my thoughts on ethanol, whats yours?

[sur3fir3]

Why ethanol is not viable as a fuel source:

To start you need to understand some things about corn.

To me one of the most important things to understand when it comes to growing corn is that it requires more fertilizer, fungicides, pesticides, etc etc than 99% of other crops grown. So the amount of fuel that goes intro producing it should be taken into consideration BEFORE working on the numbers for ethanol. There are papers out there that have this type of data, I will leave it to you if you are interested enough.

Secondly corn erodes the soil many times faster than and can replenish itself. The number I have seen estimated at was 18x faster.

The one issue about ethanol that I have seen many conflicting reports on is exactly how many BTUs it takes to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. I've seen numbers range from 116,000 Btu all the way down to 36,000 Btu (this is due to a dry processing system that uses less energy than the older wet system). It is pretty widely accepted that 1 gallon of ethanol produces 77,000 Btu. So you say wait a minute if its on the lower end of that scale you will produce more energy right? Wrong, in some cases.

The one thing this does not take into account is the first law of thermodynamics. (this part is out of my comfort zone of knowledge so I am using a source) From what I understand it depends on the efficiency of the engine, if its 25% efficient only 25% will goto power the other 75% is released as heat.

There are many other things I could go into that also show ethanol as being an unsustainable fuel source, but I don't want to bore you guys too much.

Now you may be wondering well if we don't use ethanol, electric, or anything based off of fossil fuels what can we use? I am not sure myself, but I do know that spent cooking oil works great in diesel engines when filtered properly. We could subsidize a restaurant's taxes if they donate their spent oil to be used as fuel or just pay them for it. Of course there are always solar charging stations.

The obvious fact is eventually we are going to have to find something besides fossil based fuels for our vehicles. it may be 50-100 years down the road, but it will happen. I am curious as to what you guys think about all this?

here are some reference links

http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/uploads/The_Many_Problems_of_Ethanol.pdf

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17166.cfm

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

 

[hamz9561]

I work with a lab that does fuel sampling as a contractor gathering the samples. Most metropolitan areas are now running a 10% (E10) ethanol blend to help combat pollution. Ethanol burns a lot cleaner, but has less energy by volume than petroleum based fuels.

Ethanol is currently based on corn but can be made from any plant material. Corn just happens to be the easiest for most producers to work with.

Bio-diesel is made with soybeans and can also be made with old cooking oil.

Synthetic Jet Fuel is also being made with grease recovered from larger metropolitan strom drains and sewers.

 

[sur3fir3]

I work with a lab that does fuel sampling as a contractor gathering the samples. Most metropolitan areas are now running a 10% (E10) ethanol blend to help combat pollution. Ethanol burns a lot cleaner, but has less energy by volume than petroleum based fuels.

Ethanol is currently based on corn but can be made from any plant material. Corn just happens to be the easiest for most producers to work with.

Bio-diesel is made with soybeans and can also be made with old cooking oil.

Synthetic Jet Fuel is also being made with grease recovered from larger metropolitan strom drains and sewers.

What do you think is going to happen to the energy market in the distant future? What would you do based on your experience? I am just trying to understand the different sources available, and the benefits/downfalls to them. Its a personal knowledge quest.

 

[frickenjoey]

Actually I think they found that grass clippings was a better producer than corn was. There are a lot of alternitives out there, we just have to find and use them. The oil market does not want us to find other sources, no money in it for them. I am all about finding other sources that we can use but we have to spend the money to find it.

 

[sur3fir3]

the whole energy industry is lackluster when it comes to anything that would provide fuel cheap and easy for the masses.

 

[hamz9561]

When I was in high school, we actually produced ethanol from grass clippings and it was cheap to do.

I had actually thought about getting the necessary equipment to make my own bio-diesel when I was driving a diesel truck. I think that bio-fuels are the future and that we need to investigate better ways to make it using cast-off materials such as corn stalks and other things like it.

 

[SMaxxin]

IMO regardless of what the future fuel will be I see no change for the consumer.

 

[dub c]

corn is food... so we shouldnt burn it. I believe that diesel will be around for a long time. It will be a long time before we see electric cars. There is just not enough coal fired power plants to charge that many batteries, not to mention power lost in our grid. We are stuck in the paradigm that nuclear is off limits, but thats were the abundance of power is at.

 

[moe7404]

I as a young teenager i started reading everything i could about cars, and fuels. we have had gasoline for OVER 100 years. yes it has its bad points and its good points. but we still have it for good reasons. BUT ethanol has NO lube ability. to compensate i use marvel mystery oil in the gasoline. check out http://www.ampcolubes.com/ to lube the valves, and piston.

 

[2revo1maxx]

I agree with Joey!

It's been done already. We have all the answers. The problem is infrastructure and the corporate machine that is big oil, who just happens to run this country.
Nobody cares about the environment when there's billions of dollars to be made!

 

[flm_savage]

+1 for big oil. The industry is far more than just gas.