Slashdot Mirror
The Strange Energy Budget of Ethanol Production
joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle published an article regarding research on how much fuel is required to make Ethanol. The results indicate that it make take 6 times more energy than the end product delivers."
The author is using data from thirty-year-old production techniques to shoot down the new "buzz" about tomorrow's efficient ethanol production. At the same time, he is ignoring the current research that is generating the buzz: researchers are just now coming up with efficient ways to produce enzymes that can turn raw agricultural waste into ethanol. That means stuff like sawdust, wood pulp, cardboard, corn stems, yard waste etc can be turned into ethanol instead of going into landfills.
Data about how much energy it takes to grow corn is irrelevant, because we won't be using corn. We'll be using lawn clippings, or pulverized construction waste, or re-re-recycled paper, or whatever.
include $sig;
1;
Good nose. And when the politicians are bought and paid for by Archer Daniels Midland and friends the result is government subsidies for corn-derived ethanol and a full-court press to keep Brazilian ethanol (sugar derived) out of the US (just google brazil ethanol imports).
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Good question. In the early days of oil production, it took one barrel of oil to get ~50. Oil was easy to pump (not very deep), and of high quality (pick and choose your oilfield). Nowadays, one barrel of oil gets you somewhere around 5, less in some fields. The big exceptions to this are a few, very large, oilfields in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the former Soviet states. Some might find some insight into recent US foreign policy here.
Return On Energy is being affected by several factors. Oil is now deeper and stickier, and takes lots of force to suck out of the ground. The gushers have gushed. It is also of lower quality, and more energy is required to refine it.
The ROE calculation for a particular oilfield is difficult to do. Oil producers are very secretive about some numbers, so the margin of error is significant. But what is clear is that the ROE is dropping, and will continue to drop. When it hits 1:1, oil becomes useless.
I think the most interesting thing about this, is that we won't know until after the fact. Suddenly the worker will not have enough paycheck to get gas to go to work in the factory that makes refinery bits, or some convulted economic chain like that. Another reason the calculation is so hard to do.
If we were having an oil deathpool, I would guess 15 years.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Don't forget that biodiesel and ethanol come from different parts of the corn plant. (Substitute your favorite plant) Ethanol is made from sugar/starch. Biodiesel is made from oil. You can extract the oil, without affecting how much sugar/starch is in the product. Then turn the sugar/starch to ethanol.
Don't only is this study heavily biased against ethanol by using outdated data, it ignores the biodiesel production (which is somewhat rare), and that the by products are useful in their own right.
Ethanol alone doesn't need to be energy positive (though it is - if you farm with modern methods), so long as you account for the energy left after producing ethanol.