Snake......... Hydrogen MAY become viable but always at a high cost.

I like low tech, like alcohol and old Ford trucks. Hi-tech always ends up costing a lot more.

 

The cost will drop as supply rises. Thats in the future though.

I prefer old ford trucks to, thats why I like Hydrogen. Ever see the 69 Shelby cobra with a 427 converted to run purely on hydrogen? You don't lose power with it like you do with ethanol.

 

The big issues with petroleum alternatives is that when you take into account the entire cost of production, gasoline and diesel still come out ahead. Petroleum would have to be much more expensive to be beaten out by alternatives.

There are a couple countries who run alcohol only, by law. It is more of a political issue since if you take into account the fuel and fertilizers etc to make fuel stock(corn) and then the energy to process, you get out less net energy than you put in. The only advantages are that you can use energy sources that are underutilized and you can thumb your nose at OPEC. Without huge subsidies from the gov, ie your taxes, alternative fuels don't make sense financially.

There are cars that do run on alcohol/gas mixes just fine and there are some commercial versions running something like 85% alky and they do not cost an arm and a leg. Biodiesel is also catching on.

Alcohol is not nearly as explosive as gasoline, gas is nasty stuff when you think about it. The one disadvantage to alky is that it is hard to see the flame in day light. It burns kind of blue and that is hard to see. I have had an alcohol fire and it is nowhere near as exciting as gasoline.

These fuels are really tree hugging dirt eating druid solutions and knee jerk political statements. They don't work if you look at the net energy versus real cost.

Much as some people hate petroleum, it is still the most cost effective fuel for our uses, even after more than 100 years of looking for alternates.

I don't think we will find an alternate until OPEC goes insane or we finally figure out Fusion or some other real energy source. Windmils and solar are just Don Quixote jousting. It all comes down to money and what we are willing to pay. That is why OPEC is able to get away with what they do. And I doubt they will ever kill the goose that lays the golden egg, except for political reasons or when they run out. Till then you squeeze the goose for all it is worth.

Think about it, I am personally paying at least 10 times what I paid for gas back when I first started to drive. I am paying 3 times what I paid as little as 6 years ago. Have I cut my driving? Not much. Have I bought a tiny hybrid, no. I still drive a 11mpg truck, a 17mpg van and a 20mpg car. Most of us still drive almost as much as we did 10 years ago.

We are the geese,

Jim Henderson

 

Quote: "There are a couple countries who run alcohol only, by law. It is more of a political issue since if you take into account the fuel and fertilizers etc to make fuel stock(corn) and then the energy to process, you get out less net energy than you put in. The only advantages are that you can use energy sources that are underutilized and you can thumb your nose at OPEC. Without huge subsidies from the gov, ie your taxes, alternative fuels don't make sense financially."

You bet it is a political issue in Brazil and Argentina that they burn E-85 totally rather than import crude. It should be here too. They want autonomy in their economies from the whims of OPEC and US BIG OIL COMPANIES. Shouldn't we want that too? The argument you and others within the oil industry always try and make is it takes more energy to make a gallon of Ethanol than what that Gallon of Ethanol will pruduce is as old as the hills. Why have 3rd world countries made it mandatory? Are their treasuries fatter with cash subsidizes to support their farmers than the United States?
By failure to recognize the feed value of the byproduct Distillers Grain (ddg), sure ethanol is a looser. But, figure it in then everything works, and with graim prices in the tank and oil looking at $70 a barrel things are looking splendid.

Iowa is the ethanol capitol of the world with dozens of small co-op owned ethanol plants grinding and cooking corn mash making ethanol and ddg 24/7. And Dozens more plants are in process of construction. Don't tell Iowans Ethanol has no future and doesn't make sense financially. He-ll, the state even offers retailers a 10 cent rebate per gallon of ethanol used. E-10 is always cheaper to buy at the pump in Iowa than dinosar regular.

The latest statement our governor has made is he wants the legislature to pass immediate legislation to speed along the construction and marketing of soy diesel and mfg plants. He wants Iowa to be the soy diesel capitol of the world too.

Bdox is right in his statement Quote: "We need to change the infrastructure to supply all the diesels. But it's worth it. Wouldn't you rather be paying US farmers for your fuel than pay the freaking Arab countries?"

 

Jim I agree with much of what you say but not necessarily how you characterize it.

For instance, windmills work just fine. There is just the NIMBY factor they deal with.

Also alternative fuels can cost less if the infrastructure is altered to accomodate them.

Your statement: "These fuels are really tree hugging dirt eating druid solutions and knee jerk political statements. They don't work if you look at the net energy versus real cost." That is propaganda promulgated by the existing energy industry that fears they may lose a portion of the market.

Think about it: If there were no oil in Iraq do you really think that we would be sacrificing American lives over there? Not freaking likely. You speak of government subsidies, (dispite Bush's constantly changing excuses for being involved with Iraq,) that war is a several hundred billion dollar subsidy for the existing energy industry. They would never call it that but we end up paying for it in the long run.

By switching to alcohol we go a long way toward correcting our balance of trade. Americans prosper. We don't have to engage in foreign adventures that kill our children.

 

I wasn't saying gas burns cleaner. I was saying if you take into account how hydrogen is produced right now, it's not as clean as people hype. Honestly, the problem with Hydrogen is that it takes huge amounts of energy. Once we have viable clean energy, possibly nuclear like you say, then the hydrogen problem is solved. Until then, there is no point in talking about it.

 

I believe it is worth talking about. If there is no demand, there is no supply. If people keep asking about it, more of our intellectual base will be looking for a way to power that hydrogen making effort. No supply without demand right? If people didn't want a easy way to cook things, would someone have invented the microwave?

Hydrogen asside, the reason we should switch to any renewable, home made energy source for our automobiles, is so that OPEC couldn't bring us to our knees if they felt the whim to.

Remember the oil embargo in the 70's? Immediatley following that, the government freaked, and subsidised our electrical independance from foreign oil. Now we are 70% energy independant of foreign oil. We use coal, hydro power, and nuclear for most of the electricity we all use. The automakers didn't follow suit, because at the time, there wasn't a truely viable solution to the problem of the internal combustion engine.

Kentucky has several small ethanol plants popping up now, and I truely believe, that for probably the next 40 years, that will be what most of the cars will be running on E-85. Did you notice gas prices are going back up? Most of the politicians are starting to realize that our oil dependance is the greatest threat to our national security, since the nuclear stand off with russia.

I've seen articles saying, that with tax breaks, ALL US diesels could be converted to run on bio-diesel within the next 3 years, and that supply could be made to fit that demand. We can already use the infrastructure that is already in place for man made diesel fuel. No major changes there.

The next thing that would happen, since diesels consume a large part of the oil we need, is you would see prices drop, probably 30% on gas. Thats because there is a 30% greater supply of crude.

I like talking about hydrogen, but I also like the movie back to the future, and thats where hydrogen belongs, 40 or 50 years in the future. Ethanol and espically Bio-diesel are the most reasonable idea today.

 

Bdox, cast my vote in favour of pure ethanol. Jim is right about us being the golden geese. But some of us geese are doing our best to wiggle free. I don't think the political and economic issues are easily separated, but lets try and look at the economic side only. Ethanol cost more, at least right now it does. But the corn guys are doing their darndest to be as efficient as possible, and they are improving dramatically. And oil is not getting any cheaper, it flaots around or just under 70$ per barrel currently. With the US and China buying oil as fast as it can be pumped, it wouldn't take much of a problem to spike the price a bunch. many people complain about subsidies for the corn guys, and yes they have some, 350 million in last August's Energy bill. But that same energy bill gave the oil industry 14.4 billion in tax breaks and credits. This, at a time when the oil industry is showing record breaking profits. Currently, I don't think the oil industry needs any help. Their are lots of reasons that petroleum fuels dominate, but I don't believe that any of them are because petro is 'better'. It isn't. The petroleum industry purchased political favours (prohibition ) in the late '20s to help it crush the ethanol industry. Mr Ford's original intention was for his machines to be run on ethanol. Gasoline as we now know it didn't even exist yet.The farm guys have their own studies to show that biodiesel and ethanol are a better deal than petro. Pimental and Patzek dissagree, and claim that ethanol requires more energy to make than the ethanol contains.......but those two guys work for an oil company ! Whose numbers are you going to believe ? It says something, I think, that all of the big three manufacturers in north america are making ethanol ( E85 ) ready cars and trucks. Do they know or suspect something about oil supplies that the rest of us don't ? Why don't you jump over into the alternative fuel section of this site and talk ethanol with us ? There are several of us interested in converting gasoline only trucks into E85 only trucks. We'd love to have you join the talks. Df

 

The LEL (lower explosive limit) of gasoline is 1.4% in atmosphere, for ethanol it is 3.3%, making gasoline more than twice as explosive as alcohol, not to mention that energy released from gasoline is 1.5 times that of alcohol.

Cheap no-name canola oil sold in a 4 liter jug can be had for between $4.00 - $5.00, considering diesel is around $1.00 per liter, it isn't that much more expensive; sold in bulk it could certainly be on par. The problem is, at -15C or so it turns into lard.

 

Furball makes some important points. My understanding is that the power derived from alcohol is about 80% of gasoline so you must use more to get the same net power out. I don't have hard facts on this.

Canola oil is derived from rapeseed (as those wily Canadians all know.)
There are many others that can be used as well. Peanut oil, coconut oil corn oil and so forth. I am still learning about the characteristics and costs of them all. But none of the technical problems cannot be overcome.

Bottom line, it becomes a political problem. We need to get ourselves out of the position where our nations can be manipulated by the OPEC group. There is plenty of dino oil around the world but the costs of extraction go up and up and the processes are in the hands of a few big corperations. Vegetable based fuels are low tech operations that can be handled by many sources so it becomes more competitive and we would be less likely to be the victims of the price fixing that we are now faced with.

 

No easy answers or we'd be doing it already

Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce, yes. Fuel cells are the only reasonable way to use hydrogen but that'll take a break through to be usable - right now they use enough rare metals to cost at least $10K a pop.

Ag-based fuels like enthanol and bio-diesel take a lot of energy to creat to though - think of how much fuel it takes to raise an acre of corn? Don't forget the fertilizer - anyone who buys that knows the price basically follows the price of oil 'cause it takes so much oil to produce it.

But we should be looking at all these options and putting lots of resources into research. I'm not sure that will happen while there's so many people in DC making money off of oil though. Why can't they see that there's even more money to be made coming up with alternatives?

 

Hydrogen can be used in your standard IC engine, no problem. People worry about it being a million small hindinbergs, but you are at the same danger with a tank of gas, so say analysts.

Oh, and do you farm? Have you ever? I know that today, with the huge thousands of acres farms, it is easier to farm big equipment. Now, my grandfather, althrough the ninties, still farms with a small John Deere tractor, and he had about 600 acres. Usually 3 was corn, 250 was soy beans, and the other was split between tobaccoo, potatoes, and other small vegies for the house.

My point is, that little John Deere didn't use that much fuel to run. Now it didn't have heated seats, stero, a sealed off cabin, like these huge new tractors with a built in butt wiper, but he got the job done. I know, I spent the first 10 years of my life helping him. As long as he came through with a good crop, and that was 4 out of 5 years, He always had plenty of money. The cost of agriculture if you do it yourself isn't that massive. So the cost of growing it isn't huge. Right now, its the cost of shipping it thats killing the ethanol industry. Thats why small towns are popping up with a plant, and usually mixing the 10% brand, although I know some are scared of it.

The more flex fuel vehicles that are on the road, the more you will see the cost of ethanol fall.

Bio diesel doesn't have to be made from expensive canola, vegie, or peanut oil. It can be made from soy bean oil, which costs half of the other three. The problem with bio diesel, is the millions of diesels out there can't run on it in there current form. They have to be modified, I'm not sure the exacts on that, but I read it would cost on average 2000 per diesel engine to convert to a soy based bio diesel. Couldn't someone push for a tax break for all diesels to be converted? The manufactruring level isn't there yet, but with demand that will grow. The manufacturing process is relativley inexpensive.

I choose not to get into a political argument on why we haven't switched to a alternative fuel yet.

 

Bdox is right when he asks, why not alcohol and bio incl. soy diesel? The answer is so simple. Because this country is owned lock stock and barrel by the big oil barrons, and they are going to fight any attempt to weaken their grasp on every American's lifestyle and income.

It is so simple. The answer is right here in or own country's middle west bread basket. We grow the corn with a combination of Natural (animal and human waste) and synthetic fertilizers, plenty of natural sun and rain, and harvest the corn and haul it to Ethanol plants and feed lots where it is ground and cooked into ethanol fuel and ddg(dried distillers grain) which is fed to livestock. We return the ddg to the feed lots and blend it with corn in feed rations to fatten live cattle to slaughter. Then ship the processed meats and ethanol back east thru pipelines and trucks to you boys to enjoy on your tables and burn in your vehicals. In turn you are sending your money back to us (through ethanol, and meat purchases) so we can buy more goods and services which you are making for us to enable us to grow and process more and more corn and beans, THUS THE MONEY GOES BACK TO YOU. We will use Ethanol and soy diesel too to grow and process the stuff you want. I think it is the PERFECT ENERGY-MONEY-PRODUCT CYCLE, and it exists right here under our noses in America without big oil or OPEC.

Well, we in Iowa are going it alone with our ethanol and soy diesel production. So far all the plants except one very large (Cargill Corp) are privately owned Co ops, and are very vunerable to price spikes in both energy and imputs. But so far guess what--they are working just fine! The workers are getting paid weekly, and the stockholders are happy. No BIG OIL Companies involved! Don't tell me it isn't possible 'cause we are doing it and it and this ethanol, soy diesel industry is getting bigger!

Our answers in this energy thing is so simple and it isn't conservation. He-ll we are already conserving all we can. It really torques me off now the Big Oil Companies have gotten on the conservation bandwagon. Sure! They can afford to with their obscene profits to recommend everyone turn down their thermostat and drive smaller cars, car pool etc. What is a 10% drop in usage to them when they increase prices 30% and more to us. Sheesh! And do you think those energy folks drive around in little ford fiestivas or raingers? He-ll no they drive Lincoln and Super Duties, and SUV's.

The energy answers are simple and processes and procedures are in place in a very small way at present, but are growing by leaps and bounds in spite of Big Oil's attempts to squash it. Guys like Bdox and others on this message board will propell us thru the next 40 years of energy demands simply by continuing to ask their government leaders "Why Not Alcohol or Bio diesel"

WHY NOT AMERICANS?
Brazillians and other 3rd world countries can do it, WHY NOT IN AMERICA??????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????

 

I keep seeing people claim that ethanol is an expensive solution to produce. NO it IS NOT. You take that corn, you create the ethanol, use the waste for livestock feed and fertilizer. Then what happens is that you have an icreased interest (at a roughly 20% reduction in fuel mileage) and demand. Production goes up, prices go up on ethanol around the world because then WE have to tap into their production plants to supply our needs while we create more production plants. We won't stop importing it because we'll make more on it if we export OUR ethanol to other countries and import what we get at the pumps from the same countries. It's a viscious cycle, and the reason that gasoline is so high right now. Do you really think that in the big picture what we do really matters?

 

I'm doing more than asking why not. I have been writing to congressmen and Sen. Harry Ried (I live in Nevada,) and demanding legislation that would put a moratorium on taxes for veg based fuels for the next 40 yrs. If that happened, the market would take off like wildfire. The necessary vehicle mods and alterations to infrastructure would start happening overnight. (I have learned that most congressmen/women and senators will not deal with you if you are not from their districts. My "other" senator who is a Bushass kisser sends form letters unrelated to my topic.)

I do not think that petro will ever go away and that's ok too. But if the demand fell by fifty or eighty percent the prices would fall into a competitive range too.

I'm not normally in favor of getting government to interfere with a free market, but the idea of a free market in the US is a myth. Ask the farmers. And big oil are actively involved in what is basically a world wide price fixing scheme and we need to fight back by whatever means are at our disposal.

I'm really glad to be on this forum because we have such a broad spectrum of people represented here that, if open minded enough, a person can relly learn from the varied viewpoints.