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Urging Congress to Cancel the Ethanol Tariff
reporter writes "The Wall Street Journal is urging Washington to discard the 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. This tariff is effectively a subsidy for corn-based ethanol produced in the USA. Yet, producing ethanol from corn is highly inefficient and consumes 1 unit of energy for each 1.3 units of energy that burning ethanol provides. By contrast, ethanol derived from sugarcane (which is the sole source of ethanol in Brazil) yields 8.3 units of energy. Sugercane is about 7 times more efficient than corn. Some studies even show that corn yields only 0.8 unit of energy, resulting in a net loss of energy."
I'm not too impressed by arguments that say that energy efficiency is the only reason that ethanol or biodiesel can't work. Even if they consume more energy to produce than they make, they are still very useful for one major reason: they are easily transportable. If I can make electricity at $0.07 per KWh at a coal or nuclear plant and make it into a much more valuable transportable energy source via the ethanol or biodiesel route, then I may come out ahead even after the energy losses. Coal and nuclear power are cheap. Gasoline isn't.
Of course, I should mention, you probably shouldn't be running your tractors and other equipment that you use to harvest the corn or other agricultural product with oil or ethanol. That doesn't work. It only works if you have a mostly electrical system. I wonder if there are any major piece of agricultural equipment that can be set up to "run from the grid" in a sense. Like big batteries on tractors that recharge every day?
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Damn wiould I like to see pump prices drop - I'm paying $3.70 out here in Los Angeles for premium 91 octane (we don't get the good 93 oct out here due to smog :-( ). While this is cheap compared to the rest of the world, I'm sure that we pay for the low gas prices by other means...
I'm sure once the American dependence on foreign oil abated, then the middle east situation (Iragi civil war) wouldn't "require" the American presence anymore......
..........FULL STOP.
Ending the tariff is a good start, but it's pretty hard for corn farmer's to compete with sugar as an ethanol base material.
The obvious solution is to allow farmers to grow hemp - it's one of the easiest crops on the planet to grow (no spraying for pests, low irrigation, etc). Oil from the seeds can be used to run (unmodified) diesel vehicles, and the leftover material can be made into ethanol has four times the energy density of corn (about 2/3 that of sugar).
Oh - but this is in the land of the free - and we can't let the corn farmers compete, lest they plant a few thc bearing hemp plants in the middle of their crop. After all, a few stoners will mean the end of society as we know it.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Seriously; is anybody thinking that the US will consider any other aspect but "protectionism"?
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If the sugary sugarcane is more efficient than using corn, why not try to convert sugarbeets into ethanol? Granted I don't know all the complexities of generating ethanol from biomass products, but just following the seeming link between high sugar content of the cane and applying it to our beets.
I don't think it's the MPG that's the point of ethanol, it's that you're not putting excess carbon into the atmosphere. If you grow plants to make ethanol then they will soak up the carbon that was put into atmosphere from the last lot of ethanol produced from plants. With fossil fuels, you just keep puting carbon into the atmosphere and it's not getting taken back out.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Reading in the TDI Club I was surprised to read that Ethanol provides worst MPG than pure gasoline.
Does anyone have information on this topic?
Sure.
worst: (adjective) most bad, severe, or serious.
worse: (adjective) less good, satisfactory, or pleasing. 2 more serious or severe. 3 more ill or unhappy.
wurst: (noun) German or Austrian sausage.
In the UK there are heavy taxes on ethanol too. It's a shame, because those duties are pretty much restricting alternative fuel uses.
For example: It's pretty much cheaper to use a diesel engine than to use biodiesel that you make yourself. (if you're a 'good' citizen and pay all taxes due)
Reeks of inhibiting progress to me.
Miles per gallon isn't the critical thing its cost per mile that matters.
For example here LPG gets around 10% less miles per litre than petrol however the cost of LPG means its less than half the cost of running on petrol.
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While this is an important issue, I'd like to see corn lose its protection as a sweetener as well. High fructose corn syrup has replaced sugar as the primary sweetener in our (American) diet, and the studies suggest that HFCS is really quite bad for us. Not only is it a sugar (with all the inherent health issues), but your body doesn't seem to count it when it comes to curbing hunger, so HFCS calories don't replace, but add to, the rest of our diet.
Not to mention cane sugar tastes better. If you'd like to compare, next time you see an old-fashioned bottle of soda, check and see if it's from Mexico. They still use sugar (check the label to be sure), and compare it with the flavor of a domestic bottle of the same brand. You might be surprised at how different sugar and corn syrup taste as a sweetener.
Just imagine, there's an action our lawmakers could take that would help curb obesity, diabetes, fuel prices, and pollution!
For example here LPG gets around 10% less miles per litre than petrol
I read somwhere that it was 50% less - which always made me wonder what the point was, as if it's roughly half the price of petrol but needs twice as much, then there's no net benefit (excluding the congestion charge). If it is only 10% less than there is a point to it.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Except that, with oil at current prices, it's Waay cheaper to fill your tank with ethanol than to fill it with gas.
But, seriously, though: the same car, on ethanol, makes 10-20% worse mileage than with gas. Down here we have "flex-power" (ethanol/gasoline flexible fuel system) cars, and if a car gets 12km/l(30mpg, 8l/100km) on gas, it usually will get 10+ km/l (25mpg, 10l/100km) on ethanol. Currently, in my town, the pump price for alcohol is about R$ 2,10/l (US$ 3.85/gallon) and the pump price for gas, R$ 2,50/l (US$ 4.59/gallon), which is a 19% difference.
IOW: renewable and non-renewable fuels break even (with a slight advantage for ethanol) on mileage per dollar.
On the performance side, on ethanol cars tend to have a higher final speed than on gas, but they have some 5-10% less torque.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
IIRC, it's because of the power output of ethanol is signifigantly lower than diesel and gasoline, therefore to make the same amount of power with ethanol, you have to burn a bunch more of it. Measured in joules, I think the output of burning ethanol is roughly half that of gasoline, so to generate the same power, you have to burn twice as much of it.
EveryDNS. Use it. It works.
AC's need not reply
I don't think cost is the main benefit, it's the enironmental cost. LPG is still in its infancy and so I wouldn't expect it to be a money-saver other than via subsidy or tax breaks. A gallon is a unit of volume; evaporate a gallon of water and you have many, many gallons of water vapor. I'm not really up on the details of LPG and the chemistry involved but I don't think gallons of LPG are directly 1:1 comparable with gallons of petrol.
If that (power output is lower) is the case, it's only because of improper engine design. The vehicle should be able to inject more ethanol without making the mixture too fuel-rich. This should actually cause there to be more mass in the cylinder at a given temperature, so power should be higher. Modern engines with oxygen sensors should be able to tell the difference and adjust the fuel injection accordingly.
It's somewhere between 10 and 20 %. IDK where you got the 50 % figure, but it's way off.
In the Netherlands, I currently pay E 0,50/l for LPG, versus E 1 for diesel and E 1,50 for petrol.
(Yes, my car runs on LPG)
But where do you think the Brazilians get the land to produce that sugarcane? The same place they get the land to produce the beef that goes into McDonalds hamburgers. I'm surprised the "save the rainforest" people aren't up in arms yet. I'm against protectionism and tariffs, but Brazilian farmers do need to change the way they do agriculture. I'm not sure increasing demand for sugarcane is going to encourage them to change anything.
They do, and that's why cars made in Brazil today come with so-called "flex" engines, which can burn any proportion of ethanol to gasoline, from 0% to 100%. The driver can adjust his own proportion according to relative price, availability, and fuel economy. Today this usually means they fill with 100% ethanol, but they could change this if there is some scarcity in ethanol for some reason (think higher prices for sugar, which would make manufacturers more reluctant to produce ethanol).
IDK where you got the 50 % figure
:-)
IIRC, it was from a leaflet from a company that carries out LPG conversions. Maybe they didn't want the work
I often see LPG sold at about 50% of the price of petrol/diesel - usually around 45-50p a litre (last time I looked), with petrol at around 95-98 and diesel now over a pound.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
but I'm not sure that ethanol is the solution. It is a short-term fix for a long-term problem. Removing the tariff on ethanol made with sugar is sensible, because it produces more energy per unit during combustion. Gasoline is corrosive, as is ethanol. Therefore, by putting it in a car engine, we are shortening the life-span of the car's engine. It would make a great deal of sense to have a more energy-efficient fuel in that car so that you get more 'bang for your buck'. I think what really needs to be addressed in the government, though, is the future of transportation/fuel sources in america. This isn't a battle over obscene profits for oil companies or getting a tariff removed, it's the realization that our fuel source for the past 100 years or so is not unlimited, and that the countries that hold large reserves of oil can (and will) leverage their position against us. Political grand-standing has focused most americans on ineffective issues, and it will likely be left to the states. Recognize that this problem will not ultimately be solved by saving 53 cents-per-gallon on ethanol, but by finding efficient alternative fuel sources and having the public embrace the change.
"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
First, anyone who wants to be president (pretty much every senator) doesn't want to mess around with Iowa farmers since they have an early caucus. Reducing tarriffs almost always makes sense, economically. Not politically. For example, steel tarriffs make the steel workers happy. But they increase the price of domestic toasters, cars, etc.
Someone mentioned tarriffs on sugar. The National Review (a conservative magazine) did a front cover article on this a few months ago. Similar political situation but with La. farmers. It costs America a lot of jobs in food industries which require sugar. That's why they use corn syrup. It's cheaper relative to sugar, but only because of the tarriffs.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Because the high-THC plants would be fertilized by all the pollen released by the hemp plants they were surrounded by.
The resulting plants would be seedy and have vastly reduced potency. In order to produce good marijuana, you want unfertilized female plants, to channel all the energy that would normally go into seed production into resin production.
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First: Ethanol is less dense than Gasoline. If you compare volumes instead of weight, Ethanol is at a disadvantage. Second, Ethanol already contains some oxygene in the molecules, thus the energy density is lower anyway. Ethanol produces about 29,7 Megajoule per kg if burned, Gasoline about 47 Megajoule per kg. Pure Hydrogene would produce 143 Megajoule per kg, while pure Carbon (Anthracit) gets about 33 Megajoule per kg.
In the end it's always a compromise between ease of transportation (pure Carbon wins), energy density (Hydrogene wins), ease of combustion (again Hydrogene), safety of storage and transportation (Carbon), handling of fuel (any liquid fuel like Ethanol or Gasoline) and other aspects of operation.
Ethanol has the big advantage that it's energy source is free (as in beer) and will be for the next 5 billion years. That might help Ethanol to overcome the other obstacles, as the big area necessary to grow the plants, the complicated processes to refine the plants to Ethanol and the low energy density, which makes the transportation of Ethanol more expensive.
Why does it have to be corn versus cane? Has anybody done a study of the engery density of sugar beets? They grow an a northern clime (like Wisconsin or Idaho or Germany), the tubar yields high surgar content, and the waste (both foilage and mash) can be used for compost or animal fodder. What kind of engery density can you get from that? They would be socially responsible because they are grown in developed countries, produce only reusable waste, and would not be produced by peasants toiling in slave labor. They also would most likely be grown on existing agricultural land instead of slashed-and-burned rain forrest. As part of the US's screwed up agricultural price support system, we pay farmers *not to grow* extra corn and soy. Perhaps we can take all that fallow agricultural land and have them grow sugar beets instead.
I have not been able to find a single peer reviewed source to back up that 7 times as efficient number. I see many references to the widely excepted 1.34 return, but I have found nothing that says 8.1 units returned. I did find one study that claimed SugarCane could hit 3.7 in production in Brazil, but that can't be directly compared to the US.
1) In Brazil manual labor can be had for $3-5/day. At that cost it can be cheaper to use a fleet of farm labor instead of a tractor. the fuel consumption requred by the work force is not included.
2) Brazil has a much larger land mass that is appropriate for growing sugar cane.
3) Ethanol has to be shipped in sealed tanks. Due to its propencity to attract water, piping it with fuel through the exist infrastructure would result in water contaminated fuel at the pump. The extra expences and fuel needed for the new delivery systems really kill the return. This is also the reason why E10 has been a pretty standard fuel in the Mid-West for years, but not on the costs. Brazil uses a much more localized distribution system (many 20k gallon plants as opposed to a centralized 10m gallon plants).
4) Ethanol has less power per volume then gas. That means those flex fuel vehicles are going to lose mileage AND power on E85. A proper E85+ designed engine could improve the power issue (Ethanol's higher octane rating allows for higher compression, which leads to more power and better efficiency).
I'm not saying Ethanol is bad, just that it isn't as great as GM wants you to believe.
Biodiesel is better (IMO) in that it can be added to the US's fuel infrastructure with no modication to the system or vehicles, it's performance is on par with petrol-diesel (ie: better than gas and ethanol).
-Rick
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Corn-fuel is what we call a first-genearation technology. Biotech companies like Novozymes are working on enzymes which can break down corn-waste (leaves etc.) until the starch is short-chained enough to be fermented in the classical way. None of the first generation plants comes anywhere near making a profit, but once they can start fermenting the leftover crap, this picture could change. Raising fuel prices are obviously helping.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Please define your use of LPG:
Liters Per Gallon?
Lovely Pregnant Girls?
Liquid Propane Gas?
Little Polly's 'Gasm?
The big alternative I hear discussed is switch grass. If you google it, you'll get a page full of links to using it as a source for ethanol. Its easy to grow, easy to harvest, and produces more protein and ethanol than the alternatives (soy beans an corn respectively).
As efficient, not more efficient. "More" is broken for this type of comparison. If it were twice as efficient would you say "two times more efficient?" Of course not. That would be retarded. So to conform to the pattern you'd have to say "one time more efficient." But if you do that, then seven times "as efficient" would be the same as six times "more efficient." And now you're slinging around ambiguity. The "as efficient" form is clear and unambiguous.
So you're saying it would be bad for them to have the extra opportunity of work? You make it sound like if it weren't for the Evil Theoretical Sugar Beet Barons then life would be just fine.
People don't take "slave labor" jobs by force. They take them because it's better than anything else they might do. So the problem is not the work, but the situation. And taking away the work certainly does not make things better. You make it sound like *not* using third world products somehow improves the third world condition.
The last thing we need is to trade the current Mid-east manipulators of US economy for ones in South America!
I'm going to have to sharply disagree with you there. While energy independence is a goal that we must strive towards, I would rather be dependent (if we had to be) on Brazil than on Saudi Arabia. Brazil hasn't sponsored religious extremism and anti-Americanism worldwide. Brazil is a democracy and respects human rights unlike the Saudis. As a bonus, Brazil is also one of our strongest allies in South America. Plus, money pouring into Brazil might go toward taxes there to preserve the rainforests, and shifting from oil to ethanol would help reduce our impact on global warming. I'm just not seeing much in the way of reasons to say that being dependent on Brazil is the "last thing we need" especially in comparison to our current situation.
The concentration on ethanol production only from corn is due to powerful lobbying and this attitude should be curtailed rather than canceling tariffs!
This attitude is the result of lobbying. Without subsidies to corn production, tariffs on sugar imports, and tariffs on ethanol, we wouldn't have the assumption that corn will be used.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I believe in every person's right to drive whatever they want, but have zero sympathy for people who make poor choices and then blame everyone else.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There is one Dr. Pepper plant in the US that still uses cane sugar. They do mail-order, but the shipping cost is makes it not worth-while for daily consumption.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
One of the biggest problems, even with flex fuel vehicles, is that they are still primarily set up for gasoline and only view ethanol as an afterthought. Ethanol requires higher compression than your average pump gasoline to get any sort of performance. E85 is rated at 106 octane. Your average pump gas is 87-91. In order to better take advantage of the energy in ethanol you would need to raise the compression a few points. This will offset the energy difference and put them on a more equal footing. Especially since an alcohol engien runs cooler than a gasoline engine.
"I'm not saying Ethanol is bad, just that it isn't as great as GM wants you to believe."
But... but... those commercials, that highly optimistic, squeaky voice telling us to GO YELLOW... you're saying that's not a realistic portrayal of the situation?!?
Some studies even show that corn yields only 0.8 unit of energy, resulting in a net loss of energy.
So that's why I never got that A in physics in high school! You see, I wrote on the final exam that you can never gain nor lose any energy under any circumstances. Today, my friends, I stand corrected!
...is that U.S. politicians bow too easily and too readily to lobbyist' pressure. Sugar ethanol is certainly a reasonable way to go. The technology is there, the science is sound.
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I would like to hope that the spread of cost for a gallon of "fuel" would radically shift. Right now we see the breakdown of cost for a gallon of gas [fuel] here. This shows that
19% taxes
4% dist & marketing
22% refining & profit
55% crude oil
Federal tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. Let's say the average state tax is 20 cents. Assume the average gas price(avg) is $2.97 a gallon:
2.97 =
19% =
4% =
22% =
55% = 1.63
= 2.96
what I think is truly the case for our average state:
13% =
4% =
28% =
55% = 1.63
Although I can't find from brief searching for specific refinery/profit breakdowns, I am sure they are out there. I bet realistically profit per gallon has increased by 75% and refinery cost is held at unreasonably high levels because oil companies are not maintaining their resources. I am *so sure* that any investigation will smoke that out.
Now, will the new "Energy" companies be more realistic with this? I highly doubt it.
-- "Mathematics is music for the mind, and Music is Mathematics for the Soul. - J.S. Bach"
Maybe I'm looking at this from an economic standpoint instead of an energy conservationist standpoint, but - wouldn't the removal of tariffs lead to greater supply, lowering fuels costs? If it becomes more economically feasible to use alternative fuels like ethanol, it could greatly help the US to quit sucking up all the oil, and get us away from this 3 dollar a gallon norm the oil companies would like to press on us.
Show me an economic way to start using ethanol fuels, without huge startup costs, and I'll show you a revolution.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Cool! I guess I'll just ignore the problem then. In fact, since it's so helpful, we should have MORE slave labour!
Ohhh! Pay Dirt! A pair of half-eaten choco-pants!
While I think that the need to produce ethanol is here and the efforts are altruistic, you don't understand why we have import tariffs. We have those things in place to encourage American companies to buy goods that are made HERE IN THE USA rather than importing them from abroad (which would be more expensive because of the tariff). I completely agree that we should produce ethanol by any means necessary but please keep the import tariffs in place. This would encourage growers in the USA to start their own corn and sugarcane crops, with ethanol processing plants as a bonus. You have to remember that we have a record breaking trade deficit that is completely screwing up the economy and it's doing nothing more than drive production and cheap labor overseas while we lose jobs in our country. Tariffs are often labelled "protectionism" but at this point in time, we NEED it.
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Reading in the TDI Club I was surprised to read that Ethanol provides worst MPG than pure gasoline. Does anyone have information on this topic? Because if Ethanol provides worst milleage, and it is not energy-efficient to prodce Ethanol... this might be just a marketing campaign, not a fuel product.
.8 units out for every 1.0 unit you put in. That's even worse. However, there are several other useful products that are generated from the process of turning corn into ethanol (animal feeds, etc) that may increase the value, if not the efficiency, of the process. Then there is the ability to produce ethanol from other products besides corn, which have a much much higher energy yield ratio than 1.3:1. Brazil uses sugar cane, but you can also use waste from paper mills or even prarie grass.
It depends on how you look at it. It is a fact that ethanol generates less power per unit than gasoline. Based from this, 10 gallons of gasoline will get you further in a flex fuel vehicle than would 10 gallons of ethanol. I have read somewhere than 1 gallon of gasoline has the energy of roughly 1.5 gallons of ethanol. However, ethanol is also considerably cheaper at the pump than gasoline (at least in countries like Brazil with strong ethanol industries) and even after accounting for the lower fuel economy it is still a net cost savings over gasoline.
There is also tremendous benefit in being less dependent on importing oil from countries that want to destroy America. Firstly, we're not giving money to people who want to blow us up. Secondly, we're not putting our economy in the hands of a country full of people who want to blow us up. Of course, there is also the added benefit of redirecting all of those US oil dollars to the American heartland instead of sending them overseas.
Finally, there is a great deal of debate about the efficiency of ethanol production. Some studies show that for typical corn-based ethanol you get 1.3 units of energy out for every 1.0 unit you put in. That's not terribly efficient. Other studies say you get
If you're really interested, posting on Slashdot isn't the best way to find out. Try Googling ethanol and cellulose.
In general, from the perspective of US consumers, corn is subsidized and sugar is tarriffed. This is why so many types food and drink in the US use corn syrup as a sweetener instead of sugar. Corn syrup is much less healthy, but much, much cheaper due to the subsidy/tarriff double whammy.
jf
There's really two issues here (aside from the spelling/grammar nazism):
If you include the costs of the energy required to make the equipment that would be used to increase ethanol production to replace gasoline, yes, ethanol takes more energy to produce than gasoline.
Of course, this calculation does not include the cost of equipment and human lives to secure petroleum resources in the Middle East to produce gasoline.
In other words, this "Ethanol is a net energy sink" argument is utter bullshit.
However, the other issue - "miles per gallon" - of course. A 20 gallon tank of ethanol takes you less far than a 20 gallon tank of gasoline. About 15% less far. So what? A 20 gallon tank of diesel (petro or bio) takes you farther than a 20 gallon tank of gasoline, (plus, producing petrodiesel from crude is a more efficient process than producing gasoline from crude), but you don't see everyone flocking to diesel.
Why? Because diesel (petro) is a horrible polluter. (and doesn't offer the cold-weather flexibility of gasoline).
But compared to Ethanol, gasoline is a horrible polluter. Gasoline puts carbon into the atmosphere. Ethanol extracts carbon from the atmosphere in it's production phase, and puts it back in the combustion phase.
So the gp poster has a point, but it wasn't clear which one he was talking about. With regard to the production issue - that argument is bs. With regard to the energy-density issue - that problem is resolved by using flex-fuel vehicles. Burn ethanol for commuting the 20 miles to and from your daily job. Burn gasoline when you're driving cross country to see the folks in Florida, if you absolutely MUST have that 400-mile-between-fill-ups range.
(or buy a diesel, and get a 600-mile-between-fill-ups range all the time, and run it on biodiesel to eliminate net-carbon dioxide, particulates, and sulfur oxides from the emissions).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
you must be new here.
I've heard of this, esp. around the State of the Union, and briefly looked into it, and it just doesn't make sense to me. Anyone care to fill me in?
The way I understand it is that the more sugars a crop has the more EtOH you can make, simply because it is easier to ferment sugar than starch. Basically this means that order of EtOH viability follows order of tastyness. Sugarcane, sugarbeet, then corn, then soy, and so on. Grass doen't have much sugar, and it takes energy to convert starches and cellulose (of which grass has plenty) into sugar, and then you can ferment it. Since it has been my experience that we obey the laes of thermodynamics in this country how is it ever going to be more efficient to get EtOH from grass than corn? The fruit of corn will always provide the advantage. If you are going to convert cellulose you can convert the ears and stalks of corn, or just the stalks of grass.
Is switchgrass all hype, or am I missing something?
Do you really have an Elise? What's the maintenance like? How often/how much $$$/how easy to do yourself?
You mean you ethanol has uses other than drinking?!
It's official. Most of you are morons.
We need to grow the damn sugarcane in the states.
Why are we hell bent on offshoring every industry that might earn someone a good living? One day YOUR job will be offshored/outsourced.
The weight vs. density observation is valid, but you have to compare volume's instead of wieght until we can pressurize tanks to contain a weight of fuel rather than a volume of fuel.
The oxygen already in alcohol raises an interesting question in my mind. If the oxygen containing alcohol group in ethanol C2H5(OH) is easily used in the combustion, would it not lend to a more complete reaction? I didn't pay that much attention to the reaction kinetics in my chemistry classes, so maybe someone else could shed some light. If the reaction is more complete, there should hypothetically be less harmful exhaust.
I like the idea of ethanol fuel for cars, due to how renewable it is (and in a certain sense it cleans up after itself). I just wish there was the infrastructure. For those of us that have vehicles that can use ethanol, how many can actualy purchase ethanol? I know I can't, and I want to at least try it out.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
We've seen over and over how successful NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT have been to the American workforce. Tariffs protect jobs and industry.
The obvious solution is to grow sugar here, in the States. Not offshore more industry to neighboring countries. Haven't we lost enough jobs here as it is?
Wait... you're saying that dividing one empirically derived mumber by another empirically derived number equates to agenda-pushing? I feel sorry for your middle-school math teachers and laugh at them at the same time.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
America used not to have income tax. We survived on tariffs alone.
As you pointed out, tariffs not only protect American workers and industry they encourage other countries to pay their workers fair wages. The fact that tariffs are discouraged in NAFTA, CAFTA, and GATT shows how evil these trade policies are.
That and growing a crop that will yield ethanol is made possible by photosynthesis which has CO2 as an "ingredient" and O2 as a "byproduct". In some sense it is a short term fix, in that ICE's are still involved, but it is a short term fix that we can live with more easily for longer than burning fossil fuels. I imagine that ethanol burning and production would be more of a long term fix that can be made obsolete through future upgrades. I won't argue with raising crops to fuel vehicles until we can switch to the hydrogen economy if/when that happens.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Slitting our own throats by allowing our industries to be offshored en masse. Does that count? Or should we take pride in being the best burger flippers and coffee servers in the world?
We've lost sooo much industry since NAFTA & CAFTA & GATT. According to BLM stats, 28 million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past five years alone. Revocation of tariffs is one reason why. Corporations are *rewarded* for offshoring industry and jobs, thanks to congress.
When we wake up one day and find that all of our good paying jobs (the few that remain) have been sent overseas, and our country is slipping further and further down the porcelin alter.. maybe then we'll realize tariffs weren't such a bad thing after all.
of your job being offshored or outsourced.
As I understand it, Hemp naturally gains a THC level when fertalized, so to avoid this where it is legal, like in Canada, they have to separate out all the male plants from the crop or some crap.
So by the time you do all that it is probably cheaper to just grow corn or soybeans or something.
Hemp should be grown for paper too though. But in our country it probably costs less to grow trees because of the above bullshit as well.
I would like to see a real study that shows all the possible crops and how much ethanol a 1 acre field of that crop could produce in 1 season. Then we can offset that by production and fertilizer costs as well per crop. Too many studies are out to prove the bennefits of just one plant. we need some real data on the subject from an unbiased source.
My family owns a farm though, and I must say I want to keep the tarrifs or we would go broke. We barely squeeze out 30 grand a year in take home profits right now. (that is about half that has to go back into the farm) If you let foreign farms compete that don't have to meet all the regulations and standards we would go broke in a year. Plus our farmers are forced to rebuy all our seed every year. There is no such thing as letting some of your crop go to seed anymore. there are laws against it thanks to our screwed up patent laws.
Oh yeah, american farmers can't just stop farming and sell the farm either. You have to pay back taxes when you sell a farm and that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars which usually just about equals the price of the farm.
The american farmer is basically screwed.
If the WSJ really wanted to get radical, they ought to advocate ending us sugar price supports and dropping the embargo on goods from Cuba where they produce sugar cane at a fraction of the cost that it is produced in the US.
No, I am saying its just like buying from a sweat-shop. You would be supporting an exploitive system. And its not the Theoretical Sugar Beet Barons, but the Real Life Sugar Cane Plantation Barons in Latin America who exploit peasant labor for pennies a day. By using sugar beets instead of cane, we would have relatively well paid farmers in regulated economies in Canada, US, and Europe instead of exploited peasants in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. I would much rather support a group of yeoman family farmers in Manatoba, Rhineland, or Idaho than an exploitive sugar cane system of peasantry in Brazil and Honduras, in the same way that I would rather pay a few dollars more to buy a shirt made in a union textile factory in Missouri than a seat-shop in China or Vietnam.
"Yes. Those are lifestyle choices. People should pay the costs of their lifestyle choices, not force the rest of us to pay them through artificially low gas prices that don't reflect the costs of maintaining a road network or fixing the environmental damage created by large, fuel-hogging vehicles."
Great, so lets get rid of the school taxes while we are at it, and of course no sidewalks, space program, no funding to collages, and so forth. We are only going to pay for what we directly use right?
Given that the largest and most fuel hungry vehicles on the road are semis, I would suggest buying some pretty powerful firearms if we were to ever stop subsidizing the roadways they use with our much smaller vehicles. Since the price to deliver food will skyrocket and most will quickly stop delivering. Without food delivered to metropolitin areas, you can expect people to start eating their neighbors.
Energy conservation at this point is a red herring. What?!?!?!? Did I say that?!?!?!? I must be insane!!!!! No, actually, given that we are still using non-renewable energy sources, we will eventually run out. We will eventually get to the point of using renewable energy sources, but that simply will not happen until we are seriously hurting due to our current non-renewable sources running low. So, basically, we can all lower our standards of living for the next 20 (30?, 50? 100?) years, and leave the hurting and conversion to our children, or we can keep our standard of living, go through the big hurt ourselves, and get moved to renewable energy sources.
I am thoroughly convinced that our current level of technology would allow us to either move now, or easily within a decade if we started to feel the big hurt of running low on non-renewable energy.
There is a general belief by the poser-environmentalists that living crappy, and being good to the environment are the same thing. Extravagant lifestyles and environmentalism are not inherently seperate. Those that push the idea that they are, have either been conned, or have alterier motives. Whether they realize it or not.
If we're going to switch over to what is essentially a food burning system, then we can't be playing games about which farmer is more important--every one of them will be needed. What we should do is, worldwide, encourage the best use of land. It appears that the US is better suited to produce lots of grains and corn, and Brazil (and many other equatorial states) sugar cane. What should happen then is that Brazil produces more cane, and imports food goods like corn and beef. Tarriffs distort this optimal usage by discouraging these sorts of trades.
American farmers will likely feel a crunch if foreign competition is their domestic market isn't compensated by a new foreign market. So the tricky part is getting Brazil to reduce their own tarriffs at the same time. The WSJ article is desperately short on this aspect of the bill, and how the Brazil market currently stands tarriff wise.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
That's because you broke the 2 sentence rule.
"If an explination takes more than two sentences, 90% of the population won't understand it."
I'm sure they have NO IDEA that fuels are blended, and would be eternally grateful to the anonymous slashdotters for telling them so that they can take it into account when designing engines!
I think that they're talking about using enzymes to reduce the cellulose into something fermentable - so any vegetable matter would likely work with that process (I think). The same process could be used to convert corn "field trash" along with the kernels into ethanol. Or Hemp. Or (presumably) yard waste.
I think that switchgrass is talked about because it grows over a large portion of the cornbelt and would make a good drop-in replacement for a corn crop. Switch grass is also a perennial plant that would require less field work to grow than corn or soybeans do.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
They subsidize farmers to NOT grow corn. My aunt and uncle recieve a yearly check from the government to NOT produce food on their Wisconsin farmland.
The reaction won't necessarily be any more complete, as it still requires attack by an external oxygen molecule. The barrier to the corresponding reaction in the absence of burning (oxygen gas and heat oxidation) is large enough that that reaction is insignificant by comparison in a fuel situation. Which is a good thing, because otherwise your beer would spontaneously explode (not burn, explode) on hot days.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I don't think volume matters that much than weight. You always find some spare room to put a tank in. Space is not that precious in a car. My car can carry 20 gallons of gasoline, but just the trunk has at least 250 gallons, the whole passenger room about 800 gallons. Increasing the volume of the gas tank by 100 percent would just remove 2,5% of space if it were taken from the passenger room. Normally a tank is outside the passenger room for security reasons anyway, and the space between the rear wheels, where the gas tank resides, is not fully occupied by this. This wouldn't even affect overall measurements of the car at all. The sizes of gas tanks are more designed with a 500ml distance to go on a refill than with the maximum capacity in mind.
But weight is precious, firstly because this is pulling each time you are accelerating or braking. A full refill of my tank increases the car weight by 5%, and if I am using ethanol for refill, I would have to take in 50 percent more to store the same amount of energy, thus increasing the weight of the car by 2.5%, and this directly affects the mileage. And transporting the ethanol with trucks or rail waggons would add at least 30% penalty on the transportation costs (it may not be the full 50% because the transporting system has a minimum weight which is independent of the actual freight).
The weight of the whole system is also a reason why liquid gas or hydrogene have not caught on with cars yet: The tanks have to withstand much more pressure, and thus are more heavy, even when empty, and leakage is much more dangerous, thus increasing the weight again for the additional security systems. For more heavy vehicles like busses or trucks there are viable liquid gas systems available, because there the weight of the tank is much smaller compared with the overall vehicle weight. There are several towns whose public busses run on liquid gas instead of gasoline. In Italy liquid gas is available at most of the gas stations, thus also many cars can run on both liquid gas or gasoline, but those cars are more heavy and make sense economically only because of the lower liquid gas prices.
Seriously, you might lose some power. Ethanol has only 60% of the energy density of gasoline. Assuming a 10% mix, that means you're losing about 4% of your net energy concentration. There's some evidence that not all of this is a loss, however, since ethanol burns somewhat faster, leading what amounts to really about a 2-3% drop.
As far as destroying engines, I highly doubt it. I used to live in Iowa, and you pretty much can't get gas without EthOH. I've owned several cars that ran their entire lives on ethanol-blended gas, and all of them were at nearly 200k miles before I sold them, usually still running fine with original engines and fuel systems. My current everyday car is a 1995 Honda that's pushing 250k, and ran blended gas for its first 200k miles. (I bought it at 100k, and know the previous owner and what they did with it.) Unfortunately, the last 50k have been on non-blended gas, and I've more problems with injector fouling than I ever did when pushing ethanol through the system. Difference in running on straight and blended fuel (it's blended here in the summer, and I get back to Iowa for a week or two at a time)? Net wash in perceptable MPG, and yes, I keep records on every tank.
I realize that my experience does not a peer-reviewed study make, so I won't say authoritatively that it does not. However, my experience is such that leads me to think that you have no idea what you're talking about, unless you can back it up with some sort of evidence, preferably real studies.
Temporary Solution . Your comments are, once again, a wonderful example of avoiding the actual problem we face. Cars designed for ethanol blends will work fine, but that is because they are made of (more expensive) corrosion-resistant parts. Damage will still be done when sediments are dissolved/stripped-off from the gas tank's interior during the change to an ethanol blend. It doesn't get much more efficient than riding your bike. Who knows... you might even get a tan.
"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
So the US weans itself away from the Middle Eastern Teet only to go suckle the Brazilian one (at least I hear they're sweeter).
From here:
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
Somebody forgot to take their meds.
Besides, are people who own large boats a sizable portion of U.S. car owners? Even truck/SUV owners?
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but the problem is people who own gas guzzlers simply as a status symbol. What ever happened to the sports car?
More tariffs mean more of our manufacturing stays at home and isn't lost to cheap overseas replacements. Steel is a good example of something that needs tariffed.
Do you see how that was scored as flaimbait? People are trying to tell you something. If you take any macroeconomics class you will learn that if any country ceases to trade then prices for most items will rise. What the United States needs to do is figure out a few things which it can produce with some economic advantage. That is something that we are either better at making or can make for substantially less then any other country. We then employ a huge number of people in making these things and export them en mass. In return the people employed making these things then have the money to pay to import things that other countries have an advantage in making.
Now in the real world things are more complicated. Countries do not adhear to free trade and some countries exploit thier labor force. Both of these thing need to be discouraged. (Note that enacting tarrifs is against free trade). In addition you have currency to think about and countries like China who illegally peg thier currency to the dollar hurt the whole system.
The point is that it rarely makes sense economically to increase tarrifs. Free trade allows prices to fall on consumables or it helps keep inflation in check. Either way means that your money is worth more. Think of just this case where gas prices could be considerably less expensive.
producing ethanol from corn is highly inefficient and consumes 1 unit of energy for each 1.3 units of energy that burning ethanol provides
So what? Should we attempt to invent technology that produces energy and consumes none? Wouldn't that contradict nearly every law of thermodynamics?
Sounds like "it'll never work" speak, which is the greatest asset of the status quo, anti-competitive and anti-free-market.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
First of all, because if unburned gasoline evaporates to the air, it's pollution.
So you can strike that off the list.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Let me get this straight, Wall Street wants to remove the tarriffs from foreign imports of ethanol. This will make us dependent on foreign ethanol and foreign price controls in the future. So, we're looking at a repeat of the petroleum industry problem in the near future.
Woohoo! I could crank up the boost on my turbo Miata :). Seriously, to offset the reduced energy available from ethanol vs gasoline, car makers could build higher compression engines. This would preclude going back and forth to crappy California gas though, and that would be a long way off.
If that (power output is lower) is the case, it's only because of improper engine design.
To prove your point: the Saab Aero 9-5 BioPower engine (designed for Sweden where E85 is common) is 310hp on ethanol and 260hp on petrol. Torque is also 25% higher on ethanol.
As Cuba could export sugar cane to a third country ethanol producer they would still have an US originated income which would drive the Helms Burton people nuts. This would put Cuba in the front door of an Ethanol OPEC group if they had a significant influence on cane prices.
I once towed a bobcat behind my Mazda b-2200. The low gearing made it possible to get it moving. I will NEVER do that again, if only because I upgraded trucks, I note my new truck, '97 RAM 1500 4x4, matches your recomendation for those working off paved roads.
Trucks have such heavy frames simply because they must weigh enough not to be moved around by the load. They need the weight so why not make them stronger then hell. To a lessor extent that is true for all trucks.
The real problem is people using trucks when they should be using an econo-box. For those not obsessed with image two older vehicles do nicely. OK I admit I've got three but the classic is strictly a showpiece. 200 miles on it last year (that's about one tank of gas) and my version of an econo-box is a 200HP AWD turbo four banger.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We need to break our addiction to foreign oil. Reducing or eliminating a tax on imported ethanol is a temporary stop-gap "fix" that will help to reduce the cost of fuel at the pump a little bit which may help us to buy some time while we work on other things that can help address the real problem. For that reason alone, at this time, it is a good idea for the United States.
Making ethanol fuels more available and less expensive will help to speed the adoption of ethanol blended fuels on the coasts and also help to speed the adoption of E-85 for those newer flex-fuel vehicles. Making this fuel more affordable will help to speed it's adoption and will create the demand that will allow gas stations to justify the expense of installing new pumps and tanks. All of this is good.
Sugar cane is a crop that can be grown in much of the United States. Over time we can start to produce ethanol from it (and other sources) allowing us to produce more of our energy domestically which is good for our economy and will allow us to be less dependant on foreign energy which will be a great economic stabilizer meaning that over-seas economic pressures can not hurt us as badly. This is a very good thing.
It is just as vital that we develop other sources of energy as well. Dependance on any single commodity puts us at risk - if we hinged our energy economy on ethanol from sugar cane and there was a crop failure, our economy could suffer badly. Therefore we have to develop other near-term solutions as well. For transportation fuels these solutions should include coal gasification, ethanol from cellulose, thermal depolymerization and bio-diesel. We do not need to completely ignore conventional oil, there are still a number of domestic sources of this energy available. If we look at energy as a North American issue rather than a national issue, the Alberta Oil Sands could provide us with a great deal of conventional oil. With the CO2 produced from coal gasification conventional oil wells can be returned to production. There are also untapped sources of oil on Alaska's environmentally sensitive North Shore. Tapping these resources is economically feasible but is a politically sensitive and highly charged issue. With high fuel prices and our economy suffering from it, the politicians may find North Shore exploitation more acceptable with their constituents.
We should not count out gaseous fuels such as hydrogen, propane, and natural gas as transportation fuels but I see them as being either niche players or, further out in development. For the foreseeable future, I think most transportation fuels will be liquid because they are easier and safer to handle, transport, and use.
Energy is not just about transportation, we also use energy to heat and cool our homes, to manufacture things, and to save labor in many different ways. Stationary powerplants can use different kinds of fuels - everything from biomass (Including garbage) to nuclear power!
Because of issues with safety and waste disposal, nuclear power plants have not been built in the United States in several decades. These dynamics may be changing. Nuclear reactors are very efficient, it is estimated that one pound of enriched uranium produces the same amount of electrical energy as 800,000 tons of coal. Pebble bed nuclear reactors have been proven safe and effective. In the United States, the Yucca Mountain Repository is expected to start accepting radioactive waste for long term storage (disposal) in 2010. For all of these reasons, in the recent past some notable environmentalists have come out in favor of building a new generation of nuclear reactors.
Energy is an important part of modern life. The way we make it and the way we use it has to evolve and adapt. If it doesn't we will make it too valuable a commodity and we will be unable to afford it. Failure to change and adapt will without a doubt cause of a great deal of pain and suffering. We are reaching a point where we can no longer just talk about it. We need to take action that will help us now and we have to find ways to go forward using different fuels, methods, and processes. If we don't, we will wither away.
Why don't we just import the sugar cane itself, and process it here in the states?
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Leave it in an open glass in the sun for about a day. Viola Pepsi.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Haha! It's so simple. Invade Cuba, convert their sugar to ethanol and get away from OPEC.
All we need to do is cook up some crazy scheme - something like how we invaded Iraq. We could probably even be blunt about it - nobody in the US likes Fidel Castro.
Homer Simpson was right: "First you get da sugar, then you get da power, then you get da weemen!"
It mixes with the water which then mixes with the gasoline and is in turn run thru the fuel system and goes out the exhast.
Otherwise your fuel lines would freeze up and/or your car would die when you got to the water layer.
A LITTLE water in your fuel is not a problem. Water injection is a common way to boost performance.
Also tell my how pipes 'sweat' in water without leaking out gasoline? That must be a good trick.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So that begs the question how much energy do you have to put in per gallon to go from grass to sugar, since enzymes work best at elevated temperatures, and is that in any way proportional to the pay-off of growing grass instead of corn?
Anyone know?
You need methanol or ethanol to make biodiesel anyway. Also, diesels can be run on E95, a 95% ethanol and 5% gasoline mixture, so you have flexibility there. The only conversion needed to run E95 is to raise base compression and to be able to vary fuel delivery, which is a feature of any TDI diesel anyway. Diesels with mechanical injection might be more difficult, but should still be convertible.
Biodiesel is a great fuel. It's extremely dense, (high energy content) and can be used interchangably with diesel without requiring any engine modifications whatsoever.
However, it won't work for Aviation. Biodiesel has a tendency to get very thick when cold, and it often gets below freezing at altitude on an otherwise sunny, beautiful day, simply from the altitude.
Ethanol is the only biofuel I can think of that could be practically used to replace the high-octane gasoline used in a private plane. (I don't know about jet fuel)
I didn't know that tidbit about E95 in diesels, I'll look it up. What most people don't realize is that the diesel engine can run on just about *anything*! The hard part is getting the fuel injection and compression ratios right for whatever the fuel source is.
The original diesel engine was designed to run on coal dust...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's trucked a lot. In my state (California) it's almost exclusively trucked. The pipelines coming from the rest of the country don't reach here.
Anyway, as the other poster mentioned, a little water is okay. And besides, what you call "sweat" is condensation. Water doesn't spontaneously appear in the pipelines. So any sweat on the inside of the pipe is merely the water that was already there in another form.
So keep the water out of the pipeline, and you won't have problems, sweating or no.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The US gov't does a lot of stupid things like that. The worst example is that we STILL subsidize tobacco growers!!!
As per the EPA:
"If ethanol-blended gasoline is exposed to water or even water vapor (as in pipelines), ethanol will bring the water into solution and make the gasoline unusable. In addition, if ethanolblended gasoline is stored for an extended period, the ethanol will begin to separate from the gasoline. As a re-sult, ethanol is often manufactured close to the point of use or shipped by rail, increasing the cost of its use."
As per ADM:
"Because ethanol's water-retaining tendency prevents it from being shipped via pipeline, California officials have voiced concerns about obtaining adequate supplies."
My assumption that the pipes were "sweating" is based on the assumption that there is air in the pipes, and the pipes are run above and under ground. When the pipe temperature drops (going underground) the air temperature drops and condensation forms on the pipe walls. Given that a major fuel distributor and the EPA have concerns about the feasibility of piping ethanol blended fuels, I would figure that it is likely a major concern. I could be wrong about the sweating, but none the less, Ethanol is not piped as gasoline/diesel is, it is shipped.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
No, you don't seem to know the facts. Those Evil Cane Barons have robbed the lands from the local farmers (yes, literally), and farmers have become Poor Slaves with bad health (harvesting by hand is a very dirty job, since the crops are flamed first). Not to mention the harm they've done to the rainforests.
You don't have to be Lenin to see why situation B is better.. Poor Slaves would become Slightly Less Poor Farmers.
it's a lot cleaner burning, I know people who failed their emissions test on unleaded, ran out the tank, put in 10 gal of E10 and added a gal of straight methanol then passed the test with flying colors. Check out Clean air choice for info about cleaner E85, not scamming emmissions tests.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Follow the antics of crazy biodeisel travelers, won't you?
http://www.hempcar.org/
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
This tariff is encouraging Energy independence, something that is just starting to get into the heads of Americans. We need to cut our reliance on foreign energy, in the short term drill more oil wells, produce more ethanol, and produce home hydrogen plants (solar and electrical powered).
The last thing we need to do is to start importing fuel from Brazil (who is not our friend). Besides where do you think they get the land to grow sugar cane? That's right my eco freak friends - the rain forest.
From Larry Kudlow's interview with the President:
MR. KUDLOW: Well, yesterday, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman hinted that you might change position on the ethanol tariff, particularly with respect to Brazil. I guess there's a 54-cent tariff on that thing.
And the market responded--gasoline futures dropped nine cents, a huge drop. If you had a few of those you'll be back to $2.25 at the pump. Will you drop the tariff on--
PRESIDENT BUSH: I do want to work with Congress on that. I think it makes sense to--when there's a time of shortage of a product that's needed, so that the consumers can have a reasonable price, it seems to me to make sense to address those shortages, and dropping a tariff will enable the foreign export of ethanol into our markets, which will particularly help on our coasts. And yeah, I've talked to Congress about that.
The definition of slavery is forced labor. I agree that people don't take low wage jobs by force, but it is probably a good idea to boycott products that are made by literal slave labor, and a bad idea to confuse the term.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
In the sense that Brazil is both one of the primary exporters of ethanol and controls much of the Amazon. Creating an American market for Brazillian ethanol likely encourages the destruction of that rainforest. Land use practices in Brazil are *not* friendly to the environment.
If there's a vote, I'm choosing ecological diversity over NASCAR.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So what's the energy density of lawn clippings?
Me and each of my neighbors are already growing about 1/3 acre of various kinds of grasses and shrubs. There's already a mechanism to come pick up those clippings every week and takes them to--who knows? county composting?
Perhaps I should keep them and distill it in my garage.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Butanol is a far superior biofuel, it has a higher octane rating. Higher energy density than gasoline and requires no modification of car engines to run(you could increase the compression to get higher power though). It can be made at about the same weight per weight of input sugar/starch as ethanol. Oh and it does not absorb water like ethanol does.
Yes i am posting this from work like you.
...for the petroleum industry. They're basically paid to discredit biofuels. Look at where their funding comes from. No one in the scientific community takes them seriously, just the sensational popular press.
According to the EPA (in a report I can't find right now), the Ford E85 trucks running on Gasoline get 14city/18hwy, on E85 ethanol blend get 10city/14hwy.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"As a result, ethanol is often manufactured close to the point of use or shipped by rail, increasing the cost of its use."
Again, in my state, it's not much of an issue. I know it is for the rest of you. We just don't have as many pipelines as the rest of you.
I can't imagine it would cost much to put a mixing system in. I mean, concrete has to be mixed all the way to delivery and it it's not very expensive at all. So it's an obstacle, but not a big one, at least financially. Logistically, it's probably a bit bigger problem.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Nobody is forced to work on the sugar cane plantations. So obviously, the people who do work there don't have a better alternative, or else they wouldn't work there. If the sugar cane work was not available then the workers, the very people you'd like to help, would be the ones most harmed.
Without coercion there can not be exploitation. As long as people can choose to not work there, then they are better off having the choice.
Clearly the Plantation Barons are offering an option that is at least as good, if not better than, anything else available to the workers.
If you'd like to compare, next time you see an old-fashioned bottle of soda, check and see if it's from Mexico.
No need to go past the border, the Dublin, TX Dr. Pepper bottler still uses Pure Cane sugar in the production of Dr. Pepper. You can even order it online. http://www.dublindrpepper.com/
You could grow veggies instead of lawn and make even more oil!
Huh, you'd think that, given volume purchasing, he'd be able to arrange a deal to get the cars without the engine, saving a significant amount of money, both in purchase cost and labor for yanking the unused gas motor out.
I don't read AC A human right
I agree completely.
Ethanol has the big advantage that it's energy source is free (as in beer) and will be for the next 5 billion years.
Except for the cost of using the land on which to collect that energy. B-)
Ethanol has another advantage: It's carbon neutral. The carbon in the carbone dioxide that is released when it burns is carbon that the plant extracted from atmospheric carbon dioxide in the first place. No greenhouse gas emission. Most of the other inputs to make it can also be produced and used without releasing fossil carbon, too.
(Actually a slight reduction, since a small amount of the plant material, on the average, ends up as stuff that gets buried for geologic time.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The engines in cars being sold in Brazil today are 100% flexible - in other words, you can fill your tank with gasoline only, ethanol only, (neither is actually 100% pure at the pump), or any combination of the two. When they say flex-fuel, they're not talking about the not-that-flexible E85 (85% gasoline/ 15% ethanol) engines being sold in the US.
Well I'm glad to hear that ethanol is not so toxic to engine health, but a 2-4% drop in horsepower is a lot. Consider 87 fuel is a 6.5% drop in octane over 93 premium. Add it together and you have ~10% difference.
In system optimization, that's a killer. Imagine a system where you have 10 parts in series, each operating at a 10% loss.....no it's not zero, but it's about a 65% drop.
The point is, I think I notice the difference. A 3% difference for ethanol represents how many tranny-unfriendly downshifts over the life of the car?
And according to TFA (or one linked from it, I forget), sugar cane produces 7 units of energy for every unit used in production. That's a helluva lot more efficient even than sugar beets.
The advantage of sugar beets is that they do well in areas with short growing seasons and long winters -- North Dakota and Minnesota both produce a lot of sugar beets, and are close to markets for the principle waste product (beet pulp, useful as mulch and livestock fodder).
The only downside I can think of is that you don't want to live downwind of the sugar plant, cuz man, do "used" sugar beets ever stink!
The U.S. used to grow a lot of sugar cane (mainly along the Mississippi delta) and there's probably no reason we can't return to that, especially since a good deal of what used to be cane fields 200 years ago is now... er, no longer urbanized, thanks to certain hurricanes. Sugar cane used to be very labour-intensive, but I understand there are now harvesting machines for that job.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Interestingly, the same thing happened in 1991.
In 1991, the Honda CRX HF was introduced with an EPA estimated 49/52 MPG.
Like most competition, the U.S. auto manufactures lobbied for the introduction of a lot of new destructive safety tests that their cars were known to already be capable of surviving, but the CRX HF was not. They actually had to go out an buy a bunch of them themselves to take them apart to see what sheer stresses they could apply that the HF would not survive.
And so, like the Yugo before it (which didn't have good gas mileage, but was kicking their teeth in on price), they saved The American Way Of Life by keeping the foreign competition out of their markets.
I have no doubt the SMART will suffer similarly, if the Santa Clara people who have the exclusive $10M import deal fail to mark it up sufficiently to drive people away from buying them instead of American cars.
-- Terry
"How many people who own boats really "need" them?" I think we should also remember that some people tow sailboats that while requiring a heavy tow vehicle do not consume fossil fuels once underway on the water. Not every boat own owns a motorboat.
Don't forget straw. Iogen is has built a small pilot plant in Ottawa that uses straw (a natural normally almost completely useless byproduct of wheat farming) to make ethanl. http://www.iogen.ca/company/technology/cellulose_e thanol.html
Ah.. I think I get it.. we can give up our dependence on imported OIL so that we can become dependent on imported ETHANOL.. Got it.
We have the tariff and taxes and subsidies to protect OUR famers. Flooding our market with foreign agriculture will hurt OUR industies. What about all our farn unions!? Ceaser Chavez would rise from the dead and smite you.
Look, so what if it's inefficient that way?
The energy it takes to produce ethanol from corn is not portable. But ethanol is portable. That's an advantage.
It's the same diff with hydrogen. It takes more energy to create liquid hydrogen than the energy you get from liquid hydrogen. But it's seen as a good thing *there* because of the portability aspect. Why not with ethanol?
What am I missing here?
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
You also don't lose 35% of your power in a car, by burning 3% less powerful fuel. You only burn the fuel once.
It was a theoretical argument about optimizing a system in series, which should be useful in cars or not. Why post AC?
Growing, transporting, and distilling corn to make a gallon of ethanol uses almost as much energy as is contained in the ethanol itself.
I've heard of many people calculating this... But has anyone ever tried to prove it? Use farm equipment running on ethanol, convert the corn to ethanol using ethanol powered facilities, distribute the ethanol with an ethanol-powered supply chain, and fuel all of these things from the ethanol produced in this manner. The proponents of ethanol from corn could easily demonstrate the validity of the approach with a working example of this sort.
"Yet, producing ethanol from corn is highly inefficient and consumes 1 unit of energy for each 1.3 units of energy that burning ethanol provides."
That calculation has not much value. The only what counts is the price tag the energy has when ist at the consumer. The point is that the produces may get ist own energy VERY cheap, so cheap that wasteing it does not matter.
Now before someone else rants about me using a gas wasting car, I've spent the first 20 years of my driving career using cars (87 oct) that got 30-40 mpg. As of now I only live 10 miles from work.
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I'm hoping you "didn't pay more than £3.20 " cause that would be around $5 a gallon ;-P
I'm not complaining about the prices, I think they're good for the environment.
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I understand not wanting to support what you see as an exploitive system in a third world country, but do the workers there do when they lose that work? Should they come to North America where labor is more fairly regulated? It seems a lot of people are complaining about that too.
Your comment about route 405 (it goes from the Valley into West L.A. for those not in the know) is probably wrong. People are mistaken about Los Angeles when they think it's a city - it's NOT! L.A. is a giant suburb, with really no center to speak of...it's too spread out. That's why mass transit won'r work well, cause no 2 people are coming/going in the same direction, even on the 405
Mass transit will work when L.A. becomes more crowded, and then trains/busses will be a viable option.
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That is a good point. As long as they can't get the religious/racial unity to start sweeping int Europe, it probably wouldn't be too bad for us in the US. Given their history, you are probably right that they would be too busy killing each other to worry about us.
Best Post Ever by a gnazi.
Have you ever noticed the best
I've no doubt that that happens, and in those cases I agree with any sort of boycott. The more general case, such as in the Latin American banana industry, no theft of land took place, and the people that work in that industry have plenty of other options. I personally know a couple of banana workers, and while it's hard work for not much money, it's the best job available to them. If they were better educated of course things would be different, and that's (one of) the real source of the problem. But that's a whole different set of problems.
It's a complicated issue, and the "simple" answer of boycotting the evil exploiters, while it may make people feel good, directly harms the ones they'd like to help. If those banana workers had to find other work then their children would have even less of an opportunity to get an education, extending the problem to the next generation.
Again, we don't have pipelines from California to the rest of the country for gasoline anyway. There is a pipeline that runs from Arizona to Texas (that direction), but it never reaches California.
So again, it just isn't an issue for us here in California. We will have to truck it, or tanker it, but we already do so with gas, so it probably won't be a big cost adder for us.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Oil is the crack of the world and as the president stated "America ia addicted". Eventually world war 3 will be fought for it if something isn't done fast. Some people say that removing the tarriff will result in bringing more ethanol in. I say to you now, removing the tarriff will only result in killing or setting back ethanol production in this country. Exactly what the crack head oil people want. Right now ethanol is the only answer. We must push foward with it full throttle. If you look around I don't see much sugar cane growing in this climate. So if you want this country to be energy independent don't listen to the friggin bullshit these money grubbin basterds are putting out. These pricks would kill us all tommorow just to make an oil buck today.