Some Facts About Ethanol

Also conveniently left out by the Pro-Ethanol lobby is all the fuel that goes into raising/harvesting/transporting the corn.

The clean air lobby forgets the reduced mileage which causes more fuel to be burned.

If ethanol additives were cost effective the gasoline producers would be all over it....but it is just the farm lobby working its magic
 
If you could reliably GET ethanol, you could build engines with high compression and tuning to take advantage of ethanol's high octane rating and get back at least some of the milage lost to lower heat of combustion.

Kind of a circular problem, there is no reliable source of ethanol, so the cars have to be made as Flexible Fuel Vehicles able to run on 87 octane gasoline, which means they get low fuel mileage when you can find some ethanol/E85.

A few years ago, Ford sold thousands of FFVs here with their cute little green leaf badge, in spite of the fact that I could find no source of E85 in the state. But Ford and the car buyers got the tax break anyhow.
 
Also conveniently left out by the Pro-Ethanol lobby is all the fuel that goes into raising/harvesting/transporting the corn.

The clean air lobby forgets the reduced mileage which causes more fuel to be burned.
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Fuels costs of production are not left out of any credible assessment. Have you bothered with any realistic presentations, or just settled for the strawmen you have described?

I'm not sure what your point is about the clean air lobby. The object in this case is to use less gasoline, not make the most fuel efficient vehicle on the planet.
 
I think alot of folks are missing the entire point to ethanol production. Yes corn is not the best ethanol production base. Yes it takes fuel to make etahnol. BUT WE MAKE ETHANOL HERE. Not in Iran or suadi arabia or timbuktu. How much fuel do you think a 700 foot supertanker takes to get from there to here? Hmmm... That corn picker and dump truck aint looking so bad now. THe whole point of ethanol is we can make it HERE. With 100% american grown base stock. Regardless of what it is. Yes ethanol is subsidized, And rightly so by my calculation. Id rather my tax dollar subsidy go to some farmer in iowa or south dakota, or a ethanol production facility in this country than have it sent to prince bakalakdaka for his crude oil.

SW
 
I think alot of folks are missing the entire point to ethanol production. Yes corn is not the best ethanol production base. Yes it takes fuel to make etahnol. BUT WE MAKE ETHANOL HERE. Not in Iran or suadi arabia or timbuktu. How much fuel do you think a 700 foot supertanker takes to get from there to here? Hmmm... That corn picker and dump truck aint looking so bad now. THe whole point of ethanol is we can make it HERE. With 100% american grown base stock. Regardless of what it is. Yes ethanol is subsidized, And rightly so by my calculation. Id rather my tax dollar subsidy go to some farmer in iowa or south dakota, or a ethanol production facility in this country than have it sent to prince bakalakdaka for his crude oil.
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I totally disagree with you, and think the actual science on it refutes your claims...but Prince Bakaladaka! :D :D :D
 
phetro- what claims do you disagree with me on? I dont dispute the fact that it takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gas but the advantage is its made in the US. Thants the point to ethanol.

SW
 
THe whole point of ethanol is we can make it HERE.
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Yes, but it takes oil (probably foreign oil) to fuel the machines needed to plant, fertilize and harvest the corn. It takes petroleum to manufacture the fertilizer to grow the corn. It takes petroleum based energy to convert the corn into ethanol. It takes oil to transport the ethanol to the blending facility - it has to be trucked because it's corrosive to pipelines. All things considered, corn-based ethanol takes more energy to produce than it gives back when it's burned.
 
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol

To match the detonation characteristics of gasoline at high-power settings, the utilization of ethanol-based fuels requires fuel-flow volume increases of nearly 40%. This means that currently-published performance information is not accurate when using ethanol-based fuels.

Ethanol-based fuels are not compatible with some fuel system components. Examples of extreme corrosion of ferrous components, the formation of salt deposits, jelly-like deposits on fuel strainer screens, and internal separation of portions of rubber fuel tanks have been observed in some vehicles using ethanol fuels.

The use of ethanol-based fuels can negatively affect electric fuel pumps by increasing internal wear and undesirable spark generation.

E-85 is not compatible with capacitance fuel level gauging indicators and may cause erroneous fuel quantity indications in vehicles that employ that system.

E-85 is capable of dissolving large amounts of water at conditions down to -77°, thereby impeding the detection and removal of water from the fuel system.

E-85 experiences heavy evaporation losses.
Ethanol has only 66% of the energy content of gasoline (in terms of lower heating value with units of "BTU/US gallons").

Some believe butanol fuel is a better option since it can be made from the same corn and other natural products. It works in all existing cars not just flex fuel ones. It gets better gas-mileage than gasoline or ethanol and provides better octane levels. It also pollutes less than ethanol or gasoline per mile.

I felt that with all the seemingly endless rhetoric regarding the positives and negatives regarding gasohol, this link would help clarify many of the misconceptions.

Ethanol, in a nutshell, represents an attempt by the powers that be to provide a RENEWABLE energy resouce alternative...THATS IT!!!
Despite all the rantings and ravings on the virtures of fossil fuels; oil, natural gas (with some exceptions), and coal are NON-RENEWABLE energy resources. Once it`s gone...it`s gone forever guys!




Curiosity yields evolution...satiety yields extinction.
 
Okay then...

Butanol anyone? And everyone seems to have ignored hemp seed oil.


Epyon


P.S: Man's foolish attempt to conquer the world and strip it of its resources will be his own undoing. Once everything runs dry then we will be in a serious SHTF situation. Can't wait for that to happen, then the true nature of people will come forth without the charades of "civilization".:rolleyes:
 
Ethanol, in a nutshell, represents an attempt by the powers that be to provide a RENEWABLE energy resouce alternative...THATS IT!!!
Despite all the rantings and ravings on the virtures of fossil fuels; oil, natural gas (with some exceptions), and coal are NON-RENEWABLE energy resources. Once it`s gone...it`s gone forever guys!
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Right on. You can point out all of the possible negatives for methanol/ethanol/butanol as a replacement fuel....But at the end of teh day, there's gonna be a point where we need to do something.

As mentioned, at least with these technologies, we can produce our fuels "at home" and not rely on any foreign sources, so the political climate won't effect us.

Heck, I've got 10 acres of land...with the right equipment (which is currently prohibitively expensive) it might be possible for me to become "self sufficient" for my fuel/energy need. Already looking into a wood burning furnace, as I got KILLED last winter on gas. But I have lots of wood...could last a long time just cutting out the dead stuff on my property.
 
Jim, been away from the PC for a couple of days. You can find lots of info by Googling "Wood-based ethanol production." Also, the GA Forestry Commission has lots of info about the subject.
 
OK, but I had hoped you would know of something specific so I would not be blundering around in a field I have not worked in for years.

I did not see much on a quick look at GA F.C.

Otherwise I see a lot of claims for developmental enzymatic hydrolysis and still some acid hydrolysis holdouts.

Then there are the nuts in Arkansas who propose to gasify biomass and ferment carbon monoxide to alcohol. Wow. They don't mention the source of energy to run the gasifier at 2000+ F, but mention plasma arcs which are real power eaters. I ran a partial oxidation coal gasifier. Thermal efficiency from coal to syngas - CO & H2 - was in the neighborhood of 66%. Then they have to ferment and distill.

There is mention of a guy in a New York university who "extracts" fermentable sugars from willow chips with water and a permeable membrane, leaving behind what still looks like a wood chip. That is a good trick. I cannot find a description of the chemistry taking place. Maybe it the water is supercritical and is hydrolyzing the hemicellulose. If so, then he has to be fermenting that with the hard to manage C5 yeasts, and armwaving about how much the residual chip is worth. It would comprise alpha cellulose and lignin. I think. But I could not find technical details.
 
Jim, I assumed, probably erroneously, that there'd be more info on the GFC website, due to my having seen an interview on GPB of the director of the GFC. He was my source for the "hot water" method of extracting sugar from wood products. He's also my source for the "22,000,000 tons of waste left in the woods."

However, I did read a couple of articles that I found through Google about the advantages of using wood products over corn were that the process was more environmentally friendly, plus, more converting wood supposedly is more efficient than converting corn.

I'll see if I can find a couple of those articles and post links.
 
i had a great uncle who was years ahead of his time, the first time he was caught refining corn he got 3 years the second time he got caught they gave him 5 years. but he would get $10.00 per gallon for his
 
Thats called "moonshining" when its for drinking. All you have to do to produce your own ethanol for motor fuel is apply for a permit and blend the final product with gasoline to make it undrinkable when it exits the still.

SW
 
The guy is extracting Xylan - proably hydrolyzed to Xylose if the water is hot enough - and is going to revolutionize the fuel business? Xylose as a anti-cary sweetener is expensive enough that I would not want to have to pay for fuel alcohol made from it versus the oil sheiks' wildest dreams.
 
We covered the topic of ethanol replacing gasoline in our chemical engineering senior design class last fall. End result of analysis? To completely replace gasoline in the U.S. alone with enthanol would require covering all of arable land in North and South America in corn fields, then building 500-800 new distilleries. Not entirely cost effective, but replacing about 5-7% of the gasoline in the country would help. Ethanol is snake oil.
 
Dreadnoghut- were not trying to toatlly replace conventional gasoline with ethanol. No current production car can run on 100% ethanol. Even flex fuel cars can oly run on 85% ethanol. The point is to stretch the oil supplies from our own country with ethanol made in our country to reduce the need for foregin oil. BTW just because most ethanol made right now is made from corn that doesnt mean it will stay that way. In many previous posts other base matierals have been discussed. Im not beating that dead horse again. The scientific evidence on the simple fact that ethanol is profitable for farmers manufacturers, and is a relativly untapped source of domestic fuel supply is prolific on the interent. Im done with this topic. You just cant convince some people.

SW
 
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