Slashdot Mirror
Vinod Khosla Talks Ethanol
IamTheRealMike writes "Vinod Khosla, venture capitalist and co-founder of Sun, has a new obsession these days. Ethanol is the fuel touted by many as an alternative to dwindling oil stocks, but is it all it's cracked up to be? Whilst Khosla is an avid supporter of ethanol as an alternative fuel (video link) his optimistic views have been rigourously challenged by Robert Rapier, an oil industry insider who is also engaged in a quest to discover alternatives. Recently the two debated via phone the merits of an ethanol economy, and Mr Rapier has now written up a report of the debate. What will be powering our cars 10 years from now?"
And lastly, most ethanol is produced by corn in an extremely wasteful process that requires an enormous amount of energy which cuts in on its overall efficiency.
Worldwide, most ethanol is actually produced by sugarcane. The corn thing is a US-specific thing based largely on the economics of government subsidies. Per-acre ethanol yields for sugar cane (Brazil and India) and sugar beets (France) are reportedly double that of corn in the US.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
If you want to get energy independent quickly and reliably, this is the answer. If you want to create a lot of sloppy hype and get people to spend stupid amounts of money on shoddy technology that's going to be under development for decades, then micro-pile atomic reactors are a better bet than Ethanol.
Ethanol is not perfect. It's only being hyped because GM et al are selling E85 engines. They aren't selling Diesel engines because they don't know how to make small ones. VW, BMW, Peugot, Reanault, and Mercedes all have decades of experience with small block engines. E85 is being pushed because if they pushed Diesel engines what little is left of the big three would collapse over night. Personally, I prefer Diesel. It isn't going to explode.
you don't need foodstock to create ethanol, you can use waste cellulose as a more ecologically friendly source of ethanol. Wiki article.
And as far as biodiesel gelling in cold temperatures (as another poster points out), you don't have to have 100% biodiesel all the time. You can use a coal-based fuel oil/biodiesel mix (not ideal, but better than 100% crude oil diesel) or you can mix with alcohols to change the properties of biodiesel as needed.
More music, fewer hits
Actually, It would probably be 95% Ethanol since the azeotrope with water, makes simple binary distallation impossible, also 100% Ethanol is hydroscopic enough to pull moisture out of the air, so it won't be 100% ethanol when you put it in your tank.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Whenever someone pushes ethanol that hard, they're really pushing for corn subsidies. If he starts talking wood chips or sawgrass, that might be something worthwhile, but as it stands it's just another pork project.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, Brazil (which encompasses much of the Amazon basin), manages a great degree of self-sufficiency for vehicle fuel using ethanol, and they haven't had to use 97% of their land to do it. A large part of their success stems from the fact that they use sugar cane, not corn, to make ethanol, which I read is far more efficient in terms of both land use and energy required for conversion than corn.
Corn is not a great source for producing ethanol, but the reason it is the highly touted source in the US is because there is already a massive and highly subsidized infrastruture for growing corn in the US, and corn farmers have a powerful lobby. Ethanol from corn may well not be a long-term energy solution, but that doesn't mean that ethanol form other sources can't be viable, and Brazil has shown that.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Brazil, and it won't be corn, it will be sugar cane. Sugar cane is around 3 times more energy dense than corn for ethanol, and is the best source of ethanol known on the planet.
Brazil already has a LOT of ethanol they'd love to sell us, much cheaper than the gas we're currently buying. The problem is the U.S. government places a HUGE import tariff on it (on the order of 100%, doubling the cost), making it too expensive to be viable.
For the record, the tariff on oil coming to the U.S. is zero, zilch, nada, 0%.
A good documentary about this is Addicted to Oil, by Thomas L. Friedman.
So for some reason the government wants to keep our money funding terrorism in the middle east and the slow destruction of our planet rather than funding Brazil and a clean, efficient fuel.
Maybe they're afraid of soccer...
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Even the numbers from the National Corn Growers's Association only indicate that ethanol from corn produces only 30% more energy than goes in. That's a poor energy return. Numbers from opponents of ethanol are much worse.
The more promising idea, if it can be made to work, is "cellulosic ethanol". The idea is to develop bioengineered enzymes that can digest agricultural waste (straw, corncobs, sugar cane, wood chips, etc.) into something more useful. But so far, no process to do that is beyond the pilot plant stage.
For example, Ford has a concept truck that can run on gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen. (Other auto makers also have concepts, no doubt.) Also, considering the fact that most people's daily commute is about 24 minutes (24 miles assuming average speed of 60 mph, which is generous), commutes are well within the range of electric vehicles (if anyone would sell one) or plug-in hybrids. That would allow the energy source for your car to be whatever is on the grid. Which allows wind, solar, bio-mass, nuclear, hydro, etc. to enter the picture. Furthermore, bio-diesel has to be considered as well. So, the long-and-short of it is that while ethanol cannot completely replace gasoline as THE next wonder-fuel, it is entirely feasible for all of our vehicles to be run using renewable energy. Besides, ethanol is produced locally and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil (that's for all those Republicans out there).
"Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was." --Theodore von Karman
Money. For his oil company reps.
He works for the oil industry. I read that summary, which was surprisingly matter of fact as to what the viewpoints were, but it's clear he has a pro-oil viewpoint.
Using precious third world children going hungry as an argument against using corn as fuel? Wow that's stupid, didn't we just have a World Trade Summit where the fundamental argument was over first world countries killing third world farming operations with subsidies and the like? There's an oversupply of food in the world, it's politics and war that cause localized starvation conditions, usually by preventing aid supply operations from working properly. In cases of true localized overpopulation, there is no humanitarian solution, feeding over-procreating societies produces even more starving mouths. Plus, from what I've read, from a fundamental standpoint freshwater is the true limiting factor on human populations, not food availabilty.
I find it amusing this oil company shill can't beleive that a carbon tax is politically impossible. The lobbying of his industry is primarily responsible for this via fake research, extensive funding of pro-industry Republicans (and some Dems where needed), funding of environmentally hostile, anti-regulation, anti-taxation, radical free market think tanks, and right-wing media like Fox News, right-wing "commentators", and many others.
And please people, stop arguing as if corn is the only ethanol production potential. The reason it is the primary game today is the political bullshit known as agriculture subsidies, which the Republicans are now the staunchest supporters of (they own the breadbasket, so screw laissez-faire principles, bring on the subsidies). I'm no true expert, but every crop from soybeans to sugar shows substantive improvements over corn in ethanol yield. True scientific muscle hasn't been exerted on this yet.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Now the next useless fact: Gasoline does not explode in the engine either. If it does it is called detonation or knock and will eventually wreck the engine. Although it burns much faster than Diesel (hence gasoline engines running at much higher rpm) it is flame not explosion.
Finally, (and this perhaps needs to be posted all over this thread because a lot of people do not understand it) ethanol has a higher octane rating than standard gasolines and has more charge cooling. As a result it can be made to burn more efficiently in an engine because the compression ratio can be raised. A modified Atkinson cycle (compression ratio lower than expansion ratio) ethanol engine can have quite reasonable efficiency, not as good as Diesel but better than lead free gasoline. And it should lose less power in the catalytic converter.
Although the fuel tank needs to be bigger than that for a gasoline engine, because of the lower energy density, this has little to do with cost per Joule which is the important thing. It does not matter if I need 6l/100Km versus the 5 used by my Diesel engine if the cost per Joule is comparable.
And finally finally, ethanol fires can be put out with water and reduced in intensity very quickly with water mist. It is comparable in safety to Diesel, as is recognised by the experts - marine safety agencies. The main problem with ethanol is that it doesn't really mix that well with gasoline, but this is the only way to introduce it gradually.
Pining for the fjords
It was invented in the 1920s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-tropsch
However, the Germans did use it quite a bit in WWII as more of their oil supplies were cut off.
Actually, it's not nothing. They are warning boaters against using ethanol, becuase it dissolves fiberglass, which boat fuel tanks are made from. The interior of the fuel tank dissolves and gums up the engine, causing really bad things to happen.
In regular engines, there is evidence (informal, no scientific studies to date) that ethanol produces a buildup on parts exposed to combustion much more rapidly than regular refined fuel, which, in your case, would cause your spark plugs to need replacement sooner (you might pull them and check, it's pretty easy, really). I don't know of the effects on engine horsepower and torque, but it shouldn't be a drastic change from gasoline.
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
The Early Days of Coal Research
e ls_history.html
Wartime Needs Spur Interest in Coal-to-Oil Processes
In 1944 General George S. Patton's Third Army was racing across southern France. In his haste to be the first U.S. commander to cross into Germany, however, Patton overextended his supply lines. His armored columns ground to a dead stop. Faced the choice of waiting until he could be resupplied or draining the fuel of captured German vehicles, Patton chose the latter. His tanks and armored personnel carriers continued to steamroll toward Germany, powered by the German's own ersatz gasoline synthetic fuel manufactured from coal.
The leaders of World War II, on both sides, knew that an army's lifeblood was petroleum. Ironically, before the War, experts had scoffed at Adolph Hitler's idea that he could conquer the world largely because Germany had almost no indigenous supplies of petroleum. Hitler, however, had begun assembling a large industrial complex to manufacture synthetic petroleum from Germany's abundant coal supplies.
When Allied bombing of the German synfuels plants began taking its toll in late 1944 and early 1945, the entire Nazi war machine began grinding to a halt. More than 92 percent of Germany's aviation gasoline and half its total petroleum during World War II had come from synthetic fuel plants. At its peak in early 1944, the German synfuels effort produced more than 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants. In February 1945, one month after Allied forces turned back the Hitler's troops at the Battle of the Bulge, German production of synthetic aviation gasoline amounted to just a thousand tons one half of one percent of the level of the first four months of 1944. None was to be produced afterwards. Lack of petrol meant the end of the war and the end of the Third Reich.
http://www.fe.doe.gov/aboutus/history/syntheticfu
Brazil is absolutely HUGE, larger than the continental 48 United States.
They have plenty of room to grow more sugar cane, and they are adding refineries at a very rapid pace.
If the U.S. market were there (ie. level playing field with equal tariffs or no tariffs), you would see production ramp up very quickly.
The cool thing about sugar cane to ethanol is that it is very, very efficient. The distance from the cane fields to the refinery is usually less than 25 miles. Start to finish it's a very efficient, clean process.
I hope it succeeds and grows rapidly, despite our foolish, oil-loving government.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
BTW, shitty here means 30% less economic than gasoline, if anyone was interested. Concerning biodiesel, it requires ethanol (or methanol) to be produced, so that the efficiency has to be precisely calculated. Finally, crops aren't really the best way to produce ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol could be used in combination with high sugar crops to lessen environmental impacts.
Actually coal mining is still hugely dangerous and more people die in coal mining accidents worldwide every year than have died working in (say) nuclear power over the history of mankind.
The mining operations themselves have huge negative environmental impact, as well.
The biggest problem with coal is everything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's happening
As gasoline prices rise, other solutions become economically viable. As they become viable, resources are spent to develop the techniques even further, increasing their viability.
When the demand for ethanol reaches levels tens or hundreds of times what it previously was, investments that wouldn't be profitable in the past become so. Right now the prices are spiking because of increased demand while suppliers are lagging a bit behind. It takes time to build an ethanol plant, after all, and the switch away from MTBE and states requiring it as an additive aren't helping.
I don't read AC A human right
Except that E85 vehicles are simply gasoline vehicles that have been modified to not contain any parts in the fuel system that dissolve or corrode in the presence of high ethanol blends. An E85 vehicle works fine on gasoline. The ignition control computer automatically adjusts the mixture to compensate for whatever blend you happen to have at the time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Accelerated decay of radioactive waste could make nuclear power much more practical:
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/7/13/1
That would allow us to power electric cars off the grid.