I saw a story the other day about ethanol plants actually produce more nitrates than carbon dioxide. This leads to greater greenhouse emissions. Also, the cost of corn has risen because of the plants, which make the costs of feed for chicken and pork increase. The story went on to say that grocery prices have risen by 33% because of the increase in corn.

 

Again, you are simply re-stating a blanket / worst case scenario. Some vehicles may see a 29% reduction in MPG. The worst I have personally seen in 5 different vehicles was about 17%

In my car, which I have tuned for E85 with optimized fuel and timing curves, turbocharger and 11:1 compression, I seem to loose about 3 MPG in mixed driving - 30mpg on gas, 27 on E85. or about 10%. But E85 is $2.79 vs premium at $3.49 - or about 20% cheaper. So I am saving about 10% at the pump.

 

This may be possible with older plants, but newer ones have a much more refined process which minimizes 'water use' - the majority of the 'use' coming from pulling water into cooling towers and discharging it without the water ever coming into contact with any process chemicals. IE - one could say that a kilowatt hour of electricity requires 5 gallons of water to produce, but if this water is simply pulled from a river, picks up a little heat in a cooling tower and is returned to the river, is it really 'used water' ?

 

I thought I read somewhere that oil changes are needed to be made more frequently when using ethanol. Am I dreaming? Wouldn't it be just the opposite? A cleaner burning engine would require less maintenance would it not?

 

Probably. Since EtOH burns cleaner than gasoline, it should require less frequent oil changes. I suspect that EtOH is between gasoline and propane for burn cleanliness. On the other hand, incomplete burning of EtOH could create some acetic acid (CH3COOH) which could be harmful to the engine if not removed. Most of it should vaporize and blow out the exhaust but perhaps not all of it.

EtOH does have less energy per gallon so in an engine designed from the ground up to burn gasoline does not perform as well as it could. With its 105 octane rating, though, it should be possible to build an engine specifically for E85 type fuel. Note that an engine that will run on E85 and one that performs well on E85 are likely to be different. An E85-only engine, for example, could run a 10.5-11 to 1 compression ratio without difficulty. Raising the engine compression will make it perform better and it could recover much of the current difference in fuel mileage between gasoline and E85. E85 would have to be widely available for this to be a viable option, however.

Giving billion$ to our farmers to grow fuel makes a lot more sense to me than supporting the middle eastern despots and their terrorist buddies in the style to which they have become accustomed. Last figure I read said that we are sending them $250 billion every year. Even if E85 production is not as efficient as gasoline production, it would still be worth doing for reduced air pollution and political tensions.

Gasoline and diesel are the only widespread automotive fuels at the moment. When only 1 kind of product dominates an economic sector, it's price will be HIGH. Until there is a viable and widespread alternative fuel available, there is no price competition for fuel and the price will remain high. There is no reason for it not to be. Once there IS a reason for it to sell at a lower price, it will drop in price. Reduced demand due to people buying E85 could contribute to that significantly as could a viable plug-in electric / hybrid vehicle. Such a vehicle would be good for short ranged trips around town and could reduce the gasoline consumption by quite a lot. Not all of us could use this type of vehicle but if a significant number could, all the better for reducing gasoline demand.

Of course, even though E85 is only available in the mid-west and a few other places now, it is spreading and could become widely available in a few years. If so, it should provide some relief from high gas prices for those who can use it. It will be good to have that choice.

Ed

 

ED. Very well written to say the least. You’re a smart person indeed. I got to visit a satellite company in California last year. I wasn't supposed to be in the facility but a friend of mine knows a guy etc.... The project is for the Defense industry. It was a stunning display of 25th century technology to say the least. I was overwhelmed by the intelligence of the engineers, most were Asian. Was told by the lead project engineer (whom I can say is an absolutely brilliant individual) that the fuel cell is w/o a doubt the "next" technology. And the first one out with one that is conducive to autos will be the wealthiest person on earth. When? In his estimation about 10+ years from now. GM stated that it'll be closer to 2020. I guess we'll just have to wait it out.

 

Off the top of my head, I'd say this story seems to be just that...a 'story'. Corn (and other plants used at ethanol feedstock) pull CO2 out of the air when they grow, this carbon is released when the plant or the ethanol produced from it is burned. I don't have any hard and fast numbers, but on the surface it would seem that plant based biofuels would be some of the more 'carbon neutral' choices available. At least the plant is capturing some CO2 from the atmosphere before being converted to fuel and burned, as opposed to the 100% release of CO2 from fossil fuels. This really only comes into play, though if you believe the tiny fraction of a percent of the atmosphere that is man made CO2 is responsible for anything other than propaganda.

The food prices seem to be another scary aspect of the 'story' that need to be monitored as well. Although if someone in the mid east gets an itchy trigger finger and lights off a nuke, gas suddenly shoots to $8 or $ 10 a gallon, wait to see how much groceries cost then!

Food isn't produced at the grocery store, it has to travel by some method...truck, train, etc. All that is running on mid east crude.

 

Thanks for the kind words, Tom. I appreciate that. I'm a retired R&D chemist, so it is hard for me to resist commenting on any aspect of chemistry.

The latest and greatest and the still-on-the-drawing-board stuff is often VERY impressive. I've seen a bit of that myself in the bio-tech area so know what you are talking about.

The hydrogen fuel cell WILL be a big deal in the transportation and home energy markets, so a really efficient and inexpensive-to-build design will be worth MANY billions, if not trillions of dollars.

I truly believe that by the year 2030 or so, only 3rd world countries will be using significant amounts of petroleum-based fuels. As a chemist, I am well aware of how valuable hydrocarbons are as chemical building blocks. To see them burned simply for their heat value is near sacrilege. 200 or so years from now, people may well curse "those idiots who burned that incredible resource for fuel way back when".

The plug-in hybrid vehicle will be a stop-gap that fills the void between now and when hydrogen fuel cells are truly practical. We will need it in the same way that we need clean efficient nuclear fission plants to generate electricity until nuclear fusion is practical. I would love to be around to see that happen, as it would usher in a new age of prosperity for everyone who participates in it.

Ed

 

Hi, Corey:

You are exactly right about the propaganda surrounding the so-called global warming "crisis" and its human-made origin. Most facts are not reported in the mainstream media on this but are readily available to anyone who will take the time to look them up. A few of them include: slight global warming is happening and has been for the past 6,000 or so years; CO2 is around 400 ppm in the atmosphere and about 1/10th of that is caused by human activity; water vapor is 95-98% of the global warming gas in the atmosphere, depending upon whose study you read; methane is about 20x more effective than CO2 as a global warming agent but since it is not caused by humans it is ignored; some of the huge amount of CO2 in the oceans bleeds into the atmosphere as the oceans warm, thus showing that atmospheric CO2 is caused by warming and not the reverse; and last, but not least, CO2 is plant food, pure and simple. If plants are to live, grow, and propagate, they MUST get carbon to build starch, sugars, and cellulose. Plants cannot get carbon from anywhere BUT the atmosphere. Eliminate half the CO2 in the atmosphere and plant life worldwide would be horribly affected. Imagine a world with suddenly HALF of its current food supply. Holy s***!

I agree that bio fuels are carbon neutral and that making them could significantly impact food prices. Still, our farmers are the most productive in the world so if anyone is up to the challenge of growing both food and fuel in the amounts needed it is they. Maybe the government could even stop paying some farmers not to grow particular crops? If they were completely busy feeding and fueling the USA, they would be doing their country a great service as well as making an excellent living. I'd call that a win-win situation.

Ed

 

Here is the Iowa State University report regarding the future impact of corn-based ethanol production on other food prices (e.g. soybean, beef, pork, poultry, eggs).
http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/DBS/PDFFiles/07sr101.pdf

In brief:As for switchgrass as a viable replacement:AND, the U.S. only gets 21% of its oil from the Persian Gulf, a higher percentage (22%) comes from Africa. As a percentage of OPEC imports, the U.S. gets more oil from Non-OPEC nations. (Source: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pe...im0_mbbl_a.htm

 

Equilibrium corn prices would rise to more than $4.40 per bushel. The direct effect of higher feed costs is that US food prices would increase by more than 1.1% over baseline levels. Beef, pork, and poultry prices would rise by more than 4% and egg prices would rise by about 8%.

I read where Chicago is now paying $4/gallon milk. Florida's estimates are for $4.50 in the near future. That seems much more than a 8% rise. I'm paying $2.29 in my neck of the woods in N. IL..

 

110 million acres sure sounds like a lot until you consider that it is about 5% of US land area. Sure, not all land is farmable but by making a genuine effort in that regard, the amount of land that could be converted in this country into productive farmland is quite a lot more than is farmed today. Doing that would not be cheap or easy but then we are well beyond cheap and easy solutions to this problem.

Personally, it would make a lot of sense to me to grow sugar cane, which could be done in large amounts in the southern states, and also buy crude sugar cane squeezings from abroad and use that to make EtOH. Sugar cane is just a grass, so it is hardy and easily grown. It is also quite efficient at converting sunlight into sugar. Since it is widely grown around the world, it is unlikely that a few large producers could corner that market and form a sugar cartel for price fixing / gouging, as has been done with oil.

Our current energy production strategy is to use a few large scale facilities to obtain economies of scale. This approach may not be the best one for EtOH or other alternative energy production. These things are best suited to smaller facilities in many different locations. They should be exploited where they will work best but not in places where they don't. As a co-benefit, doing this would create more jobs that are spread across a larger geographic area.

Cellulosic EtOH looks good to me but is likely to be viable only in certain regions. The Pacific NW, where I live, has abundant water, electrical power, and wood waste from vast forests. It may be possible to generate more EtOH fuel from this region than it can consume. As mentioned in that ISU article, raw material transportation is a major stumbling block in creating a viable EtOH production and distribution system. The same would be true of gasoline were it not for the vast pipeline network that has been built over many years and with many billions of dollars in this country.

I'm sure that a lot of fancy calculations will fly out the window in the face of $100+ a barrel petroleum. To those who don't believe that it can reach that level, I suggest that they consider that crude oil was $10 a barrel in 1990 and has risen 680% since that time. If it did half of that over the next 17 years, it would reach $230 a barrel. Moving from $68 to $100 a barrel is less than a 50% increase. Given the political instability in much of the oil producing countries, this seems only a question of time and perhaps not as much as some hope.

I think that the bottom line in energy production and use will be to diversify into as many alternatives as possible until such time as new and better fuel / transportation technology can resolve these issues on a more permanent and cost effective basis. Nothing is going to solve these problems quickly, cheaply, or by itself. It will take multiple contributions to reduce the demand for oil. EtOH can be part of that and so can others, such as liquid coal, nuclear, solar, wind, etc.

H2 fuel cells and fusion power are 20+ years into the future and that assumes that we work on them and support them now. There are many highly technical problems to be solved but it can be done if we choose to do so. The trick is having the political will to do it and not get mired down in oil as the only answer to our fuel problems. One way to do this might be to ask ourselves "what will we do when there is no more oil?". Demand is rising and production from current oil fields is falling. New large discoveries of oil are few and far between. This is not a viable long-term scenario for success.

Ed

 

As some like the idea that ethanol helps pay the farmers in US revenuess. Other areas are being hit with price increases because of ethanol use in fuels. Food stuffs, beef, pork, and poultry are increasing in price because a lot of attention of the corn crop is being targeted towards fuel. So even though the farmers may be doing better, it has a wider impact than most know about. People on limited incomes are paying more to eat, and the E85 has yet to prove itself as saving any money at all.

 

I would never claim that ethanol is 'saving money' In certain instances it may, depending on the economy of the specific use. But what it is vastly more effective at doing is diverting money from the mid east...terrorists, and people that want to kill us in general - and putting it back into america...farmers, corporations, etc.

As far as food prices, they may be going up. Part of that may be due to rising fuel costs as opposed to corn supply/demand issues. It costs a lot more to move food to stores when diesel is $3 a gallon versus $1 a gallon. It would probably take some pretty fancy accounting to separate the difference.

Personally, I believe that before we start having issues with food prices due to corn, we should close off some of the massive corn exports we dole out to the rest of the world. I understand this is happening to some extent now.

 

It's already been reported that due to ethanol food prices are on the rise. BTW unfortunatley, the gas companies have royalties to pay, and those royalties go to the mideast. Gas companies are global companies, so it's too myopic to say that the money will not trickle into the mideast. One other thought China due to it's econiomic development will be passing the US dependance on mideast oil in the next couple of years. In fact China has have moved up in the line exceedong the US for pollution globally. This was just announced this year, 5 years ahead of schedule.