why is no one excited about ethanol?

ethanol is not the answer.. subsidies make farmers happy but really.

This Wall Street Journal article kind of sums it up:
blogs.wsj.com...

Hyrdrogen from Algae an Algae oil is an answer to bio generated fuel.. .see this video (estimated 10,000-20,000 gallons per acre per year.... corn and soybeans are in the hundreds and has to be heavily processed.
www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...


jatropha is a very far off 2nd possibility as well if for some reason Algae doesn't meet the claims. No refining needed (58 to 73 US gallons per acre) This CNN video gives a great overview. this stuff can be grown in places where normal food crops don't grow well (desert southwest) though some people are using land in Florida right now. There are problems with this though, this crap is pretty toxic (the plant / leaves) and is labor intensive to use as fuel

www.cnn.com...#/video/us/2008/08/11/candiotti.dream.fruit.cnn?iref=videosearch

en.wikipedia.org...
uk.reuters.com...

[edit on 16-8-2008 by infolurker]

This page dispels a lot of the myths people are saying here about alcohol.

I do not understand why people want to give their paychecks to corporations. Every household in the US should have their own still. Who could object to producing your own fuel instead of paying the megacorporations to do it for you?

I love this myth.
Myth: It would cost too much to build all the ethanol production facilities needed to offset the U.S. consumer's thirst for petroleum.

Fact: It takes about a dollar per annual gallon of alcohol production capacity to build alcohol plants. With the money we have spent in Iraq we could have built enough ethanol plants worldwide to permanently solve the fuel issue for every single person in the world renewably, and increased the food supply to in theory feed everyone - not to mention reversed global warming in the process.

We have spent 500 billion dollars in Iraq trying to secure that county’s oil reserves. The current administration wants to spend 250 billion more in the next two years. The world uses 500 billion gallons of fuel annually. We could have done it in the same amount of time we misspent the money in Iraq. If the leaders won't lead then the people have to lead them. All around the world countries are committing to biofuels. China apparently has committed 300 billion, or enough to make them fuel self sufficient. It would be crazy but possible that the US might be the last country to realize that solar based alcohol is an answer that can be accomplished with moderate amount of capital and in a time frame that would mean minimum suffering from peak oil.

reply to post by The_Alarmist2012


Farmers want money just like you and me. I am talking about using NON AGRICULTURAL LAND. Land that will not produce traditional food crops. The fact that the farmers want to make more money with their corn product does not impact the usefulness or need to make alcohol. It only puts a spotlight on the greediness of farmers.

In other words blame the farmers for growing corn for ethanol instead of food.



[edit on 8-16-2008 by groingrinder]

reply to post by groingrinder


Obviously you are not going to get it, go back to the post where I posted the FACT about how much corn was used in 2007, click the source link, that page is a FARMERS page... They aren't going to change anything except to increase their amount of corn to ethanol production... Look at the graph on that site, the corn usage ramps up right along with the price of fuel.. it ends at 2007... The 2008 production I will bet you is even higher.

There is NO incentive for them to do anything else... To think that they will change to something else is a pipe dream.

People are starving, no matter what you think about that, billions of bushels of crops are being used to produce ethanol now, perhaps much more, all for fuel. The byproducts of this have some minimal use for animal feed, and if you are looking for justification perhaps that will make you feel better?

Is it right or wrong, will it change, does anyone give a damn???????

It is up to the individual... Believe what you want, buy the lies, in the end it is what is.

Ethanol is a waste of food... There has to be a better way, as it is now the incentives for farmers and ethanol producers are growing right along with the rise in fuel costs.

reply to post by groingrinder

In other words blame the farmers for growing corn for ethanol instead of food.

If you ate today thank a farmer.

As we speak a farmer is suiciding every eight hours. The last I checked 29 countries banned the export of food. While you twitter about biofuel and blaming farmers, the ordinary family farm worldwide is under attack.

Here in the US the beginning of the corporate take over of America's farmland was to begin jan 2009. If the American Consumer does not wakeup soon you will be worrying about filling you belly and not your fuel tank.
FROM AN ANTI-NAIS WEBSITE

I rarely post here, but felt compelled to share today's experience with you... Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even "giving milk products away" is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is
illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can't even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGIOUS!!!! How can it be illegal to give something away or take a casserole to a friend's house?

AND FROM ENGLAND

SLEEPWALK TO STARVATION
With hindsight, it was the late 1990's and the first decade of the 21st Century when farming went into irreversible decline as it lurched and staggered like a perpetual drunkard from crisis to disaster...

warmwell.com...

One final note from me before I abandon this subject to delve into more immediate much more serious concerns...

If I offended anyone with my posts, my apologies to you.

Also, please forgive me for buying into the "deny ignorance" thing. Obviously I must have missed the point on that one.

If everyone is cool with the continued, and expanding use of food for ethanol production, who the hell am I to rain on their parade?

Long live the happy cactus dreamers!

Cheers.

I think we do have one problem with using desert crops, and that would be the resistance of the farmers to losing their fuel crop. I know for a fact corn production is way up this year in my area, and I am assuming it is nationwide as well.

The desert crops would not be able to be effectively grown in the areas which produce food crops. Cacti will rot and die if they get too much water, and it doesn't take much to get to the point of too much. So if we tried to make ethanol out of cacti, I don't see a problem with our food. But how do we get people to make ethanol out of cacti when they are already getting it from corn? That's going to be a challenge, and I think that is what a lot of posters (including groingrinder and The_Alarmist2012) are alluding to. In this country, we (shouldn't) don't just go around telling people what they can and can't do.

I do know there is a tax rebate for ethanol blending. I propose that rebate be limited to certain crops, and removed from using ethanol made form corn or other edible crops. Not a perfect solution, but it would tend to steer ethanol producers toward the more desirable crops.

TheRedneck

What's all this negative short-sighted and ill-researched information I'm hearing about electric cars?

1) Current electric car technology has equal or superior range to a car running on gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen.

2) Charge times are from 1-3 hours.
-Why do people view this as a limiting factor? Am I completely alienated or do people drive their cars 24/7 these days?

3) Electricity can be produced at one's house for free, aside from the initial cost.

--------------------

I think people are stuck on the whole liquid fuel thing. It reminds me of a friend of mine who became addicted to heroine and tried to quit by switching to a 'safer' substance. She is now addicted to methadone

[edit on 8/16/2008 by iceofspades]

I'm not even going to read through the thread to respond to this because it was so "knee-jerk" for me!

I live in Iowa where ETHANOL is king. I work in the Soybean Processing Industry. I hunt deer and turkey. Here is what I see..........

Pay attention Democrats and tree-huggers!

*The price of corn is at an all time high. Therefore, the price of feed is higher and therefore, so is the price of meat (and therefore, so is the price of everything else!)

*I don't care how prosperous you are. Ask an Indian: NEVER BURN YOUR FOOD SUPPLY!

*Farmers, like any good Capitalist, want to profit and take advantage of higher prices. What happens? Oh, they start clearing a record amount of CRP managed land they own to make way for more crops. That really sucks for my deer and turkey hunting! Oh, as well as for the Bull Snake, which used to be common when I was young but now you hardly ever see them anymore. How do you like that you environmentalist tofu eating tree-huggers?

Ethanol sucks. Its not a viable alternative or even supplement. The price to make it alone isn't worth it nor are the consequences to the environment. Ethanol doesn't scare the Arabs into lowering the price of a barrel of crude, however, if you remember a couple weeks ago, the mere mention of the USA drilling will drop it!

PS: Sorry if I sound cranky. My wife always says I am when I just get home from work.

*I don't care how prosperous you are. Ask an Indian: NEVER BURN YOUR FOOD SUPPLY!

I agree. But Sec of Ag Ed Schafer did just that. "The cupboard is bare" the USA has NO RESERVE FOOD SUPPLY .

Many of the family farmers I blog with are just as concerned about burning our food supply. The big corporate farms and Monsanto with its corn patent are raking in the money, but the whole situation bothers most family farmers. When you add the proposed USDA and FDA World Trade Organization driven regs a lot of us are frightened. Many are considering selling to get out now before the government forces us off our land.

One of the biggest problems is small farmers practice diverse farming and are careful of their land while corporate farms practice Monoculture with oil derived chemicals. On top of that corn "wears out" the land. Unfortunately Biofuel supports distort the true profitablity picture. Check it out most USDA money goes to farms making over a 1/2 million not the little guy.

reply to post by TheRedneck
You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. No such thing as agricultural waste? Really? I said waste from commercial food production not agricultural waste. And there is no sulfur in the ethanol produced by sulfuric acid leaching,btw. I have stated on another thread about my use of ethanol, it works, it works better than gas and as long as it is 100 percent with no water in it, fuel efficiency and power to weight ratios are increased. If auto manufacturers wanted to they could produce engines that ran on pure ethanol with very little modification to their automated production systems. My car runs perfectly fine on the ethanol I make myself.
Are you sure that you dont work for an oil company?



[edit on 17-8-2008 by spookjr]

Originally posted by iceofspades
What's all this negative short-sighted and ill-researched information I'm hearing about electric cars?

1) Current electric car technology has equal or superior range to a car running on gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen.

2) Charge times are from 1-3 hours.
-Why do people view this as a limiting factor? Am I completely alienated or do people drive their cars 24/7 these days?

3) Electricity can be produced at one's house for free, aside from the initial cost.

--------------------

I think people are stuck on the whole liquid fuel thing. It reminds me of a friend of mine who became addicted to heroine and tried to quit by switching to a 'safer' substance. She is now addicted to methadone

[edit on 8/16/2008 by iceofspades]

I completely agree with you, it would seem like everyone here has completely given up on the electric car... (sad face)

How much cooler would an electric car be if you didn't have to plug it in to anything to charge your battery?

What if you could charge your battery while driving around town?

Do rotating magnetic motors generate electricity?

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

Absolute Ethanol never stays without water unless it is kept under special conditions. 180 proof is all you will get from a normal still without going thru elaborate steps to remove the last of the water. Ethanol LOVES water. You are better off with methanol (wood alcohol) or propanol if you want it dry.

cosmetics are made essentialy the same as most soaps,animal fats.....natural gas or propane are reasonable alternatives as far as power or economy miles per cu.? , there's plenty of oil and to many years ahead of us to frett about it but if big oil can scare up a few more billion dollars out of us they will and the fat purses of our over populated govt. body will gladly put aside their morals and substitute their life,for yours....we are ROME , our bussum so puffed up with pride we can't see the end of the road though it was we who built it...........who knew ?

reply to post by dalan.


I don't see why the following would not work. This is part of a proposal I am sending to our candidates - I'm sure they will quickly jump on this
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The electrification of highways may be even easier than is presently considered if research is done in earnest into wireless transmission of electricity as was proposed and demonstrated by Tesla in the first half of the 20th century. Small Tesla transmission coils could be placed at intervals of 5 miles along major highways from which electric cars could draw energy. This would save the expense of tearing up pavement to implant an electric grid, thereby reducing not only cost of highway construction but interruption in existing traffic flow.

The electric car should be a very cheap form of automobile, designed for commuting and other very short trip scenarios and would not require the expensive high speed crash technology or long trip creature comforts of current gasoline and hybrid cars.

The car can be digitally identified to its owner/driver by a computer chip in the “ignition/start” key. This will identify the person or “customer” for electric company billing purposes so the power company gets its fair income generated by billing each digitally identified customer for the amount of electrical energy required to operate the car and re-charge it’s batteries on the electrified arterial. This is different than running an electric street car or commuter train in that the amount of power needed to drive the car would be billed directly to the consumer and would not require high voltage as needed by trains. The cars on this arterial can be spaced and speed regulated by the road and traffic conditions through existing computer technology which will eliminate traffic jams at peak hours, increase safety and would eventually eliminate virtually all of the commuter generated pollution in urban and suburban areas.

The above would not require waiting ten years to develop the 100 mile battery for cars that will cost many tens of thousands of dollars. The commuter car would be a very low powered inexpensive vehicle using state-of-the-current-art batteries.

Because the car would be recharging as it drives on the electric commuter lane, it should not require many hours of recharging (if any) once it reaches it’s destination. This would only be the start.

The initial program would be one electrified lane in each direction with a goal to transform all automobile lanes within a five to ten year period.

I sent this to a Tesla Coil manufacturer and never received a reply.


[edit on 17-8-2008 by Hopup Dave]

[edit on 17-8-2008 by Hopup Dave]

i heard that cars can only run 10% ethanol...
too much will just make your engine run #house and ruin it.

reply to post by deathpoet69


reply to post by deathpoet69

YOu said "could have been thought of when the engine was invented"....OMG..do you not read???? The "gas ".
engine was not originally invented for running on gasoline. Gasoline was adopted by the Government for it to run on, and the engine tweaeked to run on it. WHy? Because anyone can make ethanol in a stil like whyskey...and the government wanted us to bhave to buy from them....so they make make moonshine illegal to get rid of ethanol stills so that no one has the apparatus to make their own fuel.

And they now ocntrol our fuel. But it has been legal in many states for the last 60 odd years to build a still and make your own motor fuel as long as its personal use, isnt sold, drank, or given away.
Seriously, look it up and wake up

reply to post by crawgator406


Its not as effcient as gasoline, it has a lower energy output than gasoline theu you need to use twice as much to go half the distance.

We are already using it in IL, it sucks, it gums up your fuel injectors with resin making your car perfomance worse.

You need to use twice as much energy to produce ethanol than gasoline. Oil is not just used for gasoline, its a lubricant used by the world.

Lastly, there is no global warming, check the latest data, the earth has been cooling since 1998, the temps are downtrending.

reply to post by spookjr
You obviously have no scientific background.

My point about agricultural waste was that something pulled from the soil leaves it out of the soil. If a crop pulls nitrogen from the soil, it depletes the soil of nitrogen. Should the flora be allowed to rot back into the soil, much of that depletion is restored. Are you disagreeing with this fact? or do you believe there is a nutrient fairy who comes along in the winter and puts things back into the soil.

I said I had a concern about sulfur content in the sulfuric acid method you mentioned, not that it existed. Sulfuric acid - sulfur. You do realize sulfur is IN sulfuric acid? Meaning there is a possibility that the process could produce some sulfur in the output? I was simply asking about that possibility.

If your car works well on ethanol, by all means drive it. But I know for a fact, from first-hand experience during the late 70s with ethanol (then called 'gasohol') and from those who have run alcohol-fueled vehicles in the past, that a standard gasoline engine will not burn alcohol efficiently.

If you have a vehicle that uses the new flex-fuel technology, then you can burn it just fine. If you have adjusted your engine to run on alcohol it runs just fine. Auto makers can indeed make alcohol-burning engines with a few mnor adjustments to the assembly. That does not mean every engine will run on ethanol without problems.

And no, I do not work for an oil company. I drive a truck for a department store chain. Truth does not lie with oil company shills alone; usually it does not lie with them at all.

TheRedneck

guess everyone should just start buying new cars too