SwiftFuel Alternative To Alternative Fuels

TheDawgLives writes "PBS has an article by Bob Cringely about the best route to end our dependence on oil and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of replacing all our expensive cars with even more expensive hybrids or electric cars, his suggestion is to use a cheap drop-in replacement for gasoline called Swift Fuel. It is derived from Ethanol, but doesn't require any modification to older cars to prevent corrosion. It can be mixed with gasoline in any amount and can even be distributed using the same network as gasoline, including being pumped in the same pipes and shipped in the same trucks. It is truly a drop-in replacement for gas, and it is real. It is being tested by the FAA for certification in propeller aircraft. It also happens to be about $2 a gallon cheaper than gasoline."

Comments

Food prices

[xaxa]

Where does the ethanol come from?

Re:Food prices

[sleigher]

Your right that it can be grown on land that is not used for food and grow very well there. I think the problem is that the people who do grow food might stand to make more money growing switchgrass so then the land for food will be used anyways. I know if I was a farmer and had a chance to make more money growing a weed I would be all over it. I might be wrong in that. It might not make them more money it is just the first thing that popped in my mind.

Re:Food prices

[MacDork]

Plowing up new land creates *lots* of CO2 via soil oxidation too, and quite possibly at a faster rate than the fossil fuels they are "replacing." And since oil is a fungible commodity, the oil you "replaced" will simply be sold off and burned by someone else... Biofuels just make oil a little cheaper than it would otherwise be by decreasing demand ever so slightly. So, it's quite likely that the biofuel initiative is actually make the problem a lot worse. The biofuel initiative is also creating a giant dead zone in the gulf of Mexico due to fertilizer runoff. But don't try to tell any of this to the cult of global warming. They don't like facts interfering in their religion.

Re:Food prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are all of these nutrients and minerals going to come from to grow new plants?

I don't know if switchgrass is a legume or not. Legumes make their own nitrogen fertilizer; and cellulosic ethanol could be made from some kind of leguminous grass. You wouldn't need much of the other nutrients (phosphorous, potassium, etc.)

fertilizer is a safe, renewable source that is completely independent of petroleum...

No more dependent on oil than other products. Ammonia for nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas; not oil. That stupid oil company TV ad that lumps the two together ("Two-thirds of the oil and natural gas consumed in the U.S. is produced in North America") is very misleading.

The best alternative is to develope communities in a fashion that is conducive to both mass-transit as well as manual-transit (such as walking, biking, &c.)

AC's Law of Real Estate: The housing you can afford is 50 miles from where the jobs are.

Oh, and try walking or biking to work in Wisconsin in February.

Re:Food prices

[TapeCutter]

"But don't try to tell any of this to the cult of global warming. They don't like facts interfering in their religion."

Your post started of by making a good deal of sense, but then you brought politics into it and fucked it up. I am assuming you have done this because it's a popular US pastime to bash environmentalists and not because you have actually done any reasearch into climate science.

The AGW 'cult' have been telling the neo-cons that corn to ethonol is a bad idea since before the first government subsidy cheque was cut. Yes the 'giant dead zone' is caused mainly by fertilzer run-off, but how about pointing out it existed well before the corporate welfare crowd started sponsering hairbrained biofuel schemes?

OTOH, lets not let facts stand in the way of yet another contorted excuse to bash environmentalists, most of whom would agree with your stance that corn for fuel is an exceptionally bad idea.

Re:Food prices

[hedwards]

And that's been seen before. It's the paradox of efficiency.

Say we're only using domestic fuel and none can be exported. Yes, that's not realistic, but it makes things less complicated.

As fuel efficiency is raised, the demand for oil dips, as the demand dips the price or supply must do so as well. Oil companies don't want to settle for less money so they're not going to lower production until they need to.

The result is that in general people start to driver farther than they were, and the savings in efficiency disappears.

In a scenario like this the government would step in and introduce a tax on the fuel being sold, to keep the price from dipping.

In terms of the real world, you'd have OPEC reducing the supply to keep the fuel price from dropping and the incentive for people to be more efficient. Realistically, OPEC knows perfectly well that the oil will eventually dry up completely, and it's really in their interest to keep the rest of the world hooked as long as possible.

Re:Food prices

[Mr2001]

I think the problem is that the people who do grow food might stand to make more money growing switchgrass so then the land for food will be used anyways. I know if I was a farmer and had a chance to make more money growing a weed I would be all over it. Well, why do you think farmers aren't doing that already? Why don't they all just switch to growing the single most valuable crop their land will manage?

One reason is diversity. There's some risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. If the weather is wrong, or if your crops get hit by disease, planting two crops instead of one means you'll probably have something left instead of nothing.

Another is the market. If a significant number of farmers stopped growing food crops in favor of switchgrass, the price of switchgrass would go down and the price of food crops would go up, and then it'd be profitable to switch back (or start new farms). So even if some farmers do switch, it'll balance out.

Re:Food prices

[sumdumass]

Just a note, the switch grass, one it is established, doesn't need tilled or anything. It just needs harvested so any Co2 production from it would be a one time thing for the most part. They claim that the root system will capture about 94% of the carbon it takes to produce and use the cellulose ethanol too.

Re:Food prices

[misanthrope101]

Many, many environmentalists and left-wingers have been criticizing corn-based ethanol for some time. If you don't like food-based fuel for cars, then argue against that, and you might be surprized to find that a lot of people with different backgrounds, to include the crunchiest of the granola-heads, agreeing with you.

But if you want to just heap contempt on liberals without actually trying to help... well, continue what you were doing.

Re:Food prices

[misanthrope101]

Yes, but moving to alternative fuels lowers your dependence on oil, and when it dries up:

1. Everyone who didn't plan is screwed
2. You are not

If we don't plan ahead by investing heavily in alternatives, we'll have to figure it out at a time when resources are more scarce, energy is vastly more expensive, foreign firms have already patented things out the wazoo, and our society is struggling to reinvent itself on short notice.

Surely it isn't controversial to say that you should generally plan ahead for a big, ugly change that you already know is coming. I'm not the smartest cookie, but even I know that.

Re:Food prices

[drsquare]

Who can't farm on current farming land because it's now growing bio-fuels.

Correction

[morgan_greywolf]

It also happens to be about $2 a gallon cheaper than gasoline for the next five minutes."

There. Fixed it for ya.

I just ate an aspirin pancake.

[copponex]

I'm sorry to yell. But where exactly do you think coal and oil and natural gas come from?

Here's a hint: it's all dead organic material, which originally gathered energy from something that gathered energy from what original source? Yes, that's right kids! It's the sun! Revered for millenniums for a reason...

Wind generation? Another form of solar energy. No sun, no wind. Lakes and rivers? No sun, no rain, no fresh water, no lakes and rivers! Not to say you can't harness these different manifestations of the sun's energy...

Passive solar plants are already in use all over the world, and even store energy using gravity or other passive methods that waste very little energy. Many small power plants can decentralize the grid, improve efficiency since the grid is smaller, and are much more viable than millions of little ICEs.

Imagine, Wal-Mart borrows ten billion dollars to install solar panels to cover their parking lots, which stop local heating effects, decrease A/C usage in all customer cars, and provide them with another revenue stream all in one master stroke.

Actually you are both quite wrong.

[Calledor]

This is based on an economic consequence. The infrastructure of America is built around the car, and not just any car, but a car that had 60 years of dirt cheap fuel. Our cities and towns are modeled around this. More importantly salaries are also adjusted for a much cheaper transportation cost. You have several options and none of them are particularly appetizing, and none of them have anything to do with global warming. You can produce your own fuel through biofuels, switch to electric cars, or produce more oil from costly hard to access oil reseviors which represent the last of your domestic supply. Nothing else is feasible despite all the fairy farts, adament denials, and heartfelt praying that might be offered. If you don't want to live where public transportation can be possible, then do not expect people to cry for you when something clearly predictable damages your ONLY source of personal transportation.

Re:Actually you are both quite wrong.

[sumdumass]

The problem with peak oil predictions is that it never takes into account for more efficient production advances. You can reverse the peak trends with technology and innovation.

Peak oil doesn't mean that there is less and less oil, but that the cost of getting to it gets more and more expensive and at some point we end up producing as much as we can. Well, with technology innovations and advances, that peak can be moved to higher levels of production until a point where we actually run out. Canada is pulling bituminous oils for sand which was unheard of or highly impractical 20 years ago. And this totally negates the fact that we can make the fuels produced by oil from coal which means that peak oil is mitigated even more.

The US is still the number 3 oil producer in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We have fields not in production, one of which China has got a lease from Cuba on off the coast of Florida. New types of drilling technology and and processing has allowed us to tap into fields once thought to have been out of reach or too costly to use. Peak oil is a red herring of sorts.

Re:Actually you are both quite wrong.

[Alioth]

The significant thing isn't a reduction in the amount of oil that can be produced, it's the reduction in cheap oil that can be produced. Only the cheap oil has to run out for the US to be in a severe world of economic hurt.

Did you even read the article?

[Fallen Kell]

He talks EXACTLY WHY the solar power->electric->battery WON'T WORK! Because it will take over a decade for electric cars make it to most households even if we outlawed all non-electric car sales today! Cars have a life expectancy of 10 years or more, which means you will see that same 2007 car that was bought last year on the road until 2017 or later. The government could even outright outlaw all gas powered cars today and still you would not see a full uptake of electric or hybrid cars for several years because people can't afford to make the purchase. Again, it is usually every 3-4 years for someone to get a different car, but not necessarily a brand new car (usually a used one), and most cars will see at least 10 years and 3 owners. This means people expect to have 10 years to save up to purchase a brand new vehicle, or 3 years to save up for a several year old used one. Any change that would be significant would need to be able to affect ALL cars at the same time, not after 10 years. This is why a fuel change that can be used in existing cars is the method of choice to change our energy usage. Yes, keep the hybrids and electrics coming, but do the thing right now which can affect ALL cars right now! And let the 10+ year solution continue to work as well.

Which vehicles?

[copponex]

I'm sorry, hauling 3500 pounds of steel to carry one person and groceries using controlled explosions is monumentally stupid.

We need to conserve energy dense fuels for situations where they are are truly needed (emergency vehicles, long-haul transportation through sparse landscapes, aviation).

What people are upset about is that life is much less convenient when we're all not driving powerful vehicles than can carry 10 folks and tow a boat on a whim. Well, tough shit. You may have to carpool or take the bus. You may not be able to keep your own jetski in a garage a hundred miles from your lake house. These are privileges, not rights.

Algae based biodiesel is interesting, but again, we need to get away from ICEs except where they are absolutely necessary. An electric car can receive power from any source - nuclear, coal, and even biodiesel through small on-board generators. ICEs will always be addicted to one type of depletable resource - that derived from dead organic material.

Wait wait wait

[Calledor]

Are you actually advocating that brazil not mechanize the nearly 500 yearold process of sugar cane harvest? Are you nuts? Was industrialization something you found "quaint"?

Re:Wait wait wait

[MaskedSlacker]

'Progressives' always oppose progress if they think it benefits the capitalists more than the workers. Even when the workers still come out vastly ahead, just not as much ahead. And to head off the incoming replies, the median income in the US adjusted for inflation is seven times what it was a century ago, and several orders of magnitude above pre-industrial revolution levels (or for that matter, Brazil's current median income). So yes, industrialisation made everyone better off, even though all those farm laborers lost their jobs.

Re:Wait wait wait

[Anonymous Coward]

"So yes, industrialisation made everyone better off, even though all those farm laborers lost their jobs." So those farmers were better off because they had to uproot their lives and move to the city? They had to go through emotional issues of having the ground swept from underneath them? I think they would not have been so quick to praise the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution merely widened the gap between the "haves" and "have nots".

I think we are fooling ourselves if we think things are as rosie as ever. I remember when I was a kid my mother didn't have to work and my father earned a slightly better than average wage. The house we lived in was brand new, in a new estate on the shores of the largest saltwater lake in the southern hemisphere. The house cost my father 3 times his yearly wage.

I am at roughly the same age now, I have a new but fairly average house in a new estate and I earn about double the mean wage. My house is over 6 times my yearly wage. Are we really better off? Yes we have more gadgets but that is not what is best in life. We have been fooled into being hooked on consumerism.

Re:Wait wait wait

[Xenogyst]

"So yes, industrialisation made everyone better off"

Some of that is because we just changed where our poor are. The minimum wage in the Guangdong province, China (2004) is about $50-100 dollars a month, assuming 40 hours a weeks, is about $0.63-0.31 an hour. Which is about 12% of the current US minimum wage; roughly 8 times less.

The 3rd/2nd world is our real labor class.

Re:Wait wait wait

[AshtangiMan]

I suppose that for me the really infuriating thing about the oil company CEO is that he is raking in my tax dollars in the guise of subsidies. I'd rather the oil market was unsubsidized and deal with that reality, where if I don't like it I can choose not to support it. But now even though I chose not to buy oil (in the form of gasoline) the bastards still have a hand in my pocket. I'm not sure why that doesn't infuriate you too, though there have been some experiments which examine that phenomenon.

How about one of these...

[ayjay29]

There's been so many articles on what fuel, or what car is going to be big in the next few years. Seems to me we have had the answer around for a number of years.

I usually cycle to work in the summer, in Stockholm its quicker than driving or taking the subway, and parking is not a problem. It's easy to stay fit cycling and, provided you find a good route, probably a lot safer than driving.

There's bound to be a bunch of excuses about not having a great route to work, or living too far from work etc. But it's something to think about if you re-locate or change jobs. I have not owned a car for over 10 years, and for 9 of them i have commuted on an old city bike a got for $60. I've probably spent another $50 on maintainance in that time. Add in all the health benifits, and money saved, and it does seem to be a pretty sane option to consider.