What about Ethanol? 5

[JimCasey]

I try not to be cynical >BUT< I am not seeing a technical benefit to Ethanol.
1. It takes as much energy to make as it returns. There are precious few eco-hybrid tractors and combines out there plowing and harvesting the cornfields, but plenty John Deere Diesels.
2. Cars get poorer mileage so the cost per mile increases when burning E85 or even 10% ethanol.
3. Displaces farmland used to grow food: THe price of corn has already risen noticebly
4. CO2 and Water vapor are both produced by ethanol combustion. Even the H2 Fuel-cell lobby has dodged the observation that WATER VAPOR is a more potent greenhouse gas than almost any other component.
5. Vast quantities of CO2 produced in the fermentation process.
6. Ethanol plants are being built with the cheapest (and no, I don't mean least expensive) components. This suggests that the ethanol manufacturers expect it to be a short-lived demand and want to grab the quick bucks up front. Also implied is a sacrifice in safety.
7. Residual corn products after ethanol production are converted to Cattle Feed, (also at a high cost of energy in drying, packaging, and transportation, and methane production in bovine flatulent discharge.)

SO as I see it the Birkenstock crowd gets to feel good when they narrowly define their system and they just measure the specific exhaust components of their prius after filling the tank with E85, but in reality a tank of E85 does more harm to the ecosystem/planetary entropy balance than a tank of Sunoco 260.

I'm open to reeducation, but there is more to ecology than wearing tie-dyes and singing coom-bye-ya.
Next I will rant about the ecological footprint of compact fluorescents vs traditional incandescent bulbs.

 

[cranky108]

By rasing the price of corn, dosen't the goverment reduce the amount of farmer wealfare given?

 

[moltenmetal]

cranky: you've got a point, but do you really think that there's a net reduction in money out of government coffers and into the pockets of farmers as a result of ethanol production? Doubt it seriously. Ethanol does sop up some of the (enormous) excess agricultural capacity in the US, which does drive up the prices such that we all pay more: that's good, because grains were WAY too cheap before. The farmers earn more, so they pay more in taxes. It definitely benefits farmers, which isn't a bad thing- better them than giving the money straight to ADM, Cargill or the like!

One thing is sure: the Europeans and others, who have complained bitterly for decades about US agricultural subsidy policy (while maintaining their own, similar subsidies), are much more favourably disposed towards agricultural subsidy related to ethanol production than they are toward similar subsidies for food production. Corn made into ethanol is no longer available for dumping on the world markets.

 

[IAAWVU05]

I found something interesting regarding this topic.

I browsed through the site and clicked on a link that said "busting the ethanol myths".

Here it is.

http://www.permaculture.com/node/490

This guy either thoroughly researched this topic, or is one whacked out hippie (maybe both)

 

[ewh]

From the permaculture site:

"Even if, for alcohol production, we used only what the USDA considers prime flat cropland, we would still have to produce only 368.5 gallons of alcohol per acre to meet 100% of the demand for transportation fuel at today’s levels."

Cool! Forget about all of those other crops. Grow them on the marginal land and devote the prime land to ONLY alcohol production!
Who needs food? Sounds logical to me

Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare

 

[IAAWVU05]

ewh

- You're assuming that nothing grows on the "marginal" land.

Remember that "prime" cropland is only HALF of the TOTAL agricultrual farmland.

So going by what you said, we would only use 46.2% (434,164,946/939,279,056) of our total crop land to farm fuel.

I'm sure we could grow SOMETHING out of the other 53.8% of the total agricultrual land. It's not like the "prime" land is very fertile soil and the "marginal land" is a bunch of rocks. I'm pretty sure that if regular people who have gardens in their back yard can grow more vegetables that you can shake a stick at on less than an acre, we probably won't need to worry about food vs. fuel. Because if some average joe can grow enough crops in his back yard to feed the neighborhood, then I'm confident that the professional farmers can grow enough to feed the nation on "marginal" lands.

 

[ewh]

Sorry, that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare

 

[IAAWVU05]

sorry, I can't pick up on tongue-in-cheek on forums.

 

[cranky108]

So why are we only using corn? Why can't we use sugar cane, or sugar beets, or sorgum, or apples, or several others.
The fact is what we buy in the store are the good fruit. What happens to the not so good fruit, and slightly spoiled grains, or out-of-date candy, the not humanly eatable grains?
I guess we just toss them in a landfill.

 

[btrueblood]

No, a lot of it goes for pig food.

 

[BJC]

A lot of it goes for pig food but it has to be cooked first.
The feeding of garbage to pigs has been outlawed.

Until the introduction of the moderen hog concentration camps, Los Angeles had the largest hog ranch in the world. Garbage picked up daiily in LA and there abouts was sent to east of town and fed to hogs. It was outlawed in the early 50s I believe.

 

[DonPhillips]

I understand Brazil is using sugar beets for ethanol production because it yields more ethanol and uses less energy to produce. However, I understand they have an almost non-existant farm lobby.

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[KENAT]

I think I brought up the issue of beats in another previous post on ethanol or something cranky108.

Other than the 'big corn' issue (all the subsidies, ingrained culture etc) is there some other reason/s why they are using corn not beats?

I tried to find out if beets are more energy dense than corn but a quick google didn't give me a conclusive answer although it suggested they were. Also I'm not sure if more or less land is suitable for beets etc. Then there's the possible issue of if combines and other equipment are readily available for corn while there may not be as much beet equipment around etc.

Either way, the corn thing just seems like they're using it because there was a glut of it making it cheap, not necessarily because it's the best candidate.

As to why not to use cane, I don't believe cane generally grows well further away from the equator.

Perhaps butanol is a better alternative?

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18443/

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[moltenmetal]

Er, they grow sugarcane in Brazil, not sugar beets...Sugar beets were an alternative to cane sugar which we could grow here in North America. The majority of the world's sugar is derived from cane, not beets, for a reason: cane's a cheaper source.

The reason they're using corn in North America is that the grain itself is an inexpensive source of starch which is basically polysugar. The fermentation bugs are just as happy to digest starch as sugar. The cellulose in the corn stalks, not so much.

 

[YoungTurk]

I believe there is an important point which seems to always be missed in the ethanol debate. Although I agree that corn ethanol is not going to be an economically viable alternative to gasoline in the long term, what we have with ethanol is a chicken-or-the-egg problem. In order to develope viable sources of ethanol, significant investments will have to be made. However, if no ethanol vehicles are on the road, if no distilleries exist, then no return can reasonably be expected on investment into improved production technology.

If existing distilleries can be retrofitted to incorporate new technologies as they come available, reducing the true price of ethanol, and cars are on the road ready to burn the fuel as it becomes cheaper, then there is incentive for investment.

 

[moltenmetal]

youngturk: you're confusing ethanol with hydrogen: there's no chicken and egg problem here. Ethanol works just fine in ordinary internal combustion vehicles as long as you add at least a little petroleum gasoline. There's a ready market for the product. There's no special infrastructure, aside from the construction of the production facilities themselves, required to utilize ethanol as a fuel. There are minor problems with the distribution channels (ie. pipelines designed for mineral gasoline etc.), but these are truly minor when compared with the challenges associated with alternatives like LPG much less hydrogen!

People have been making ethanol for millenia- it's the definition of a "mature technology". Order of magnitude improvements in the energetics of this technology are unlikely.

It would be best if we'd all just STOP holding out hope that we can continue with "business as usual" as far as the personal automobile is concerned. There's no magical technological fix out there to make the fossil fuel dependence of the car just go away. We can make cars smaller and more efficient and use them less- that we can do- but we'll only do that if we're forced to by fuel price: that's a fact. Until we fix the far easier problems related to fossil fuels use- the ones associated with non-moving users of energy (ie. heating and electricity generation)- there's absolutely no point to even trying to mess with transportation fuels.

 

[KENAT]

moltenmetal, not sure who your first few lines were aimed at "Er, they grow sugarcane in Brazil, not sugar beets...Sugar beets were an alternative to cane sugar which we could grow here in North America. The majority of the world's sugar is derived from cane, not beets, for a reason: cane's a cheaper source."

I don't think anyone implied they were growing beets in Brazil or did I miss something? Also part of my point was that when it comes to making sugar Beets are the cold weather alternative and hence, when it comes to making ethanol should they be the cold weather alternative?

As to the corn being inexpensive, that was my question. Is (or was) it inexpensive because it's genuinely cheaper or because of all the subsidies etc? When you take this into account would Beets be better, at least some significant amount of the time?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[YoungTurk]

I am quite sure I understand the difference between ethanol and hydrogen.

People have been making ethanol for millenia- it's the definition of a "mature technology". Order of magnitude improvements in the energetics of this technology are unlikely.

Ethanol has not been made as a fuel for millenia, unless your talking about fueling frat parties. Cellulosic ethanol, yeast alternatives, and improved efficiency in distillation all represent areas where order of magnitude improvements are potential.

Ethanol works just fine in ordinary internal combustion vehicles as long as you add at least a little petroleum gasoline.

My car will run on E20, but I'd never dump E85 in. There is a reason cars need to be designed for E85. The modifications are minor, but there are modifications required. Furthermore, if you eliminate the requirement for flexible fueling, which could only be accomplished if sufficient numbers of fueling stations were available, ethanol only engines could acheive significantly higher efficiency by running at higher compression suited to the higher octane of the fuel.

 

[moltenmetal]

YoungTurk said: "Cellulosic ethanol, yeast alternatives, and improved efficiency in distillation all represent areas where order of magnitude improvements are potential."

My opinion about cellulosic ethanol is on the record here, and supported by the absence of any commercial cellulosic ethanol plant to date despite 40-50 years of development effort.

The underlying thermodynamics of the separation processes are well known and preclude order-of-magnitude improvements in the dehydration of a fermentation broth.

Ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen have all been used by politiicans ot justify a politically expedient fairy tale: that one day we'll invent a consequence-free alternative to gasoline which will permit the automotive status quo to continue. And there are too many engineers and businesspeople willing to sell that particular brand of snake oil. While the fairy tale continues to be believed, no real progress is possible. We need to get real, and quick.

 

[YoungTurk]

People tried to fly for hundreds of years. The argument that flight was impossible was supported by no flight despite hundreds of years of developement effort! (By the way, SunOpta built the first cellulosic ethanol plant 20 years ago, in France.) I believe that within five years we'll see whether ethanol can make a difference.

Ten years ago there were no ethanol plants and no retail ethanol outlets in my area. Today there is a plant down the road and many E85/E20/E10 stations along my commute.

Real funding for cellulosic ethanol research dried up after oil prices dropped in the seventies. Funding has only recently returned to similar levels. Also, look at advances in biotechnology. This type of tech wasn't available until the last 5 years, and it will continue to change the game. How long before someone engineers an organism or enzyme which can double the rate or concentration of conversion?

I don't disagree that there are people willing to wave energy red herrings to maintain the status quo. I also believe there are people willing to decry ethanol, to maintain the gasoline status quo.

 

[cranky108]

To me ethanol is something like a a non-realistic silver bullet, like wind, solar, and mass transportation. It has some good points and some bad. And tax credits may be what is needed to encurage development, but don't expect that in 2 weeks it will solve the oil problem.

The real point I see is that our leaders don't understand the the techinical issues. And we as engineers need to look at teaching them, or better replacing them with more intellegent people (statesmen).

The driveing factor here is and will be the cost of energy in what ever form, or the paying off of our leaders.