OT of an OT: Ethanol

Atrocities · #1 March 26th, 2006, 04:16 PM

What your creating is alcohol. There is a huge myth that you need thousands of acres of land to make one gallon of alcohol fuel. That is simply untrue. If you take the combined US gross production of alcohol beverage in the US compared to the land used to make these products, you will find that per gallon of alcohol produced, less than 1/1000 of an acre of land is used.

Sugar is the primary ingrediant to making fuel. Keep that in mind. Corn fuel is just a very very very small part of the overall products that can be grown to make fuel. Sugar Beats take up very little space compared to the amount of sugar they make. Converting that sugar into fuel still yeilds a very healthy amount something on the order of 80%. Now this is all from memory mind you so my numbers could be off, but the truth is, alcohol fuel is more pratical than we have been led to believe.

Fyron · #2 March 26th, 2006, 05:13 PM

"What your creating is alcohol. There is a huge myth that you need thousands of acres of land to make one gallon of alcohol fuel. That is simply untrue."

Nobody posted such a statement though? What post are you reading? The study I had linked to talked about a _years_ worth of energy anyways...

"Corn fuel is just a very very very small part of the overall products that can be grown to make fuel."

I don't understand why you are so concerned about corn? The study had to pick something to analyze... Its not really possible, or even advisable, to analyze every single plant in one study. Part of suggesting we implement a new technology is determining whether or not it can work. Studies like this are a basic part of the scientific process.

=0=

Hey Will, go to your IRC window please.

Thermodyne · #3 March 26th, 2006, 05:58 PM

You make alcohol (hydrocarbon) with sugar (hydrocarbon), which most plants produce. Beets, Cane Sugar and Corn are the big three sources right now. And there is a good source for almost any agro climate. In the US, we hear about corn because the industry spends money to promote itself. Beets would probably be a better crop for production. A self renewing grass is the best. Problem with bio alcohol fuel is the energy it takes to make it and then the fact that takes 1.63 gallons of pure alcohol to equal the energy in a gallon of gas. As for emissions, we don�t wear gas masks in alky race gars because they look cool. One of the combustion byproducts of methanol is formaldehyde. Alcohol is hard to store, and it is so hydroscopic that it visibly absorbs water from the air. Also, methanol (the kind that comes from bio) is highly corrosive, it will eat through an aluminum fuel cell in less than a years worth of use. Bio only pans out if there is no oil. It does not offer a true source of substitute energy. Much of the promotion today is done in pursuit of US Federal subsidies. Public funds being spent on bio should be diverted into hydrogen research IMHO. Or�..Bio research should look at hydrocarbon based oils as fuel. Peanuts and soybeans being two sources already in production along with corn. It takes less energy to produce and returns more energy per gallon.

Jack Simth · #4 March 26th, 2006, 06:12 PM

Why burn sugar ethanol when we can Manufacture Crude Oil?

Which, incedentally, also gets us such useful things as plastic, in addition to fuel, takes no conversion of the existing distribution setup (just conversion in production - instead of pulling it out of the ground, farm and alter), and even allows for recycling. Assuming, of course, that the company's claims are accurate.

Thermodyne · #5 March 26th, 2006, 06:27 PM

Well from my poorly educated point of view, it is foolish to waste time and money on carbon based fuel sources. At some point in the future, we will reach the atmospheric tipping point for atmospheric carbon load. I would like to see a government backed push into hydrogen. Right now, the major challenges are basically just engineering, and money will usually push to technology past these kinds of barriers.

Jack Simth · #6 March 26th, 2006, 06:33 PM

Funny thing about that.... plants, and things that eat plants, have a net 0 atmospheric carbon impact when you burn the resulting fuel - plants took the carbon out of the air, animals ate the plants to get their carbon, carbon is bound up in the fuel, carbon goes back into the air when burned. Some of the carbon gets pulled out for things like excrement and plastics, so in general it will actually reduce the amount of carbon in the air, not increase it.

Might have a little problem if global warming is the only thing holding off an ice age, but hey, everything has risks.....

Biggest problem with hydrogen is that it only stores the energy used to split it; it doesn't capture it from the sun (like a plant does) in order to make hydrogen burning (to water, rather than helium....) a viable option, you first need more power than you plan to generate from burning the hydrogen. And even then, we still need plastics.

Captain Kwok · #7 March 26th, 2006, 06:58 PM

Yay! A good old biomass discussion!

Ethanol could work for the US in a limited capacity, such as replacing 15% or so of gasoline if developed well. Which is good! Like Jack Smith said, ethanol does not add any net CO2 emissions - like fossil fuels or even synthetic fossil fuels would. Bio-desiel is also gaining popularity, although it's a mixture of various fatty acids.

Corn is the most commonly used crop for ethanol in the US, but there are other alternatives (like Will mentioned, switchgrass etc) that have less environment impact.

Brazil's fuel industry was almost entirely ethanol-based from the mid-70s to the early 90s - until they had too many cars - so they've now got to import some gasoline. The main reason why Brazil was able to do this was sugarcane, which is one of the most efficient plants for making ethanol.

The holy grail of biomass is the ability to degrade cellulose effectively. A number of cellulose-degrading enzymes have been isolated from fungi and have been cloned into E. coli etc. for fermentation of organic materials.

Ethanol is probably best suited to displacing gasoline use, rather than as a power source. It'd be better to develop the other greener alternatives (hydro, wind, etc) for now.

Bio-plastics tend to be made out of cellulose or starch-based polymers and are really just starting to gain popularity. Right now a significant percentage of landfill is petro-plastics that will take forever to degrade, so they'll keep making up a higher and higher percentage of our refuse. You'll probably notice a few of the more green stores using starch-based bags.

Lastly, the hydrogen dream is nice but it's a little ways off. I think it will take the invention of something like fusion power to provide the amounts of extra electricity we'd need to split water into hydrogen. If that happens, then we might get lucky and see a new H2 economy.