| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 3:07:24 PM | just want to put this up for discussion to see what the general thoughts are about the use of ethanol in fuel and e85 fuel. from what i understand south america use both to a great extent but not sure how fuel independent they are because of it...
on what could be a positive note to consider is we havent had to send anyone be it military or otherwise to guard a corn field..
whats the thoughts | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 3:28:08 PM | | There is a study out just in the last week confirming what scientists have been saying for some time. Ethanol and other biofuels are not green. They do not save resources, but instead contribute to the problem in terms of land use. By the time you use the oil resources to plant, fertilize, insectisize, and pesticize, not to mention turn it into gasoline and transport it several times, you would have been better off just turning that origninal oil to gas the conventional way. Basically, it takes a barrel to make a barrel plus you have just tied up a bunch of land that might be a better carbon sink as forest land. You also have to take into account the fact there are already food shortages in some areas attributed to use of crops for biofuels rather than food. The study did leave open the use of sugar cane as boifuel such as used in Brazil. There is a higher energy value in sugar that might make it feasible. How are the prospects for growing sugar in Illinois? Ethanol is a band wagon a lot of people jumped on without doing their research, including a lot of politicians. People more desperate than us tried making biofuels did little but starve their people. I am thinking of Japan and Germany in WWII. When oil supplies ran low, they tried making fuel from natural materials. They found it is possible to make it but it was a poor substitute and lots of people starved in the process. | |
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~MPR~
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Joined: 2/14/2008
Msg: 3 | |
| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 4:14:34 PM | | You can get more ethanol from wheat grass or hemp at a much lower cost than corn. Imagine how happy the pedestrians will be walking around in hemp emmisions :) | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 4:15:16 PM | | ucla at berkleys 2004 study looks to have shown that we get 1.2 gallon of fuel for every one consumed... | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 4:25:53 PM | yes i have seen those studies. the people would spend lots of time at the crosswalks... the problem with those base stocks are the difficulties on transportation and logistics..
we have a ethonal plant 10 miles from here... the stock has payed very good dividends and the value of stock was a dollar a share to get in and now it is around 10 dollars now... the feed left over goes for livestock production.
there is a new one being developed that uses the methane from livestock waste to fire the plant so that it doesnt consume energy to produce the heat.. .. but it seems its like i read once.. if you give a researcher enough money he will forget what he knows about his subject.. thats not the exact one but it was used in the documentary an inconvenent truth | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 4:34:52 PM | | " It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it " Upton Sinclair from the film an inconvenient truth....everyone should have to watch it | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 4:45:49 PM | I think there are so many, as it was put, "bandwagon" jumpers... Its like herding cats. Lots of people, as it was said, dont do the research.
Although walking around in Hemp fumes sounds good to me!!!
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 5:00:54 PM | We need to go to a hydrogen based fuel, like one of the Scandiavain countries did
burns clean, good old hydrogen di-oxide a green house gas as a by-product forget the
ethanol, that sounds good on paper, get govt subsidies to build your plant, take more land out of usage for crops, perpetual motion doesn't work, your burning fuel to make fuel, you always end up with less
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 5:18:05 PM | Farmer1 is right about the 1.2 return on producing ethanol. I actually read an article where the average ethanol plant gets a 1.3 return. So there is a benefit there. Also ethanol is not the only product coming from corn and other bio fuel sources. There are distillers grains, gluton, oils, plastics, protien supplements etc. The production of ethanol is going to continue to get more effecient. The reason is money. When there is a profit to be had production gets more efficient.
Zittyzoda wrote
People more desperate than us tried making biofuels did little but starve their people. I am thinking of Japan and Germany in WWII. When oil supplies ran low, they tried making fuel from natural materials. They found it is possible to make it but it was a poor substitute and lots of people starved in the process.
But you can't compare technology from 1943 to 2008. Today we can grow five times as much corn on an acre of land that we could in the 1940s. Plus the quality in bio fuels of today is far greater than that of the 40s. The efficiency is better. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/21/2008 9:47:38 PM |
Ethanol and other biofuels are not green.
Here's what the Argonne National Laboratory says about that:
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/media_center/news_stories/20080214_response.html
We need to go to a hydrogen based fuel
That's the last thing we need. That just changes the oil company to an oil company that sells hydrogen. We need to go electric and where at all possible recharge with solar or wind at home and do away with the oir compamy paradign and the infrastructure that comes with it.
This is why hydrogen gets govt research millions in the US and why electric cars get killed off - that want gas stations forever and don't care what the gas is.
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/22/2008 3:01:59 PM | | i remember seeing the documentary about the ev 1 that was built by i think it was gm,, you couldnt buy one but you could lease one.. of all of those that were on the road i believe they were good cars but only one deactivated one is left ..in a private collection.. the rest were destroyed.... anyone else remember or know about the ev1 | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/22/2008 5:50:27 PM | This is the problem that I have with using "green" fuels like e85 or ethanol is that they are still carbon based fuels. Granted they have a lower carbon content than typical gasoline and have fewer impurities, but they are carbon fuels nonetheless.
I didn't read all of the above posts, so if I say something someone else said, I apologize.
From what I know, gasoline has between 5 and 12 carbon atoms per molecule. From what I have read, e85 has 1 carbon atom and ethanol has 2 carbon atoms per molecule. The thing is that, in combustion carbon bonds with the oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Granted the "green" fuels would produce far lower levels of CO1 and CO2, but the still produce them.
This is my thinking. We have become petroleum dependent, and would likely do the same with the "green" fuels. The ony reason we are likely to stop petroleum production is that we are running out and eventually the cost will exceed the benefit.
What would be the incetive for the world consumer to stop using "corn gas." It is completely renewable.
I don't know the right answer, but I personally think we should be focusing on hydrogen. I know at the moment hydrogen production is dirty, because it usually relies on coal based power to produce, but eventually we will have better alternatives. If we are going to burn carbon fuels to either produce more carbon fuels or hydrogen, I would think hydrogen is the better choice. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 2:14:00 PM | ROFL....
I think there are WAY too many Environmental WACKO'S who think that carbon is going to kill us....
PEOPLE... How long ago, or do NONE of you remember the hole in the Ozone layer??? Remember the mass hysteria over that?? We were ALL going to die....
I remember when I was 15.... The biggest craze.. We were all going to die from the second ice age.....
Does anyone, or has anyone ever seen those bio-sphere's? the ones that have the two shrimp and some algae in it? the shrimp live off the algae, the algae live off of the sulight and scrub/replace the oxygen in the water for the shrimp.
Okay... WE LIVE IN A BIOSPHERE!!!! I could completely understand if there were some ALIEN Life Form dumping its garbage into our oceans, and ADDING pollution to our 'sphere' but there isnt.... What we have is what we have.... its a CLOSED system...
The hole in the ozone closed up..... and we were supposed to ALL be dead in 10 years... They are discovering old abandoned silver mines that were covered by glaciers, that now are not... They have discovered evidence of tropical forrests in some place like Utah....
THE HOTTEST recorded year was in either 1838 or 1938 .... WTF... ITS all about control.... FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!!!
If the government (laughable) outlaws the incandescent (spelling??) light bulb, who do you think is set to make the most money?? GE!
Who has a pretty tight monopoly on wind power generating fields?? GE!
Who do you think owns a majority of stock in the solar power panal businesses?? GE!!
For Christs Sake!! FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!
Al Gore is an IDIOT........ Why wont he run for the presidency?? because he would have to defend his mis-representation of global warming hysteria.... The earth warms and cools.. its a fact of life. Who The Flip is running this crap house bandwaggon?? Chicken little???
Do I think your arguements about hydrogen fuels are false?? No.. I think its a good plan.. lets investigate it.. Alternative engergy?? Good lets figure it out...
but lets get the wacko's out of the flippin way of progress... they dont want us to burn carbon based fuel.... okay, lets go nuke... Oh.. cant do that.. because of the radiation... Where are we supposed to go then?
I got it, lets all get horses, and live off the land.... Oh, but then horses create methane gass... cant have that.... so do cows.. so we cant have them around either... Oh crap.. HUMANS create Carbon gas every time they breathe!!!! Quick!!! STOP BREATHING!!!!!!! EVERYONE , WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 3:33:53 PM | .
Nice rant!
Another thing is that it takes nearly twice as much ethanol to go the same distance as gas. There is maybe about 2/3'rds the amount of energy in eth than gas per gallon. Its a nice way to water down gas though.
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 4:10:39 PM |
i remember seeing the documentary about the ev 1 that was built by i think it was gm,, you couldnt buy one but you could lease one.. of all of those that were on the road i believe they were good cars but only one deactivated one is left ..in a private collection.. the rest were destroyed.... anyone else remember or know about the ev1
There's a whole documentary on it called Who Killed the Electric Car?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/
Its a really good vid on how GM just up and refused to renew anyones lease after they were over and ended up destroying almost everyone. There is one left, with the computer deactivated at the Smithsonian I believe. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 4:54:18 PM | "But you can't compare technology from 1943 to 2008. Today we can grow five times as much corn on an acre of land that we could in the 1940s. Plus the quality in bio fuels of today is far greater than that of the 40s. The efficiency is better."
However, the technology that allows us to produce more per acre is based on availability of oil. Petrochemicals is the base the of agriculture industry. Also, in 1943 most people had the know how and resources to grow their own food. Not so today. Ever try to plant a vegetable garden where someone has been growing corn with today's methods. Forget it, the land is ruined and unproductive without massive inputs. The gist of the other posts confirm my preposition, biofuels are really not any more efficient. You can only squeeze so much blood out of a turtle. If the energy is not in the matter you are using to begin with, it is not going to improve with "methods". A previous poster is right. Even if supposes you can get an extra 1/3 of a gallon (I do not agree with that) you get a product that does not get you as many MPG's as fossil fuel. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 6:10:34 PM | .
thanks for the heads up crzy!
Here are the rest :)
Who killed The Electric Car?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4429321495619730722
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5417577893196876283
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4722269089148322066
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1545020908287729580
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3030154020940689636
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8857369584861443152
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9009376695713596354
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2322988410521039437
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1181119689258442715
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/23/2008 8:25:00 PM | | yes we also grow certified by the illinois dept of ag organic beans.. means no fertizer herbicides or pesticides.... crops grow good but sometimes there are bug feeding issues... | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/24/2008 4:33:30 PM | Ethanol's EROI or energy return on input is between 0.8 and 1.2 - miserable in the face of the 5:1 payback the Brazilians get with their sugar cane efforts.
There is a significant improvement in ethanol production from not drying the distiller's grain - it can be fed straight into a digester and used to produce methane which can feed the front end heating and grain drying requirements. The extraction of corn oil for biodiesel doesn't impact ethanol yields either, but I'm not so up on the energy yield.
The bottom line on all of this is that global oil production peaked in May of 2005 and we have a hell of a mess. Everything we have in the U.S. is car dependent and I don't think we'll be driving all that much longer. I look for a collapse in housing space - maybe a sixth to a third of all homes going empty, lots of ad hoc mass transit like in other poor places, and a full throttle attempt to rebuild our rail infrastructure. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/24/2008 4:34:48 PM | | How true...I went from getting 24mpg right down to 15 mpg..So now I drive to Kansas for my fuel.Not to mention it being hard on your fuel pump,plus making your engine run cooler | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/24/2008 5:33:29 PM | I would like to see a study done that uses lawn waste as a feed stock and then use waste heat such as that from a electric generation plant to refine fuel grade alcohol....On a small scale, I have been tinkering with a pot still and have found that distillation is very difficult. Popular Science came out with an article Janurary 1981 on page 90 detailing some of the problems associated with ethanol as a fuel. As a farmer I think you might be able to swing it if you raise hogs and feed the fermented residue to them.
Here is another thought, If you live in a wind belt, you might try generating hydrogen by the elctrolysis of water using a wind charger. This has been done before. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/24/2008 5:41:45 PM | | PS. I used to believe in the greenhouse/carbon dioxide theory but I dont now. Yes I believe global warming is occuring but it is the result of an increase in sunspots. I stumbled on this when I was trying to find out if this was the year we could plant corn in the vegetable garden. I looked up the sunspot history to predict what the climate would be like for the year and found that there seems to be a steady increase in the number over the century. There were times when sunspots dramaticly decreased and there were really severe winters. In the 70's we had small decrease and we had a great deal of rain in Oklahoma in that decade. In 1980 we had the worst drought anyone could remember and the oldtimers were comparing it to that of the 30's. That was a peak year for sunspots. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/24/2008 8:06:31 PM | I saw who killed the electric car. That's where I noticed Bush gave millions for "hydorgen research" which of course went to oil companies who woule be needed to dispense any dangerous fluid or gas. Their insistance about being still "in the loop" is reason enough I'd think, to find a way to circumvent them.
An answer of course is not ethanol, it's oil, as in biodiesel. Or you can burn canola or soy oil directly. Modern diesels are so clean in some polluted cities the exhaust is literally cleaner than the air going into the engine.
A back of the envelope calculation says 2 acres of canola makes about enough oil in a season for an average year of driving.
With no need for an oil company. Which is why you'll only hear this talk from farmers and engineers, never in the mainstream media. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 2/29/2008 2:20:35 PM | Another disadvantage. It requires
huge amounts of water resources to produce ethanol. There are challenges
in several states to use of aquifers by ethanol producers who suck out huge amounts of water.
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10766882uses huge amounts of water. | |
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| ethanol and e85
Posted: 3/10/2008 8:15:09 AM | Just curious.... if its regular fuel, or bio fuel........ They both produce carbon dioxide...
Isnt it the end product that everyone is so concerned about??? | |
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