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Is Ethanol the Answer to the Energy Dilemma?
n0xin writes "According to Fortune, "The next five years could see ethanol go from a mere sliver of the fuel pie to a major energy solution in a world where the cost of relying on a finite supply of oil is way too high." In an effort to meet fuel-economy standards, automakers already have 5 million ethanol-ready vehicles on the road. Supporters are optomistic that "we can introduce enough ethanol in the U.S. to replace the majority of our petroleum use in cars and light trucks." Are SUVs included in this category?"
We'll just turn all of south america and africa into big ethanol farms, the people living there be damned. Who cares if it takes an absurd amount of our infrastructure for the renewables, as long as it's "environmentally friendly"?
Ethanol would take up too much of our ag land that we need to sustain our food supply. Check the movie The End of Suburbia (http://endofsuburbia.com/ for a preview of our sad future.
It looks like there's finally a use for all the grass clippings coming out of suburban neighborhoods and non-office paper that gets thrown away instead of being recycled.
From the article:
Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste.
This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol.
Ethanol would be a lot cheaper than trying to deploy hydrogen. With the hydrogen route, we have to redeploy our entire fuel infrastructure. Which isn't going to happen as long as most people drive gasoline cars. Ethanol, OTOH, can work in a standard gasoline engine with a few modifications, and can be supplied from the existing fueling stations.
With gas prices being so high, all that's standing in the way of Ethanol is this constant argument over whether or not it's energy positive or not. Of course, this completely ignores the issue that hydrogen isn't energy positive either. You need powerplants upstream to crack hydrogen, just as you'll need upstream energy to supply farming equipment. Even in Ethanol isn't energy positive (which I don't believe for a minute), it's still a better option than hydrogen.
What we really need for Ethanol to take off is a proper hybrid vehicle capable of burning both gasoline, ethanol, and various blends.
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Ethanol made from plants will form a closed carbon-cycle. Ethanol sythesized from non-fossil sources will form a closed carbo-cycle.
Ask the corn industry what fuel technology will succeed, and you'll likely hear ethanol.
You might try reading TFA next time. From TFA:You're criticizing ethanol based upon old technology. Cellulosic ethanol doesn't depend upon corn, and is more cost-effective in the bargain.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It also reduces the amount of Sulfur release, reducing acid rain. As acid rain has contributed to the deforestation of Scandinavia quite considerably, a reduction in atmospheric Sulfur may allow these to grow back and over time photosynthesis some of the CO2 back to Oxygen.
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
I'm proud to say I drive my 1993 Mercury Topaz on 40% ethanol. Hand mixed by yours truly with a fly-by-night flip of the regular and E85 pumps. And it runs GREAT.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
All the biologists and physicists I've spoken to say no.
Really? All of them? Care to provide a list of these sources?
It has a much lower fuel efficency, and it is still non-renewable.
Wrong and wrong. From Renewable Energy Access:
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to all of life's problems!"
Ethanol need not be produced from corn...From TFA:
Cellulosic ethanol requires little far machinery and no pesticides. From Renewable Energy Access:Between its lesser environmemtal impact (up to 80% reduced emmisions) and its cost-efficiency, cellulosic ethanol is far more environment-friendly than fosil fuels.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
IIRC ethanol can be blended into regular fuel up to 15% and be used in cars already on the road in the USA, while an 85% ethanol/15% gasoline (E85) can be used in "flex-fuel" vehicles that can be purchased from most manufacturers on request. It's only a stopgap, because ethanol is currently expensive to produce. This may change with biotech to improve fermentation, as well as a shift in US trade policy to facilitate the import of sugar cane, a much better starting material for fermentation (or just import the ethanol!)
Still, I believe the biggest limitation is, even assuming moderate improvements in conservation and efficiency, there isn't enough land available to produce the corn/beets/sugarcane needed. Plus, the biggest consumers are commercial (i.e., diesel) vehicles -- we might be better off investing in carbon-neutral catalytic solutions like Changing World Technologies or AlphaKat, which can use a wide variety of biomass as input and produce diesel fuel.
Yes, we all know that Pimentel (and whatever recently graduated grad student or two he can grab up) is an anti-ethanol crusader. We also know that he's almost alone in his claims that ethanol is a net energy loser. Lastly, we also know that whenever he says it, news sources gobble it up, because it's "controversy".
It's also wrong.
First off, lets start with the fact that even if a fuel were a net energy loser, it's irrelevant. Ethanol converts a source of energy that you can't put into your gas tank into one that you can. Usually that's natural gas, but sometimes it's agricultural waste or even waste heat from other processes or power plants. The nazis converted coal to oil with horrible efficiency (using far more energy's worth of coal than they got out in gasoline), but it powered their war machine.
Ignoring that, it's not even close to a net energy loser. Everyone's studies except Pimentel comes up with this fact. Why does Pimentel get such different numbers from everyone else? He rigs the game. Instead of assuming, logically, that if ethanol demand increases, people will build more modern plants, he uses the efficiency numbers of plants from the '70s. He uses the world's worst efficiency numbers on fertilizer production. He assumes that all corn that would go toward the ethanol production comes from irrigated land (very little corn is irrigated). Some people defend this last point, saying that the corn would require new land, and any land that it would have to grow on that wouldn't need to be irrigated is already in use. This is incorrect; the corn would take the place of plants that can tolerate drier conditions, which would move into the more arid land. Overall, total irrigation use would increase, but is is incorrect to pretend that it would increase by the amount as if you had to irrigate all of the newly needed corn.
In short, Pimentel cheats to get his bad result. And he is routinely criticized for doing so. Find me an anti-ethanol study that doesn't have his name on it, and I might care.
By the way, part of the reason why ethanol is so expensive has nothing to do with energy balances, or even its production costs: it's transportation. You can't ship ethanol in much of our current oil pipeline infrastructure.
My main complaint about ethanol is simply the land issue. More farmland=More deforestation. Especially in tropical countries, this is a major issue.
Musk needs a safer hobby than Twitter. Fire juggling? Cage fighting? Solo hot air balloon trips?
A look at a small table of energy return on energy invested figures gives ethanol from corn a 1.3, ethanol from sugarcane something like 0.8 to 1.7 (meaning it could possibly be a net energy loser!), and ethanol from corn residues 0.7 to 1.8. Compare that with petroleum's EROEI, which is today something of the order of 23, and had once been higher than 100. Even at the maximum efficiency level, it would probably take dedicating all of the arable land in the United States to grow corn for conversion to ethanol to allow business as usual. Also, mechanized farming techniques are so heavily dependent on petroleum-based (and natural gas based) fertilizers and pesticides. Here's a good article on how to properly evaluate these schemes for alternative energy, and ethanol doesn't fare very well.
No, the only real solution to the energy crisis is to abandon the grossly wasteful American way of life, and take steps towards serious conservation efforts.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
That's not the real problem. The big problem is : ;
:
1. The superficy needed to grow the corn
2. The amount of energy corn takes from the ground, resulting in an usable ground in a very little time.
The solution for our energy abuse is
Stop abusing energy.
Sometimes even logical solutions sound stupid.
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Yes, by golly, I AM!
Dude, do you have any idea at all of the number of acres of crops in the USA?
Hydrogen, on the other hand, can be produced readily in a power-plant type fashion.
Other than in science fiction, where do you have a hydrogen power plant? A hydrogen-powered car? Ethanol has been a *practical* reality for decades. My first car powered by 96% ethanol was a Brazilian 1983 Chevette. At that time, about 90% of all new cars being made in Brazil were powered by ethanol.
For the last 28 years, every single fuel station in Brazil has had ethanol pumps. Have you ever seen a hydrogen pump in any fuel station anywhere in the world? Apart from straight ethanol, all the gasoline in Brazil contains at least 20% ethanol.
There has never been a single hydrogen powered car sold commercially anywhere in the world. In Brazil, tens of millions of 92% ethanol powered cars have been sold in the last 30 years, and many more cars powered by 20% ethanol.
Do you still have any doubt on which fuel can be "produced readily"?
It also doesn't help ethanol's case that the most efficient crop to produce it is so demonized in the US. Not only does hemp have a higher usable energy content than corn or soybeans, but it freakin' grows as a weed! It ought to win out over corn and soybeans just by the elimination of fertilizer costs alone!
But no-o, we can't have people growing hemp because it's too similar to marijuana, and we'd have to put even more stoners in jail (who shouldn't even have to be there anyway)!
It's completely absurd and pathetic.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Where ethanol has the advantage is that conventional car engines can run well on it without much work and it's easier to ship around. Methane can run in diesel engines without much work - but due to the high sulphur content of US oil there aren't a lot of diesel vehicles currently in the USA and as a gas it makes more sense in fixed installations than vehicles. Biodiesel makes sense so long as it's made out of waste products - specificly growing Canola for it is burning oil to make fertilizer to make biodiesel and is a losing prospect.
There's no one true energy - even for vehicles. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something or has swallowed a sales pitch.
To produce enough ethanol to sustain the US alone, would require hudreds of thousands of acres of crops.
Want a ballpark figure? 640 000 acres = 1 000 square miles. That's smaller than the State of Rhode Island (1 545 sq.mi)
Desertification is a mounting threat to many regions around the world due to soil exhaustion. I can only imagine that large-scale ethanol farming would add to this problem.
I agree on all counts but I would add that there are other sources for ethanol than corn and some grow on arid land. One issue that's rarely discussed is that a lot of land is growing government subsidized crops that are essentially unneeded. If the land was used instead for ethanol or oil crops there would be a net gain. So long as the farmers get their subsidies they don't care what they grow. The problem usually comes down to a lack of communication between government departments. Much of the government opperates like warring camps competing for financial resources. If there was more cooperation in the government many of these problems would go away. Alternative sources are taboo because the oil companies are threatened by them. If it was simply a matter of wanting to stay on the oil standard we'd be romancing Canada for oil sand oil but the government has been ignoring the largest known source of oil. Why? Domestic oil companies have no control of that source. By invading Iraq we gained control of one of the largest current sources. It helps keep the domestic oil companies in control of the money. I hate to see the oil sands become the answer because that means a drastic increase in global warming. I hate the term global warming because it's deceptive. It's climate destabilization in truth. Notice the record cold and snow falls in Hawaii that no one in memory can remember seeing? It's part of the same effect and the global warming models predicted it. Everyone shouldn't be afraid of global warming it's the backlash which is global cooling that should make people afraid. Remember during the last round half of the US and virtually all of Canada was under an ice sheet. Europe is scared. Why aren't we? Just how many record hurricanes do we need in a year before some one wakes up and smells the CO2?
Cellulosic ethanol is ethanol derived from cellulose.
..... this does not seem to offer any advantage over the use of a dilute acid.
The idea is simple. You take any plant matter containing cellulose {a long chain polysaccharide which is fairly immune to yeast}, and hydrolyse the cellulose into mono-, di- and short-chain polysaccharides. Then you have something that will undergo fermentation.
Any dilute acid will hydrolyse cellulose, but then you have the problem to get rid of the acid {which will harm the yeast} without creating a salt which also will harm the yeast. {Might it be possible to use a base whose salt with the chosen acid is insoluble in water, and filter out the precipitate? Since solubility is affected by temperature, it should be possible to refrigerate the mixture in the neutralisation tank to help it precipitate, and dump the waste heat into the hydrolysis tank to speed up the reaction. Further Work Required.} Alternatively, there may exist enzymes which will decompose cellulose into sugars and starches. If these are found to be compatible with yeast it may be possible to work a single-stage conversion, otherwise it will be necessary to do a multi-stage process, neutralising the first enzyme before fermentation
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If ethanol is a viable fuel, remove all the subsidies and tax manipulation, and it will stand on its own. So far, it's nothing more than a massive corporate-welfare program for Archer Daniels Midland (price fixer to the world).
-jcr
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