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Ethanol Not A Total Loss
blamanj writes "It has been argued that using corn-derived ethanol as a fuel costs more in energy than what is produced. However, it is being reported that a new study that calculates the energies to include processing by-products reports a net gain in energy such that every BTU of existing liquid (fossil) fuels spent produces a 6 BTU return. While this doesn't address the environmental impact of large-scale farming, it's good news for Iowa farmers."
There's already too much corn most years anyway. The government pays farmers to leave ground fallow. If a new market is opened for corn, it will simply mean that the acres that are now growing weeds will be growing something useful. I don't think we're talking about plowing up National Parks here.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Actaully I was thinking of crusing over and seeing the guy later this week - a friend an I are thinking of starting a diesel to veg-oil conversion business. If anyone else is interested in this you can email me on palfreman at ntlworld.com and we pay him a visit.
Using EtOH does a couple things, each of them are laudable, IMHO:
- Creates another market for Corn. By opening another market, we might reduce farm subsidies.
- Reduces dependence on foreign oil and reduces the need to use reserves.
- Reduces air pollution. Specifically it reduces ozone production. That's why EtOH is used as an oxygenator during the summer months.
- Finally, growing lots of corn improves the carbon equation. Instead of pumping up 50 million year old carbon that has been sequestered all this time, using ethanol helps make it more of a zero sum game. Ideally, you're growing (removing) the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere that you're burning as EtOH. At least that's the theory.
In short, EtOH isn't a magic bullet, but it's definitely part of the mix.My father is a blogger.
Ultimately, we're talking about solar energy here. A plant uses photosynthesis in pulling CO2 out of the air, releasing the O2 while constructing more useful molecules out of the carbon. We then use some energy of our own to process this plant and the solar-generated molecules into a form where we can release the energy.
So it's not surprising that if you leave out the sun, your equations will indicate that we're creating energy out of nothing.
Of course in the process of producing ethanol for consumption in a car, the raw amount of energy delivered to the car per gallon of ethanol will be less than the raw total amount of energy that went into producing the ethanol. It's a basic fact that no process is perfectly conservative of energy, or else we could build perpetual motion mechanisms.
It's probably not much less efficient than oil - and more importantly corn can be renewed at a *very* fast pace compared to oil. It can also be grown where we choose, instead of explored for and drilled from special reserves. It also burns cleaner - and the extra plants should help the environment.
11*43+456^2
Reading through the report, I see that in every phase of production a different fuel is accounted for. Overall, the production uses Diesel, LPG, Coal, etc... My question is, why not use corn products in this capacity? At the very least, the mills producing the ethanol and byproducts such as corn oil have an already existing source of energy already on hand. Corn oil is very similar to diesel fuel, and can be burned in a modified diesel engine. Ethanol, naturally, is a fuel in its own right or we wouldn't be talking about it. Couldn't the mills reduce their own fuel costs by using the freshly generated corn fuels to power themselves? Also, sell them back to the farmer producing the corn at a preferential rate. After all, if you're producing millions of gallons of the stuff, surely it would be more efficient to put some in a holding tank and cycle it back in than to sell it, have it trucked around, and have some coal trucked back for your furnace. All that trucking is part of what increases the embodied energy, and reduces its own energy value.
I mentioned this in the article on shipping CM corn out of the US, but it is important to note that the production of corn in the US is highly artificial, and the press release from the USDA does not provide enough information to verify that the overall equation is reasonable. If the efficiency of the farms is high enough to produce ethanol only because of other subsidies (specificly for cattle feed), it doesn't suggest that the net equation (Is the use of corn based ethanol a truely renewable fuel) is really positive Also, it ignores the other issues relating to our other problematic uses of corn which enable the mass production of corn efficiently. See the discussion that was hosted on US GM production on The Connection recently for a full discussion. The same program also discussed the corn production problems during a discussion of fast food beef production. Also, NPR reported on 'All Things Considered' that ethanol has negitive enviromental impacts (by releasing volital organic compounds) during processing. Also, note this bill. From my perspective this is probobly more a Bush/Republican PR push to demonstrate both their 'environmental friendly' policies and garner farm state votes.
I'm not saying that oil is GOOD, only that Ethanol is not the panacea many make it out to be, and it carries problems as severe as oil. The world needs a much different energy source, but that is a whole 'nother topic.
It has been argued that using corn-derived ethanol as a fuel costs more in energy than what is produced.
Can someone point me to a fuel source that doesn't follow this formula?
It took more energy to produce oil then what is produced, but since the production happened millions of years ago, we don't really think about the energy that went into the production
(And then you need to expend the energy to convert the oil into a usable fuel source like gasoline or diesel).
If you had a fuel source that cost LESS energy to create then to produce, couldn't you harness the surplus, and use that to produce more fuel, etc, etc.... thereby creating an endless energy source?
Or am I misunderstanding things (Haven't had my coffee yet, but we all know that it takes more energy to produce coffee then the energy I derive from the 'fuel source').
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
So, you make some ethanol, then use that ethanol to make more ethanol, use that to make even more ethanol,... eventually you've got an endless supply of fuel.
Hmm. Endless supply of booze. Er, fuel.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I have heard that to supply the world with fuel ethanol, we would have to farm an area slightly larger than Alaska. That is ridiculous.
A much better thing would be to farm sea kelp and decompose it to produce biogas. Sea kelp grows over a foot a day. Much better than corn. The decomposition process of course realeases methane and CO2. But the methane is utilized for fuel. The CO2 off gassing is offset by CO2 the kelp absorbs.
Growing kelp in large areas would not harm the environment at all. Kelp forests are like the rain forests of the ocean. They provide haven for all sorts of sea life.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I recently talked to a friend who was explained to me a new process that could produce ethanol out of hay. The process could be used on any type of hay and furthurmore because of farming practices (at least in Alberta) there is plenty of extra hay that just ends up being burned or otherwise disposed of since we don't till the soil can't reclaim it all. They know how to build the plant and have found they can use about 20% ethanol in existing engines with no noticable side effects and it reduces emmissions by about 2/3s.
Now if only our pro-oil, anti-Kyoto, alcoholic, high school drop-out premier would actually get behind proposals like this and actually start diversifying our economy...
I stole this Sig
Assuming that ethanol and gasoline have the same number of BTUs/gallon
Ethanol has far less BTU's that gas. It has only about 60%.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
This is the same USDA that says we don't need labels on genetically modified food, too! Oh, yeah, I trust this study -- as far as I can flush it.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Actually a good bit of geothermal is probably nuclear (radioactive decay). And of course solar power is nuclear. So all our energy is really nuclear power, mostly from the plant 93 million miles away. Pity we can't get a more efficient power transfer mechanism going though.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
net gain in energy such that every BTU of existing liquid (fossil) fuels spent produces a 6 BTU return.
What I want to see is the figures showing that you can grow the crops, harvest them, turn them into ethanol and transport them, using ethanol rather than fossil fuels and still get a return. Theoretically it is possible because of all the solar energy being input into the equation, but at best the studies I've seen today are conflicting on this issue.
Here in Brazil, ethanol is a government-sponsored alternative to lessen our air pollution problems and economic dependency on imported oil.
:)
It is sold in nearly every gas station (at least in the major cities) for 65% of the gas price, maximum. In the 70's-80's it was such a success that few wanted a gas-powered car.
In the 90's, due to more reasonable oil prices, ethanol (also popularly known here as alcohol) fell in disgrace. Some even believed it was doomed.
It's making a coming back, now. I'm using an old ethanol-powered car (a Ford) and considering buying a new one in the near future.
The increased mileage is IMHO more than enough balanced by many advantages:
a) the motor works better, accelerates more (ethanol is a better fuel);
b) pollution is much reduced and doesn't smell bad like gasoline;
c) there's a law that ensure that ethanol will be sold at 65% of gas price maximum (currently around 50%) -- this makes ethanol cars cheaper on a mile-by-mile basis (YMMV -- well, not really, *it is cheaper*, but I thought it would be funny here... hahahaha);
d) gas-fuelled cars have a slightly heavier tax burden;
e) some modern cars are built "reversible", I think, and can go both on gas and on ethanol. It seems the electronic injection can adjust to any mixture of both -- or so I've heard.
BTW, ethanol is produced from sugar -- more exactly sugarcane -- contact us if you want to acquire the technology...
I'm very surprised that corn can also be used... but then again IANAChemist.
I could go into further detail, but the beauty is this: you go to a gas station and the serviceman there asks you: "Gas or alcohol?" and you say "Alcohol, fill it, please", with the assuring feeling that your wallet won't be emptied.
Why not just harvest all the (invasive species) kudzu (which also grows like crazy) and decompose *that*? Two birds with one stone.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Another option is to write off biologicals altogether and produce ethanol (or methanol, which is easier and still a good fuel) directly from CO2 and hydrogen.
You need a power plant to supply the electricity to produce the hydrogen, so this is an energy storage scheme as opposed to an energy collection scheme, but I strongly suspect that the end-to-end system efficiency will still be greater than with corn fermentation.
This has the advantage of letting you build the infrastructure for alternate fuel production (hydrogen or methanol, which can be processed by fuel cells and stored at far higher density than hydrogen) without having to replace every car on the road (an internal combustion engine can burn methanol).
Cost for the methanol (or ethanol) is potentially very cheap, even with high energy costs. The efficiency of the methanol synthesis step is what will limit price (and of atmospheric CO2 extraction if you get tired of shipping in limestone).
Now you're talking about taking carbon that's trapped in rocks and releasing it into the atmosphere (when the ethanol is burned)? What a bad plan, if you believe the global warming crowd at all.
As per my original post, you can extract it from the atmosphere by effusion or other methods easily enough. Limestone is just likely to be cheaper. Switching to alcohol-based vehicles is a Good Thing either way, as it burns more cleanly than gasoline, can be used in fuel cells (encouraging the switchover to fuel cell technology), and sets up the alcohol synthesis infrastructure, which you'd need with either source of CO2.
Limestone would be used until there was a good reason not to use it (like global warming becoming a big enough political concern). The infrastructure is desirable regardless.
Methanol may be easier to produce but it is toxic. But you can drink ethanol (and some people do).
:).
Gasoline's toxic too
Methanol and ethanol smell different. Confusing them isn't a problem. Any methanol sold at the pump will probably be spiked with both an additional odour agent and some kind of illness-inducing agent like any other denatured alcohol.
In summary, I don't see how toxicity is a concern.
Remember, any ethanol sold at the gas pump will be denatured also.
I suppose it's very clear and looking like vodka (in fact, our version of vodka called pinga). Some folks, maybe having tried previously ethanol, might conclude that an "m" is not that much difference and taste methanol.
If they're blind and ignore the different containers, they *might* - just might - be confused until they open the bottle and catch a whiff.
Put a bottle of rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) and a bottle of vodka (ethanol) next to each other, and take a whiff of each. Smell the difference? Methanol is also different.
Even if the hypothetical fool tries to drink it, they'll end up vomiting their guts out before being harmed, just as if they tried to drink laboratory alcohol or the 99% ethanol you can buy at the drug store. Lab and drug store alcohol are denatured for a reason.
I honestly don't see how anyone could confuse methanol and ethanol in practice.