's ethanol industry flourished during the 1980s, prices were low, and Brazilians bought millions of ethanol-powered cars.
However, those cars became all but useless by the end of the decade when rising sugar prices turned growers away from producing ethanol as oil prices fell.
Brazil's ethanol program struggles
What was the seepage from the silo full of corn ensilage that made the cows and pigs drunk (ruined milk shipment for a couple of days). Was that Ethanol...it seemed to have quite a kick to it? Should have mixed it with the gas in the Allis Chalmers! ...darned AL seems to be visiting more lately..!
2) U.S. produces about 33% of all the corn in the world. We can just rely on our own resources and not put money into the hands of people in the Middle East. How does that not enhance energy security???
3) Ethanol can continuously be reproduced as long as we have maize. So only if we lose all of our maize will this become an issue. The fact that it's not a renewable energy source is erroneous because we will probably have maize for as long as the U.S. will be in existence.
4) Yes, it’s true, it won’t produce clean air and it causes environmental degradation. Not any different than gasoline!!!
5) Finally, yes, I agree with John. Show me an actual white paper! I can just as easily write up nonsense in my own document and post it to start a following. I want to see all the cited references of environmental damage caused by the use of oil/gasoline as well.
How much more would you like? Here is what the Canadiens think of Ethanol corporate welfare.
ethanol production does not enhance energy security, is not a renewable energy source, is not an economical fuel, and does not ensure clean air...its production uses land suitable for crop production and causes environmental degradation."
I don't think anyone is arguing that we cannot raise corn and make ethanol. The problem is the amount of fossil fuel that is used to grow the corn and distill it into ethanol. So it is only renewable until we run out of fossil fuel. If the US is so set on ethanol they need to find a better crop than corn to produce it. So far it is all talk and no production as it pertains to Switchgrass, tree stumps or pollywogs.
Currently Ethanol is just corporate welfare worse than that given to the oil companies. What is so great about that?
Even for more efficient crops, the land requirements are huge. One estimate here says:
As for the land required to support significant biofuel production from a dedicated energy crop, switch grass offers a basis for estimation. It grows rapidly, with an expected harvest one or two years after planting. Ignoring crop rotation, an acre under cultivation will produce five to 10 tons of switch grass annually, which in turn provides 50 to 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass. Thus the land requirement needed to displace one million barrels of oil per day (about 10% of U.S. oil imports projected by 2025), is 25 million acres (or 39,000 square miles). This is roughly 3% of the crop, range and pasture land that the Department of Agriculture classifies as available in the U.S.
So, based on this, replacing all imported oil would take 30% of land.
Welcome to the discussion. Good point on the water. Not only are they doing a lot of irrigating of corn. They are flushing much of the fertilizers into the streams and rivers in the process. I do not see how any credible environmentalist could be in favor of ethanol in its current state of production. If they figure out a process for some less invasive crop like Switchgrass it may change the picture.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I believe that the resultant CO2 is captured...but the real savings is the corn or switch grass that converts naturally fixed CO2 from our environment to the Oxygen given off by al of these plants Most green plants convert CO2 to oxygen --
The following 35 facilities are or will soon be carrying the clean burning, alternative – E85, bringing the total number of public and privately accessed E85 fueling locations to 757:
PS Energy
340 Whitehall Street SW
Atlanta
GA
East Central Iowa Cooperative (Cardtrol)
1144 Highway 63 North
Hudson
IA
Kum & Go
141 S. Jordan Creek Parkway
West Des Moines
IA
Fuel Time (Cardtrol)
426 4th Street
Mason City
IA
County Line Mart
609 East Broadway
Keota
IA
Citgo/Minuteman #14
4901 South Central Avenue
Stickney
IL
Meyer Oil Company
1505 West Main
Teutopolis
IL
Gas City #59
900 Brookforest Drive
Shorewood
IL
Mach 1 Food Shop
1701 Philo Road
Urbana
IL
Meijer Gas #129
5349 Pike Plaza
Indianapolis
IN
Crystal Flash
545 South Rangeline Road
Carmel
IN
Meijer #201
606 Greenville West Drive
Greenville
MI
Mussers Service, LLC
106 South Main Street
Nashville
MI
Pacific Pride (fleet cards)
1939 Cooper Street
Jackson
MI
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24
24886 Highway 36
Bucklin
MO
Break Time Convenience Store
1405 North Bluff
Fulton
MO
Break Time Convenience Store
163 West Simon
Holts Summit
MO
Break Time Convenience Store
300 Washington
Chillicothe
MO
Break Time
1105 Main Street
Boonville
MO
MFA Oil - Petro Card 24
803 North Highway 151
Centralia
MO
Break Time
4 Business Loop 70 West C
Columbia
MO
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24
1845 East 9th Street
Trenton
MO
MFA Oil Company - Petro-Card 24
1608 East Liberty
Mexico
MO
Break Time Convenience Store
1901 North Highway 763
Columbia
MO
Pit Stop
2203 Highway 70 SW
Hickory
NC
Huey's Mart
1591 N. Decatur Boulevard
Las Vegas
NV
Flamingo Stop
8615 West Flamingo
Las Vegas
NV
Vogelbilt Corp.
1200 Wellwood Avenue
West Babylon
NY
Oregon State Motor Pool
6400 N. Cutter Circle
Portland
OR
Worley & Obetz (WoGo Fueling Card)
736 Rothsville Road
Lititz
PA
Pitt Stop #42
1928 Airport Road
West Columbia
SC
Irmo C-Mart
7353 Nursery Road
Columbia
SC
Brabham Oil Company, Inc.
525 Midway Street
Bamberg
SC
Ampride Truck Plaza
200 SD Highway 44
Chancellor
SD
Pacific Pride
1980 Terminal Drive
Pasco
WA
Sugar Cane can only be grown in two places in the USA, South Florida and Southern Louisiana. I doubt if cane sugar will ever be put into ethanol production -- but then Castro may have a need to do it!. The need to have lands equivalent to California and Texas for ethanol production is humorous, irrelevant and without foundation. Please stick to facts, not sandwiches!
I agree, walking around denying we have a problem is what canada and Mexico does...not these United States...negative pessimism does not solve any problem. Right NOW ethanol appears to be a viable mix with gasoline (either E10 or E85) AND diesel fuel (E95 or Biodiesel).
If you have credible documents to refute what is presented by others you should feel free to post. So far you have only posted your opinions with nothing to substantiate them. I did not write that article. I only posted it as a point of reference. If you have disputing evidence you should send it to the author:
By Jack Chang
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PS
I don't think Castro will start making ethanol from sugar until he has gotten all the oil that sits in the water 45 miles off of Key West Florida. The Cubans are poor and cannot afford to throw money away on get rich quick schemes like ethanol.
He's working with foreign investors, including China, to find oil off the Cuban coast, close to American waters.
In contrast, American companies aren't looking for oil off the Florida coast, because it's part of the 85 percent of the nation's offshore areas where drilling's not allowed. In addition to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast, much of the Pacific and offshore Alaska is also restricted. Only the central and western Gulf, off Louisiana and Texas, has a green light to produce oil.
These federal restrictions were imposed many years ago when oil was cheap and the need for additional drilling was considered insignificant. Fears of environmental damage have kept them in place, though technological improvements have greatly reduced those risks. All new drilling would have to comply with strict safeguards and wouldn't even cause aesthetic harm, as it would occur too far offshore to be seen from land.
Florida and California lawmakers have done the most to obstruct any pro-drilling measures - which is unfortunate, since they are two states with tremendous offshore energy resources.
Cuban Oil
This is how Brazil got oil independent, not using ethanol as the news would have you believe.
Ethanol places more $$$$$$$'s in the politicians pocket.
MIT Brainiacs pipe in on Ethanol
The gist of the article is that based on the most likely outcomes, they conclude that traveling a kilometer using corn ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline. However, further analyses showed that several factors can easily change the outcome, rendering corn-based ethanol a greener fuel.
Where I got my information
Also have some more information here
You should go into it, very interesting.
These guys claim they are going to get about 250 miles on a charge:
http://www.teslamotors.com
Does everyone agree that PHEV's are the answer and not Ethanol?
Well, I'm new to this particular thread but I certainly agree.
I do see now that the price guarantees on corn have created the biggest year for planting corn since 1944. Naturally that means less soy and cotton are being planted. Wait for the unintended consequences there.
We're throwing an awful lot of money at this thing which is likely to be as big a boondoggle as it was 30 years ago.
IMO, ethanol from corn is foolish. Ethanol from waste products might someday have a role as fuel.
For us even one electric only and one PHEV would work. Typically each of our cars is driven less than 25 miles per day. There is no reason that both cars need to be capable of making a long trip. A range of 50-60 miles would be adequate most of the time...but it'd need to have that range even when it's below zero here in WI.
His reply to my questions makes for interesting reading. Check it out on today's entry on my blog, the Alternate Route