[dreadnaught1181]

I think now that more money is being spent on bio-fuel research, ethanol is going to get superseded by newer technologies such as bio-gasoline which can be transported and used by the existing infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogasoline

http://www.shell.com/home/content/m...news_and_library/press_releases/2010/biogasoline_production_plant_23032010.html

 

[OLDSCHOOLGMFAN]

If ethanol can shut up the whining about MPG/"fuel efficiency" and give us more (or the same) bang for our buck than gasoline, I'm all for it. I'm sick of all the crying, complaining, and folks who act like just cause an ICE is smaller that it doesn't pollute the air.

 

[Mustapha Mond]

I think the bigger question is how much longer will ICE be the state of the art? There won't be much call for ethanol if the majority of consumers will be driving electric or hydrogen or fuel cells or whatever. Consumers are aware of electric-powered vehicles and alternative technologies to petroleum like never before. That creates desire, which creates demand which drives research and innovation. Technology has made vehicles like Volt and Leaf possible. One big shift in how we perceive and conceive of transportation could change the entire industry, and quickly. Look at how the Internet has changed how we work and play, and how it has driven computer innovation and sales in the past fifteen years. Real, useful, practical electric vehicles will do the same thing to the automotive industry.

Then we wouldn't need ethanol at all.

 

[tkrelston]

I don't recall the source of the article that I read, but I'm pretty sure it was in a mainstream magazine, perhaps even a Time, but more likely a Popular Science or Popular Mechanics.

I know it's not produced by fuels. The article though did take into account the amount of fuel required to produce ethanol. The fuel required to plant, fertilize, and harvest the crops. The cost of the water and fertilizer. There were other factors as well, including as you mentioned, the lower yield of energy (mpg).

I've heard that sugar is a better, more efficient source for ethanol. As I said, I don't know much about this. But from what I've read, corn-based ethanol just didn't sound like a good idea.

For what it's worth, our 07 Yukon XL averaged 1-mpg less on ethanol during a trip through Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma than its usual average. While it was relatively flat land, we certainly got better mpg than the 07 XL Denali behind us, though they were loaded with more weight, we did take a penalty as I had to keep disabling cruise control and wait for them to catch us. All in all, a higher adoption of Ethanol will allow OEMs to tune the engines for the fuels energy levels properly and achieve better power and MPGs.

That being said, future proofing the engines today is the ONLY foresight GM seems to have! Who the he** planned Alpha not to handle a bigger car than the next gen CTS? Why was the 1st Gen 2-Mode too big to slot into the G8,Camaro, Corvette, STS, CTS, XLR, Suburban, Yukon XL, Park Avenue, and all the other half baked, but still pretty good products GM made before April 27, 2009?

-- Regulation kills creativity and progress; set goals and rewards, NOT fines and mandates! --​

 

[Slideways]

I'm sorry to say, but it seems as if McCain is right. Companies can not maintain deep sea oil drilling platforms. coal is dirty, and ethanol is a waste of land. With nuclear energy, we could have cars like the Volt that would use little gas and we would not be ravaging the planet trying to obtain its power.

People don't want oil drilling in their backyard, wait for the NIMBY protests when plans are drawn up for these:

^^ That's Three Mile Island by the way.

And then there was this little gem:

You think an oil spill is hard to clean up, you can't just wash off radiation.

 

[logansowner]

Ethanol is an answer, the trouble is, everyone seems to think corn is the only way to make it. So because corn isn't viable, they think ethanol isn't either, which is ridiculous.

It can be made from wood scraps, most any plant material at all actually.

The real answer is marijuana of course, it grows 10 feet tall in 4 months, but we all know that won't happen, because someone might get high and feel good...can't have that.



Ethanol would work just fine in this country, but it would upset a lot of rich old people who don't want to have the source of their income change.

 

[rvj]

We've got a brand new ethanol plant near us and it's surrounded by farms as it was built in the country away from town. It pulls so much water from the ground to make ethanol that the wells on the farms around the ethanol plant are dry. These farms are pretty worthless when there is no ground water below them. Imagine turning on your kitchen faucet to get a drink of water and nothing comes out. We are surrounded by cornfields but we still sell a lot of non-ethanol fuels. I'm all for being less dependent on import oil but I also like the idea of water for drinking purposes.

 

[CaptainDan]

..... that using corn for ethanol drives up food prices for the world’s poor. ......

In order to plant, fertilize, harvest, process, ship, and store foods, a lot of fuel is needed. That cost goes into the ultimate cost of food. As a competitor for oil-based fuels, ethanol usage reduces gas and diesel demand, thus driving down the price for that gas and diesel. So ethanol usage can lower food prices.

 

[strider]

One problem with ethanol is transportation. You can't use the existing pipe infrastructure, so it has to be trucked to most locations.

Ethanol, butanol, even electric/hybrid vehicles are but a stepping stone to the next thing, which could be hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles.

 

[eurohazard]

The Wright brothers Flyer didn't sound like that great of an idea either, nor was the end all in manned flight. It was a starting point, corn is simply that as ethanol can be made from anything...

Nice. Very nice.

I have posted about ethanol before, particularly E85. It is a good thing. I do not believe the stories that it takes more energy to create ethanol than it provides. I believe a lot of the anti-ethanol movement was stirred by "big oil".

Is ethanol thee answer long term, I doubt it. But it's indeed a good pace to start while we silly humans keep using vehicles (automobiles, trains, aircraft, boats, generators etc) with internal combustion engines.

 

[CaptainDan]

.....need to figure out a way to make it more mainstream, have equal fuel mileage as gasoline, ....

Nah. If ethanol has 30% (whatever it is) less fuel economy than using gasoline, but it costs 30% less, then it is going to be very competitive with gasoline. If it costs even less......

 

[CaptainDan]

One problem with ethanol is transportation. You can't use the existing pipe infrastructure, so it has to be trucked to most locations.....

Actually, ethanol can be transported by pipeline (it is done now) you just can't transport it in the same pipeline used for gasoline/diesel/oil.

 

[robertburns3]

One article that I read, when taking into account all the resources required to produce ethanol, including land, water, fertilizer, actually calculated a net-negative in energy production.

I am not sure that it doesn't take more than a gallon of gas to refine a gallon of gas. Lets not forget it takes a lot of energy to get oil out fo the ground and refine it.

One of the complaints has been the amount of water used. I have read that new process have reduced that greatly. Wish I had a link.

As far as the "we shouldn't use our food for fuel" debate, I think that's a bull arguement. According to people I know in Agriculture, the use of corn for Ethanol has put fields into production that were previously sitting dormant. Further, rises in food prices, previously attributed to Ethanol production were actual the result of increased petrolium processes, which increased fertilizer and transportation costs.

 

[robertburns3]

Nah. If ethanol has 30% (whatever it is) less fuel economy than using gasoline, but it costs 30% less, then it is going to be very competitive with gasoline. If it costs even less......

You could increase the mileage of these vehicles by making them E-85 only instead of flex fuel to take advantage of the high octane rating of E-85.

 

[joemac]

Even if you throw out all other arguments, corn-based ethanol can never be more than a drop in the bucket of our national energy demands, and I'm not convinced that subsidizing ethanol from corn does anything to advance research in cellulosic or algea-based ethanol production (or any other method).

Isn't the current corn based ethanol filling the demand of 10% of our current fuel as demanded by the EPA? No? If corn is just one of the many sources that can be used, with additional sources having much greater yields, isn't the opportunity ripe for ethanol if oil becomes more expensive or if there's an environmental upheaval to get off oil?

Heck billions are paid in subsidies to big oil today, tell us how that logic works in favor of supporting alternatives. There is a huge amount of lobbying effort and money spent to see that oil remains our standard.

 

[kw02]

Ethanol requires more energy to produce than is gained by its addition to the gasoline. The addition to gasoline reduces the fuel mileage on cars. The cost of ethanol also needs to include the increase in cost of food products due to its having used corn and increasing the price and availability of corn.

The subsidizes to certain companies to "help" them afford to produce ethanol also adds into the cost. It's nice to subsidize those big businesses.

The production of ethanol generates a large amount of carbon dioxide. THe local ethanol plant, owned partly by a large grain company in Toledo, tried to get around the carbon dioxide part being labeled as a toxin by the EPA (it's not a toxin, BTW) by having Batelle attempt to inject the CO2 into the earth rock layers rather than into the atmosphere. The local community got that stopped.

I realize there's a green group pushing for anything that they believe might, might be effective. Windmills are not. Even the Kennedys didn't want windmills off their shoreline in Martha's Vineyard, but everyone else's shore line was okay with them. Windmills aren't the answer. Solar panels aren't the answer.

Nuclear is the best solution. Too bad the green folk vetoed it with harrassment through the decades. We would have saved LOTS of petroleum and coal product by generating electricity using the nuclear plants. Even France got the idea long ago how to do it right.

 

[Ed Arcuri]

Excellent discussion.
Some questions from me:
Congress has mandated CAFE for, roughly, forty years. Despite that, we continue to hear "we must reduce our dependency on foreign oil." Why? Doesn't CAFE work?
Fuel "economy" mandates are placed on the auto manufacturers. Many new cars use E85. Why are there no mandates on petroleum retailers to make E85 available?
We have a tariff on Brazilian ethanol of about 45 cents a gallon. Why?
The environmetal lobby fought, successfully, against a pipeline from the North Slope to the lower 48. This led, in time, to the Exxon Valdez disaster. Did the environmentalists secretly want a disaster for some other purpose?
When we have problems we blame them on shortsighted unions or shortsighted management. Who makes the decisions on legislative mandates, tariffs, other taxes, etc? Are these decisions made on Mars or in some US city which we may not mention?
Cheers,
Ed

 

[bballr4567]

Amazing story and pictures from Chernobyl. If you have not seen or read this piece, sit down and be amazed.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

 

[johnstarnes]

Ethanol requires more energy to produce than is gained by its addition to the gasoline. The addition to gasoline reduces the fuel mileage on cars. The cost of ethanol also needs to include the increase in cost of food products due to its having used corn and increasing the price and availability of corn.

The subsidizes to certain companies to "help" them afford to produce ethanol also adds into the cost. It's nice to subsidize those big businesses.

The production of ethanol generates a large amount of carbon dioxide. THe local ethanol plant, owned partly by a large grain company in Toledo, tried to get around the carbon dioxide part being labeled as a toxin by the EPA (it's not a toxin, BTW) by having Batelle attempt to inject the CO2 into the earth rock layers rather than into the atmosphere. The local community got that stopped.

I realize there's a green group pushing for anything that they believe might, might be effective. Windmills are not. Even the Kennedys didn't want windmills off their shoreline in Martha's Vineyard, but everyone else's shore line was okay with them. Windmills aren't the answer. Solar panels aren't the answer.

Nuclear is the best solution. Too bad the green folk vetoed it with harrassment through the decades. We would have saved LOTS of petroleum and coal product by generating electricity using the nuclear plants. Even France got the idea long ago how to do it right.

I'm against conventional nuclear power plants due to the vast amount of highly radioactive wastes they produce, plus their capacity to produce nukes. But I am very excited about the proposals that we retrofit current plants using thorium technology, plus build new thorium plants, as they produce little waste, can't melt down or produce nukes, plus the US has a VAST storehouse of thorium in the ground and already refined and in storage.

 

[maherj2]

every energy source can be shown to have a 'net energy loss' if we include all processes involved in extraction/production/delivery/efficiency etc.

I believe that the use of ethanol will lead to new ethanol technologies that will be more self-sufficient, use less 'food' crop sources and give us a viable energy alternative to the oil based energy system.