Edmunds.com | Inside Line | Auto Observer Your Account | Help | Directory
You are here:
![[F]](http://a332.g.akamai.net/f/332/936/12h/www.edmunds.com/media/townhall/webxicons/site.gif){kind=small}
Forums
Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
921 messages, Last post on Oct 07, 2009 at 10:53 AM
You are in the Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
|
Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 8:26 pm) Recent articles in Scientific American, National Geographic, and Consumer Reports all describe the much higher energy efficiency of ethanol production from sugar cane, compared to corn. Are you unaware of this?
|
|
|
Replying to: texases (Jun 14, 2008 8:33 pm) |
|
|
Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 8:26 pm) Field corn used in ethanol cant be eaten by people. I know you are smarter than that. If you are growing corn for ethanol you are NOT growing wheat, soy or any other food product. If all you read is the propaganda put out by the ethanol industry. You will have a very skewed perspective on the subject. Dumping more fertilizer, made with natural gas to produce more corn is a BAD thing. You really need to study two important things. One is the run-off into the rivers ending in the Gulf. And the aquifer that is being depleted to grow these huge corn crops. You don't seem much into facts so I will post a few for you to contemplate. Officials with Pilgrim's Pride, the largest chicken processor in the U.S., announced this week the company will close a chicken processing complex and six of its 13 distribution centers in the United States in response to the crisis facing the U.S. chicken industry from soaring feed-ingredient costs resulting from corn-based ethanol production. http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/ag/story/data/12- - 05415188705.xml http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/speakout/science/jan-june08/ethanol_3-19.html Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices. But the Senate's plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than seven billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers. Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that's only a fraction of ethanol's total water habit. Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O. Backers of the Senate bill say that less-thirsty technologies are just around the corner, which is what we've been hearing for years. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119258870811261613.html |
|
|
Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 7:55 pm) The ultimate fact remains that very little, if any, net energy is produced by making ethanol from corn. This is a dead end. Until and unless we can produce lots of ethanol from other sources like switchgrass it is a dumb idea and we are not going to reduce our reliance on foreign oil. The problem with growing lots of plants (either switchgrass or corn or something else) is that a) this takes land, which competes for food and cattle uses; and b) it takes water, which is also a scarce and getting scarcer commodity. Sorry, I just don't see ethanol making any sizable dent in this problem. I suggest we expend the same energy focusing on better efficiency, solar, and wind power to make more electricity. |
|
|
Part of the BIG profits at the oil companies is a direct result of increased Corn production for Ethanol. The over production of CORN has caused a shortage of fertilizers. Duh ShellCan had a side business everyone ignored: sulfur. It removed the ugly (yellow), smelly, unloved substance from crude oil and gas to make it cleaner-burning. Luckily, there was a use for the waste: more than 60% of the world's produced sulfur is used by makers of phosphate fertilizer to separate phosphate from mined rocks in order to make plant food. Turns out Canada is the world's leading exporter of sulphur, and ShellCan among the top producers, making about two million tonnes per year, or 16% of global exports. That didn't count for much until recently. But if you've been paying attention to news from the farm, demand and prices for crops and fertilizer have soared in the past two years. Take it down a notch to sulphur, and suddenly, that stench is the smell of money. A year ago, (10 years ago, too) sulphur sold for US$60/ tonne. Today, it is US$650. It's simple supply and demand: there used to be more sulphur produced than needed. There is now a worldwide shortage of about two million tonnes. http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=180f7446-5e77-4db5-- a5cd-4a1129ed973d http://www.purchasing.com/article/CA6564115.html A February story in the Ames (Iowa) Tribune says “the pricing of sulfuric acid, a manufacturing commodity used in the production of metals and fertilizer, has soared due in part to the increased additional demand from the manufacture of ethanol fuel.” http://www.purchasing.com/article/CA6554638.html?q=sulfur |
|
|
Replying to: texases (Jun 14, 2008 8:12 pm) Unfortunately, we're never going to GET to cellulosic without specific mandates for it: no one's going to invest in any research into it. We didn't mandate corn ethanol as a step towards cellulosic...everyone knows that the two are completely different processes. The ethanol subsidies are a handout to agribusiness and a sop to the super-greenies. As long as they're subsidized they'll produce...and as we've seen, when the subsidies dry up, so does the ethanol. Now the Saudis are going to attempt to exert downward pressure on oil prices in order to reduce the likelihood of investment into other technologies (making it a worse investment because gas is cheaper again). So corn-based Ethanol will go away when the subsidies disappear, the Saudis will open the taps and lower gas prices, interest in cellulosic will dry up, and we'll be right back into the status quo. Which the Saudis and XOM want anyway. Cynical? Yes. But probably also true.
|
|
|
Replying to: bpizzuti (Jun 15, 2008 5:27 am) If Congress had allocated money to research and develop other methods of producing biofuel, that would have been good. They did just as you have said. They just paid off the Ag lobby and pacified the Greenies. Though now that corn ethanol is showing so many negative attributes the Greenies are distancing themselves from the stuff. Three environmental Views of Corn Ethanol Biofuels as currently rendered in the U.S. are doing great things for some farmers and for agricultural giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, but little for the environment. Corn requires large doses of herbicide and nitrogen fertilizer and can cause more soil erosion than any other crop. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/biofuels/biofuels-text IS ETHANOL GREEN?....There are probably some of you out there who believe that not everything in the world can be put into chart form. On Thursday, for example, I wrote that "corn ethanol is a boondoggle," and that probably seems like an un-chartable statement. But it's not. After all, one can always chart how much of a boondoggle something is. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011340.php It’s almost considered conventional wisdom at this point that corn ethanol probably isn’t the best biofuel out there. It may not be the primary cause of global food shortages, but corn-based ethanol has nevertheless has gotten a bad rap lately. Here’s something that won’t change that tarnished reputation: Ethanol Expansion Contributes to Increase Runoff According to Louisiana State University professor R. Eugene Turner growth in the Midwest corn-based biofuel industry may be the cause of a record-breaking “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico this summer. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/06/ethanol-worsens-deadzone.php |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 7:55 pm) Maybe you can define soon. Geologically, soon might be a million years. 
|
|
|
|
|
Replying to: tfb27 (Jun 14, 2008 8:09 pm) That would be true if the refineries had the ability to switch easily from gasoline to diesel. The current high diesel prices suggest that they cannot do that in the near term. In a few years, with new equipment, refineries should theoretically be able to adjust. |
|
|
|
|
Replying to: texases (Jun 14, 2008 1:43 pm) Interesting point. I had not considered that. Somebody in Wiki made the same point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85 All this talk of compression ratios brought up my little engine building experience from 25+ years ago. I sent the Aluminum head in from my engine to be worked on at a race shop. Some yahoo shaved the top of the head after taking the cam towers off. After bolting down the head, and torquing everything down, the cam would barely turn. The cam towers didn't align right. The solution was to send the head back and have the bottom of the head shaved. With everything nice and straight, life was good, or was it! I had upgraded from stock 8.5:1 pistons to 240Z pistons, which if memory serves me right were 9.5:1. Some of you may know that if you take off material on the bottom of the head you are basically reducing the volume at top of the stroke. The compression ratio goes up. A friend had a setup that allowed me to CC the head. After doing the calculations the number was, you guessed it, 12.5:1. Oh ____!!!!!! Am I going to need to go to the Airport to fill up with 105 octane AV gas????? The solution was to spend 40 hours with a Dremel tool carefully removing material from the head. Got everything really shiny and smooth. The final number was 10.5:1. Not great, but livable as long as I kept the timing conservative. The engine went on to provide many thousands of miles of good service. All's well that ends well.
|
|
You are here:
Forums
Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
New? Join Now!
Forum Tools
Search Forums
Browse by Vehicle
Browse by Board
Browse by Topic
Today's Chats
