The future of fuel will arrive next year

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Good point.. how many 1000 acre plants ( @ $1 Billion each ) would be needed to cut our oil usage by say 20%?
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Answer: almost 7,000 plants ( $7 Trillion )

Do you realize that GM, F, T, H and C can save almost double this amount of fuel in 5 yrs just by implementing hybrid technology across the board?

[K-1]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Do you realize that GM, F, T, H and C can save almost double this amount of fuel in 5 yrs just by implementing hybrid technology across the board?

Where would the batteries come from? They're already in short supply. Gas-electric hybrids still use gasoline, remember? How about some ethanol-electric hybrids with engines designed with ethanol octane in mind.

[Olds88]

Originally Posted by jorgesalazar521@msn.com

now if we didn't have $4 gas then this tech according to industry would be 20 to 30 years away. Just like gm suddenly had many fuel ifficient vehicles (xfe) and others 6-speed trannies and lr-tires. Wow GM what persuaded you to find tech for today.
$5 gas makes sense, since it will force many new tech's to open up ($$$$$) and then 3-5 yrs. the market will be flooded and force prices to go down to <1$ -gas.
hopefully americans will remember to vote with $$$ for american technologies

Yeah those "low resistance" tires are SO great. You know that low resistance is basically eco-speak for less grip which decreases things like braking performance or traction in poor weather conditions. Basically they sacrifice safety and drivability for mpgs. Damn you GM for holding out on those wonderful tires.

But you are right the price of gas will push efficiency tech, though that really shouldn't come as a surprise.

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Good point.. how many 1000 acre plants ( @ $1 Billion each ) would be needed to cut our oil usage by say 20%?
.
.
.
.
Answer: almost 7,000 plants ( $7 Trillion )

Here is another 'order of magnitude' perspective.

Just to cut our usage by 20% we'd need 7000 of these plants at 1000 acres each across the US at a cost of about $7 Trillion.

However there are only about 3500 county or 'county equivalents' in the entire US. That means each and every one of these would have to set aside 2000 acres!! ( NYC, Chicago, LA, Rhode Island, etc ) in order to produce this bio-ethanol. Rots of Ruck.

The technology is promising but it has to be far far more productive, by at least a factor of 10 or 20 or 50.

[PhishPhood]

Originally Posted by K-1

Where would the batteries come from? They're already in short supply. Gas-electric hybrids still use gasoline, remember? How about some ethanol-electric hybrids with engines designed with ethanol octane in mind.

This is true. The battery issue has to be resolved so that there is enough supply.

While the hybrids do still use gasoline all the 4 major technologies all save 30-40% as compared to similar non-hybrid vehicles. The E-Flex system saves even more.

Ethanol-powered or butanol-powered or biodiesel-powered ICE's would be great options to link up with the hybrids to save doubly - or triply.

[Hurricane]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Promising innovation but it's still a tiny drop....

Look at these numbers...
The US uses 20 million barrels per day of oil.... 20 mmbpd Source: EIA
One barrel of oil produces about 20 gal of gasoline and 7 gal of diesel.
Thus we use 400,000,000 gal of gasoline every day plus 140,000,000 gal of diesel every day.
Over the course of 1 year we use 144,000,000,000 gal + 50,500,000,000 = 195 Billion gallons.

If this technology, 6000 gal / acre / yr, were extended to 1000 acres...it would produce 6,000,000 gal of bio ethanol per year.

Thus this plant at 1000 acres would replace ..... ready...... less than ONE minute of our daily usage. 6 Million / 195 Billion.

Thanks!

[Masospaghetti]

Did I miss something in the article? Where does it say the facility is 1000 acres?

It says it uses 1000-gal reactors...

[jckjds]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Good point.. how many 1000 acre plants ( @ $1 Billion each ) would be needed to cut our oil usage by say 20%?
.
.
.
.
Answer: almost 7,000 plants ( $7 Trillion )

Just so everyone is clear, your analysis is WRONG.

First, this $1 Billion facility is designed to produce 1 billion gallons of ethanol per year, not 6 Million gallons, as you've claimed. So, only 40 of these plants would be required to produce 20 percent of our fuel needs at a cost of $40 Billion. That's not nearly the $7 Trillion that you've made it out to be.

While your land figures are correct, they are somewhat misleading. While it would take 7 million acres of land to produce the ethanol, that is less than 11,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, New Mexico (where this plant is being build) is roughly 121,000 sq miles. Thus it would take less than 10 percent of new mexico's land space to produce this ethanol. I'm sure there is WAAAAY more than 11,000 sq miles of non-arable land (i.e. desert or whatever) in the US that can be used for this purpose.

[psece]

Not one technology will get us out from under the rock. We will need all of them to be resource independent.

Another nice feature of this process is that it consumes CO2. Either from the atmosphere or from a alternate source(manufacturing plant, etc). Also, it uses treated manure as nutrients for the algae. And the amount of energy used is 1 unit for every 8 units produced.

One question, how are they going to get Saltwater in the New Mexico Sonora desert?

[logansowner]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Promising innovation but it's still a tiny drop....

Look at these numbers...
The US uses 20 million barrels per day of oil.... 20 mmbpd Source: EIA
One barrel of oil produces about 20 gal of gasoline and 7 gal of diesel.
Thus we use 400,000,000 gal of gasoline every day plus 140,000,000 gal of diesel every day.
Over the course of 1 year we use 144,000,000,000 gal + 50,500,000,000 = 195 Billion gallons.

If this technology, 6000 gal / acre / yr, were extended to 1000 acres...it would produce 6,000,000 gal of bio ethanol per year.

Thus this plant at 1000 acres would replace ..... ready...... less than ONE minute of our daily usage. 6 Million / 195 Billion.

They are talking about a 1B gallon/yr plant, not their test plant. When I figure American gas usage at 21 million bpd that brings me to a need for 322 of these plants to replace all gasoline usage, which isn't the goal anyway.

But by all means, since this technology wont replace 100% of our fuel usage, we should ignore it.

[Masospaghetti]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

This is true. The battery issue has to be resolved so that there is enough supply.

While the hybrids do still use gasoline all the 4 major technologies all save 30-40% as compared to similar non-hybrid vehicles. The E-Flex system saves even more.

Ethanol-powered or butanol-powered or biodiesel-powered ICE's would be great options to link up with the hybrids to save doubly - or triply.

While hybrids hold some future, how many hybrids would there have to be to make a dent in our oil usage? How many extra batteries would that require? How many batteries is that going to produce when they have to be replaced? And, maybe most importantly, how much of a drain is that going to be on the economy?

Even with $4 gas, a Prius won't make back its additional cost in fuel over a Corolla. This tells me that the amount of extra equipment necessary to yield that fuel economy increase is not economically sound.

I'm not saying hybrids will never make sense. But the current generation don't.

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by PhishPhood

Here is another 'order of magnitude' perspective.

Just to cut our usage by 20% we'd need 7000 of these plants at 1000 acres each across the US at a cost of about $7 Trillion.

However there are only about 3500 county or 'county equivalents' in the entire US. That means each and every one of these would have to set aside 2000 acres!! ( NYC, Chicago, LA, Rhode Island, etc ) in order to produce this bio-ethanol. Rots of Ruck.

The technology is promising but it has to be far far more productive, by at least a factor of 10 or 20 or 50.

The New Mexico factory is going to produce 1 billion gallons of ethanol. The country uses 144 billion gallons of gasoline per year. In order to replace 20% of the nation's gasoline, we would need 29 of these factories.

[johnstarnes]

This is very promising AND environmentally benign it seems!

[HoosierRon]

Originally Posted by psece

One question, how are they going to get Saltwater in the New Mexico Sonora desert?

Pipeline. The Alaskan north slope pipeline is 800 miles. It is 725 miles from El Paso to San Diego.

[nadepalma]

Originally Posted by geozinger

(My bold for emphasis) You sure can ship ethanol by pipeline like oil, you just can't do it in the pipelines meant for oil. That's been one of the arguments against adopting ethanol as a fuel. With the right type of pipeline you could ship ethanol anywhere. However, I'm reasonably sure it would have to be dedicated to ethanol only, and probably have different safeguards and technologies applied to it.

I too, would like to see a larger adoption of ethanol as a motor fuel. We can make it here, and keep our money here, too. Particularly, non-feed stock based methods of production would be ideal, and remove that argument against ethanol.

Besides, I would love to be able to fill up with 100 octane E85 or E100 in a car that has an engine optimized for ethanol.

Hey, GM can you put a Saab Bio-Power Ecotec in my next car?

Thanks for the information zeozinger.

I was always told that Ethanol could not be transported via pipeline because it attracts - and absorbs - water. And that since those pipelines need to be flushed out and maintained periodically it would contaminate the ethanol and make it less effective. It was for this reason that most ethanol is trucked rather than shipped out in pipelines etc.

Was I mislead? Are there any plans to create a dedicated ethanol pipeline anywhere in the US?

Thanks for the info!