Ethanol More Trouble Than It's Worth? 986
call -151 writes "Yahoo reports this story by researchers from Cornell and Berkeley who show what a number of people had suspected- it takes significantly more energy (at least 29%) more energy to produce ethanol than it yields. Since ethanol production plants don't use ethanol themselves for their own energy needs (with presumably negible delivery costs) this has been widely suspected but not so bluntly stated: "Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy, or the environment." Ethanol producers dispute the study, predictably, which deducts the multi-billion US dollar subsidy. It's not clear how this compares with this earlier Union of Concerned Scientists article that claims that the yield from corn kernels is net 50% positive- and the UCS is usually quite unbiased on these things."
Looking at the wrong numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Looking at the wrong numbers. (Score:4, Funny)
Ha fool! You've obviously never seen the swine-powered running wheel that keeps my house off the grid.
Re:Looking at the wrong numbers. (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of the study is that they're using a gallon of regular petrolium fuel to produce, effectively, less than a gallon of ethanol.
I wonder, what would be cheaper/easier to produce: Growing corn or potatoes for alcohol production for Ethanol, or drilling thru MILES of rock to get to oil in crude form?
Hard to say - depends on where you're drilling, and on where you're farming. To grow plants, you need fresh water, abundant fertalizer, heavy equipment, rich soil, easy road and freight access, and perfect timing (or the crop is ruined, or the produce spoils on the way to processing, etc).
Drilling a well can involve an acre or two of land. Producing the same hydrocarbon type fuel through growing plants can involve thousands of acres.
These comparisons aren't as obvious as they might seem.
Bah (Score:5, Insightful)
A.
D.
M.
When the corporation who puts out the vast majority of ethanol-producing corn has members of both parties in their pocket, legislators are going to continue to preach the advantages of "clean, renewable" corn-based fuel.
(Also, they would prefer that you pay no attention to the fact that Ethanol produces less CO2, but more of other gasses, such as O3. We've got an environment to save, dammit! How dare you question the advantages of A.D.M.'s Ethanol!!!)
Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)
ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Corn syrup is an inferior product but it can be had cheaply in the USA because of the massive subsidies paid to ADM.
Have a Coke anywhere else in the world and it will taste good. Coke in the USA is undrinkable unless you can buy Passover Coke (once a year in certain markets) or Mexican Coke (in a glass bottle, yum) both of which have real sugar.
Also note that you can get REAL Dr Pepper from www.dublindrpepper.com
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
That is also why Pepsi won the Pepsi challenge. They still use cane sugar. While not all people can taste the difference between corn sugar and cane sugar, those who can overwhelmingly prefer cane sugar. Thus Pepsi beats Coke hands down.
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
However it was during the era of the switch that Pepsi used the challenge since Coke was suddenly lacking the fruity sweetness that cane sugar gave it.
Coke actually has each plant send syrup samples to Atlanta for testing on a regular basis to ensure consistency. Of course there is still the question of HFCS.
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference between them is the type of citrus used. For Pepsi, they mainly use lime, for Coke they mainly use lemon.
Coke has a more "bitter" bite to it, which adults tend to prefer. (Just as adults are more likely to enjoy black coffee and beer than children are.) Pepsi tastes much sweeter, which results in them winning blind "taste-tests" in which you only drink a small sip of each, but that does not always make i
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
If anybody has a link to back this up, it would be appreciated. I'm probably talking out of my ass again.
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was a kid, pop was a rare treat. I still to this day rarely drink the crap. And I'm quite healthy.
The people I know around my age that either have been drinking pop very regularly since they were kids, or whom now drink a few pops a day are almost invariably obese.
Even worse though are the number of kids you see today that are a) obese and b) have a can of pop permanently attache
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe they are right, but for the wrong reasons. It doesn't have anything to do with the way HFCS is absorbed.
Such a small difference isn't going to cause an obesity epidemic, unless you're consuming gallons of soda each day.
Bingo! You see HFCS is cheap. Far cheaper than sugar. Therefore, it was all of a sudden possible to have many more items that are filled w
Re:Bah (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bah (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Daniels_Midla
Re:Bah (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bah (Score:3, Informative)
Efficiency is not the point ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Efficiency is not the point ! (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got a great point - one of the fundamental problems we face is in battery technology, of storing and transporting energy with a decoupling between generation and consumption. Ethanol could be a fantastic battery of sorts, in the same way that hydrogen is, but compatible with current vehicles.
Of course practically most farmers are using copious amounts of oil-products to generate ethanol, but perhaps with a modernization and greening of farms, this storage technology could become more sustainable.
Re:Efficiency is not the point ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool! Whose backyard will it go in?
Re:Efficiency is not the point ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, I would prefer that the plant were based on Canadian or European nuclear technology. The U.S. has allowed its nuclear industry to become technologically outdated due to not building any plants for decades.
It's not power it uses, but OIL (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I checked... (Score:3, Insightful)
Specifically, ethanol boils at 78.3C [www.ucc.ie]
What you might be refering to is the industrial production of ethanol rather than fermentation. As from the above website, industrial production uses Ethene and steam, which requires higher temperatures than simple distillation. Also note that distillation of ethanol only gets 95% pure, as that mixture of water+ethanol has a lower boiling point than either component
Brazil does just fine on ethanol (Score:5, Interesting)
Brazil does just fine with it's sugarcane:
http://www.eroei.com/articles/16_jun_05_brazil_fu
Re:Brazil does just fine on ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
Now, corn can be grown further north than sugarcane, so that might be a factor. Of course, if we could break ourselves of our sugar habit, we'd be able to fuel many vehicles off the saved sugar.
On a different point, a couple of seed/hybridization/GM companies are looking into making corn varieties designed for maximum ethanol production. They're predicting something like a 25% increase in about five years.
Oh, and my prediction:
Ethanol fuel cells. How would you like to get more milage out of ethanol than we do with today's vehicles with gasoline? We don't have to burn ethanol the traditional way, and it'd reduce what pollution ethanol has.
I think that the main problem with the increased pollution is that they haven't spent the research and tuning efforts into reducing it, and most ethanol cars today are adaptions of gasoline cars. Don't forget that ethanol also reduces or eliminates many other pollutants from gasoline, it's only in a couple that it increases.
Re:Sugarcane (Score:3, Funny)
Then they said alcohol was bad for you, now they say a little is actually healthy.
Then they said that you shouldn't put sugar in your gas tank. And now...
Re:Brazil does just fine on ethanol (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, cane is a better crop to use to produce alcohol but the conditions to grow it effectively don't exist in the US. The fact that it works for Brazil says al
Re:Brazil does just fine on ethanol (Score:3, Funny)
Ethanol not worth it! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh. You mean Ethanol energy production. Yes. Of course.
Plastic Rabbit, New Gizmo? [whattofix.com]
Re:Ethanol not worth it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ethanol not worth it! (Score:5, Funny)
Because the mods wish to reward the poster with a real mod-point that counts toward their score instead of the pseudo mod-point "funny". The problem with this scheme is that it tends to confuse the
I really do applaud the intentions of the mods, but this is one of those cases where you shouldn't try to game the system.
That's funny.... or is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider ethanol as a means to store energy from nuclear, solar, wind, tidal, hydro or other clean energy sources and transport it to your auto's engine.
I'd like to see ethanol compared to chemical batteries, fuel cells or others on an basis of efficency & cost.
Re:Meaningless (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes gasoline to run those tractors, and electricity from fossil fuels to run the factories.
This study is saying, basically, that we'd be doing better if we just dumped that gasoline into our cars without messing around with ethanol.
Re:Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, how well will that market deal with things like the inevitable droughts. Will we be flexible enough to use another crop, or even another tech to make up for the shortfall, or will we be skating on razor thin margins from now on, dealing with rolling blackouts, etc?
Re:Meaningless (Score:3, Informative)
This is a big problem in my mind: rather than focusing on how to use less energy and address the root cause of the issue, we're spending all kinds of effort on how to provide more energy and perpetuate the "more more more!" mindset.
Think about that 60 watt lightbulb (or collection of lightbulbs) over your head. Do an interesting experiment and see how long you can sustain a 60W output on an excersize bike,
ethanol from corn (Score:5, Informative)
However, growing other plant materials (from waste or whatever) is much more efficent.
Ethanol will work... just not from corn.
Did anybody think the transition would be easy?
Hydrogen energy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, perhaps "hydrogen energy" has some meaning like "solar/wind energy used to produce hydrogen", but certainly not in the context above ("solar, wind and hydrogen energy").
Re:Hydrogen energy? (Score:3, Informative)
That's true of ethanol as well though; there's no significant natural source of ethanol. We make it from sugars which ultimately come from sunlight.
No, that statement makes perfect sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are the one reading into the statement your own bias, they never said anything about producing energy from hydrogen, its entirely your assumption. "Hydrogen energy" makes perfect sense, you use hydrogen as an energy source. You just have to use some other energy source to make the hydrogen in the first place, kinda like with everything else we use.
Its not like oil produces more energy than it took to make either, we just didn't expend that energy ourselves.
it take 1000 time more energy (Score:3, Interesting)
Oil Subsidy... (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as a third of our budget is military and a chief focus of the military is to keep the oil flowing, it makes sense to pursue other energy options.
Who paid for this study. (Score:5, Interesting)
CORN Ethanol (Score:5, Informative)
The enthusiasm for ethanol by real scientists is from the very promising means for producing ethanol from cellulose-based feedstocks, in other words from cheap plentiful surplus materials. While this wasn't cost-effective as an energy alternative when gas cost 80 cents a gallon, at 2.25-2.50 a gallon, cellulosic ethanol is quite competitive on a dollar-per-mile basis, and it can extract energy from cheap, easy to grow feedstocks or waste-cellulose material that would otherwise end up in municipal garbage dumps.
Ethanol from Cellulose (Score:3, Informative)
I know a lot of people don't want to accept it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ethanol and other biofuels don't seem to really hold up to cost-benefit analysis, as this article (and many others) suggests- Even if this article is exaggerated, the truth is still on the wall that it can't compare to nuclear.
Oil will run low pretty soon, coal, air and wind power can't take up the slack... BAMM! New nuclear age.
Does anyone really have reasonable prediction that doesn't include at least 80% of all power being nuclear in 50 years? I can't find one...
Re:I know a lot of people don't want to accept it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just being the right thing to do won't make a thing happpen. If we wait too long we'll find ourselves on the downhill side of the oil production curve with oil & gas prices skyrocketing.
If that
When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot has covered this before and I will repost my comment from back then:
While production of ethanol can be inefficient rarely does it result in a net energy loss. Several different studies show anywhere from a 38% net gain in energy to over 100% depending on methods use. The generally cited claim of a net energy loss from producing ethanol all seem to come from only one paper written by David Pimental [the author of the paper quoted in this article]. To support his claims he seems to have taken a worst pratices view for every step in the production process, a realworld combination found in less than 5% of current ethanol production. The more comphrensive studies I've been able to find show a slight, albeit not stellar, net gain in energy. The most recent (2002) by Michigan State shows a net gain of 0.56 MJ/MJ of input for corn based ethanol production. If one looks at Cellulose based ethonal production, studies show almost a 2.5 net energy gain and it is easier on the environment since it requires less maintenance and fewer fertilizers.
For reference this site has some good links, including a rebuttal of the Pimental paper (as well as showing the Pimental article).
www.econet.sk.ca/pages/issues/ethanolinfone tenergybalance.htm [econet.sk.ca]
Re:When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if I would say he always took the worse possible approach to things but it certainly was unoptimized. Two areas really stood out.
Fertilizer and Distilling.
It seems that if there ever was an application f
Re:When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably. But these studies don't typically take the energy input of the sun into account. We're not trying to conserve matter, here, just human effort and capital.
Ethanol vs. methanol (Score:3, Interesting)
This would be a moot point... (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, the words of "Chernobyl" are so well rehearsed by this community that they fail to realize the fact that Chernobyl was running at 130% capacity at the time -- a situtation which does not happen in current reactors due partially to the government regulations, partially to the IAEA, and partially to political pressures. That, and it's fucking common sense for crying out loud! Nuclear scientists and engineers know what they are working with now more than ever.
Modern day physicists if asked honestly, know that the answer lies in atomic energies for our future. It is cheap, clean, produces no greenhouse gases, and leave a microbe of waste as compared to a petroleum based economy. If the US and its politics weren't so oil hungry and to boot -- money hungry, they would be investing in the fusion experiement that is now going to be located in France. Granted it probably won't produce much power to boot... but it would be 100% clean and without any radioactive waste. The implications for potential power are huge, unfortunately most US lobbyists have convinced our government to turn their back on the future and concern themselves with just strengthening a limited fuel.
Sorry for the tirade, but I hate to see talks about biodiesel and ethanol (which is actually really cool, it produces higher octane numbers than gasoline!), and the arguement the author makes without bringing up our energy situtation that makes this point oh, so relevant.
Re:Nuclear = green house gases (Score:5, Informative)
As far as there having been plenty of nuclear accidents so fucking what. We've had plenty of airplane accidents, including a non-accident that killed 2752 people, more people than killed in every nuclear accident that ever happened, yet despite that people still fly, including the eco-weasels who bitch about nuclear power and greenhouse warming, flying to their international conferences on greenhouse gas spewing jet aircraft.
Further problems with nuclear include the unsolved problem of waste disposal,
How to dispose of nuclear waste. Reprocess waste to recover long lived fissionable isotopes that can be used in power reactors. Take shorter lived, hotter isotopes and bury underground for 1000 years (which is manageable with today's technology, the fucking pyramids have lasted for 5000 years) and let it cool down. Problem solved.
the high cost of producing nuclear power (it's actually much more expensive than many renewables),
Factored in all of the subsidies renewables receive? No, you haven't. If you did they come off much worse and nuclear comes off much better.
nuclear weapons proliferation,
Bad guys are going to get WMDs regardless of whether or not nuclear power is used.
and of course apart from the Three Mile Island meltdown (26 years ago) and the criticality accident at the uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura (just 6 years ago), there have been plenty of other nuclear accidents.
Plenty of plane accidents too, yet despite that people are still flying, including environmentalists.
Oh, and as far as uranium running out, yeah right. Fuel costs are a minor cost in the cost of a nuclear plant, increase the fuel cost by a factor of 10 and you still aren't impacting operations.
Misleading Study,why factor in energy from the sun (Score:3, Informative)
51 cents per gallon. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Ethanol is such a viable replacement for gasoline made from oil, then why does it need a 51 cent subsidy? The fact is that no ethanol maker can make a profit without that subsidy.
An Important Point (Score:3, Insightful)
A truly eco-friendly economy is going to require massive investments in solar, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear sources of power production, and hydrogen - not carbon - should become the storage medium for our energy needs. We also need to focus tightly on energy efficiency, with new semiconductor technologies, more efficient appliances, and properly insulated homes and buildings.
Now, regardless of your politics, the only serious proposal above board is the proposals made by the Bush administration towards those very same ends. Its congress - Republicans and Democrats - that are holding up the show. Bitch at your congressman today.
Re:An Important Point (Score:3, Informative)
The problem here is that the production process for the ethanol is apparently inefficient, so the shortfall in energy is made up using non-renewable resources: it is overall non-renewable. If you could decrease the energy requirement for producing the ethanol so it was less than the energy content of the ethanol produced, the entire thing would be self-
Better Use of Ethanol (Score:4, Funny)
I can think of much a better use of Ethanol than powering cars.
It even saves me gas, cuz I'm not driving, and sometimes I'm not driving the next morning either.
Not really (Score:3, Interesting)
2. The costs of oil are far greater than the money spent processing it. What about the economic costs of having to over build car engine technology to mitigate exhaust pollution? Catylitic converters use some fairly expensive materials. What about the economic costs of dealing with polluted air? What about the economic costs of keeping our military topped off with oil so we can go "fight terra" and "keep the homeland safe" aka, keep the homeland filled with plastics and oil? The military takes up over 30% of tax payer money, and it's sole purpose these days appears to be securing oil for western countries.
3. What about the tactical cost of keeping all your eggs in one basket? There would be distinct tactical advantage for America's military and cival sector to have another source of energy in case the rug were pulled out from underneath oil. Major wars have been decided by cutting off oil supplies, and if there was ever another world wide conflict, you better believe that oil control will be the tactical ace up the sleeve. Without oil, our fancy war machines do nothing. Having a secondary source of energy is very important in this regard.
So yea, the article says that ethanol costs more and requires more energy to produce. Well, that may be true in the short term. That is, unless we feel like digging a huge hole, putting a bunch of carbon based corpses and plants, and covering it up for a few millennia. If you want to speed up that process, it's going to take more energy.
Ethanol is a good thing.
The UCS is an environmental group with a cool name (Score:5, Insightful)
Large yields require fossil fuels... (Score:5, Interesting)
Modern field corn production requires large amounts of fertilizer, in particular anhydrous ammonia, to produce the 150+ bushels per acre that we currently enjoy.
Ammonia prices have steadily climbed over the past decade as the price of natural gas climbs. Ammonia is made using the Haber process to combine nitrogen from the air with hydrogen obtained from natural gas.
I come from a long line of farmers:
In my great-grandfather's day, corn production rates were pitiful.
In my grandfather's day, the Haber process and corn hybridization produced bumper crops.
In my father's day, he stopped growing corn. Combined with the US embargo of Canadian beef it just wasn't worth the effort.
Union of Concerned Scientists unbiased? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the sensational fearmongering and hatemongering titles, like:
"Is our food safe to eat?"
- This is an article about geneticly modified food. While Big Macs and Twinkies might not be safe because they are full of fat and sugar, there hasn't been a single documented case of anyone being harmed by eating GM food, ever. This kind of headline is pure un-scientific fearmongering. They could have headlined it "Genetically Modified Crops: What are the issues?". Or "Will GM crops disrupt the ecosystem". Instead they are using the "Frankenfood" hysteria to promote a view (that all GM crops are evil!), that clearly all scientists don't have a single point of view on.
"U.S. Sets Back Progress on Global Warming at G8 Summit"
- Yeah, write an article with lots of inflammitory statements like "President Bush resembled an isolated soul", but don't mention anywhere in the article WHAT ACTUAL ACTIONS OR POLICY DECISIONS HE TOOK TO "SET BACK PROGRESS ON GLOBAL WARMING". There was not one mention of any G8 policy, plan, study, or anything else in the article. The entire article basicly says "Bush is a baddie". I am not a fan a Bush, but this is not the behavior of responsible scientists. This is the behavior of a left-wing political organization... which is fine, people have the right to express thier views, but don't pretend the organization is a non-political "Scientific" one.
Pimental publishes the same crap every year (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/8.14.03/
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethano
I can't speak to this newest report, but Pimental's work has been repeatedly critiqued, and one of the main compliants it that he uses out of date numbers for yield and conversion efficiency:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html [state.mn.us]
http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf [usda.gov]
http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_rooster.html [journeytoforever.org]
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05Arg
http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm [ethanol-gec.org]
All that having been said, Pimental is right that soy and corn alone cannot replace our petroleum addiction. You can read more about this in the archives at TDIclub.com.
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Boar
Not all Ethanol is from Corn (Score:3, Informative)
In terms of total carbon burden, converting cellulosic biomass to fuel is a benefit, because otherwise this agricultural waste material would be burned off by farmers in the fields, with the energy released going to no work and most of the carbon going into the atmosphere. By capturing the energy for doing work, it reduces total carbon emmissions. Moreover, the waste material is also a fuel used in the production of cellulosic ethanol, reducing the amount of fossil fuels required for its production.
It is silly to grow an energy-intensive food crop to make ethanol, but it makes sense to use existing agricultural waste streams to do so.
Brazil reducing imports using ethonal (Score:4, Informative)
You want to know what the problem is? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you can believe some of the studies that come from some of the more esoteric parts of science, like cosmology and string theory, where political ideology has a hard time getting it Hellraiser hooks in, but even those could be muddied by grant money requirements and blinkered philosophies.
Brazil can do it right... (Score:5, Informative)
Corn may be a bad source of ethanol, and Archer Daniels Midland may be liquid evil poured into a suit, but that doesn't mean other folks can't do it right.
See a rather good writeup of the issue [ucr.edu].
--grendel drago
Here are the real numbers (Score:5, Informative)
For a small 40 million gallon ethanol/year plant, the BTU inputs are 2 trillion BTUs per year for natural gas, electricity, and corn. The output in BTUs is 3 trillion BTUs. In order to push the numbers into negative territory, the ethanol critics have to generate more than 1 trillion BTUs of additional energy costs. I have not read the Berkeley study, but I bet it includes the food that the employees eat, the cost of generating the paper in the books they read, and all sorts of other absurd numbers.
Here is the actual data for a brand-new (2005) 40 million gallon ethanol plant that uses 15 million bushels of corn per year:
Inputs:
Natural Gas:
4,000 Mcf per day of gas at a cost of $3.95 per Mcf
Natural gas: 1,028,000 BTU/MCF = 1,496,768,000,000 BTU inputs for natural gas
Electricity:
30,000,000 kilowatt hours per year for an estimated price of $.040 per kilowatt- hour
High estimate: 8,962 Btu per KWH
Low estimate: 3,416 BTU per KWH
Taking the low estimate, 102,480,000,000 BTU
Corn:
339,196,122,625 BTU for fertilizer (122 bushels per acre, 15 million bushels, 124 pounds of nitrogen per acre, 22,159 BTU/lb for fertilizer)
Total inputs:
Input BTU: 1,998,444,122,625 Input total
Outputs:
40 million gallons of ethanol, 128,000 tons of distillers grains and 115,500 tons of raw carbon dioxide gas.
LHV: Low heat value--76,000 Btu per gallon of ethanol.
HHV: High heat value--83,961 Btu per gallon of ethanol.
Low: 76,000 x 40,000,000 = 3,040,000,000,000 BTU
Surplus:
1,041,555,877,375 BTU
Think Algae! (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole reason for going with algae was that it has the potential to be more efficient, as compared with bio-fuels from more conventional sources. (It was stated that some species of algae are up to 50% oil, by mass. How does that compare with peanut plants? Or corn? Yeah.)
And yet. . . algae isn't part of the wider discussion. People are still arguing about corn. Now, I realize the algae thing is all hypothetical -- looks good on paper, not yet proven practical. And yes, it takes time for new ideas to gain mindshare. But IMO we need to be pushing research into more ingenious, cutting-edge ideas like this. Many of them won't pan out, but some could, and it could make a huge difference.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Funny)
To be blunt, when I drink beer on a Friday evening, the amount of energy that comes out is waay more than goes in. As for fusion reactors and hydrogen/sodium tomfoolery? They have no place in my nights out thanks very much!
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's a huge, politically correct opportunity to subsidize voters in agro states, and to buy off the eco-crazies with something that sounds emotionally warm and fuzzy. It's not about fuel, it's about throwing a bone, no matter how pointless, to the sustainablites while real research into actual solutions is conducted on other fronts (say, in France, believe it or not).
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of Ethanol is that by using Ethanol, we can use more of the corn produced in the US, therby having to export less. Also, by using Ethanol, we can import less oil. Even if it takes 29% more energy to produce Ethanol than it returns, What it doesn't say is that a LOT of Ethanol produced in the Aggro states run on power grids that get most of their power from dams/windmills.
We support the Agriculture by buying up all of the left-over crop of corn/soy from last year, we make it into a fuel to dilute the gas we import from the Middle East... Ethanol is much more valuable than left over corn/soy... and without it, small farmers in the midwest would go bankrupt...
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Funny)
c.f. California Gas (Score:3, Insightful)
A few years ago, One of the major gas producers found that it could make a much cleaner burning fuel using only petroleum based chemicals. It would cost less and save the air. Unfortunately the Feds stepped in an demanded that ethanol
Re:c.f. California Gas (Score:3, Informative)
There is currently a lawsuit from several States pending against MTBE manufacturers because they kne
Re:Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm guessing the massive portion of the energy (over 90%) is used by the distillation process. It takes tremendous amount of heat to vaporize water and alcohols, for what, to simply precipitate them back down. As a sidenote, in the chemica
Re:Duh (Score:3, Interesting)
It's better to have our tax dollars spent to pay farmers to grow corn in Idaho, than paid to rich sultans in the Middle East!
The US receives X amount of sunlight per year. With Ethanol, we are spending our money to convert that sunlight into fuel, using corn as solar collectors.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
You can design an ethanol plant adjacent to a hog farm. The waste material from producing ethanol f
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Because hydrogen isn't a practical energy carrier. Even at tremendous pressures (like 500 atmospheres) it doesn't even come close to the gravimetric or volumetric energy density of gasoline.
Ethanol has about 2/3rds the volumetric energy density of gasoline. This is worth while over hydrogen, even if the stuff takes more energy to make than it yields. Just think of the energy required to compress hydrogen to 10kpsi. One might joke about running an automobile on this pressure alone.
The bottom line is that energy input versus output will be moot once everyone realizes that we'll need nuclear to be sustainable. We just need a good, dense energy carrier.
FWIW, hydrides have become the hydrogen carrier of choice in nickel metal hydride batteries because you don't need tremendously high pressures to get good volumetric density. But to put it in perspective, they're still only carrying about 2 percent hydrogen by weight. Some day, a nanotech breakthrough may make it possible to increase that by an order of magnatude. When this happens, we'll have electric cars that you'll take in after a few thousand miles to get the battery changed.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
your calculations are slightly off (Score:5, Informative)
We may use it up in 150 years, but there are ways around that too, like fast breeder reactors, which can produce more fuel than they consume.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Half life for U-235 is 700 million years.
Half life for U-238 is 4.5 billion years.
Sodium (Score:3, Interesting)
and furthermore the extraction takes energy to perform. Hydrogen is a potential energy carrying medium, not a net source of energy. And high
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ethanol (or something similar) is necessary (Score:5, Informative)
1) No fusion method has actually broken even on this planet, and even if it did, it's tabletop. Not a car. It would probably be 30+ years away from actual use.
2) That sodium crap is *definitely* an energy loser, as sodium metal isn't just sitting around and takes a lot of energy to reduce to its metallic form from the ionic form in which it's actually found. It's also just basically reversing the reaction that generates sodium in the first place. Talking about getting energy from that is like talking about the relative merits of a perpetual motion machine.
3) Ethanol burns in cars. Now. With actual internal-combustion engines that exist.
The relative ethanol break-even is important to a degree, but it (or something like it) is needed now to get more oxygen in fuels which helps prevent incomplete combustion (read: air pollution). MTBE (methyl t-butyl ether) was used previously, but is worse than ethanol in groundwater. Ethanol is worse for aerosol formation in the atmosphere I've heard (ie, more smog), and is a bit more expensive. We use ethanol these days instead of MTBE thanks to ex-Sen Daschle, protecting his state's corn lobby.
Bottom line? We have to use ethanol, or something like ethanol, to clean up gasoline if not for a fuel. We also need something realistic to bridge the gap between fosil fuels and the further-out alternative fuels.
Re:News Flash: Oil is the Only Viable Energy Sourc (Score:3, Insightful)
We just upped the sulphur limit not too long ago. It doesn't work out that we will now see "extra" crap coal, but rather coal production mixes those that don't meet the requirements with those that do to produce something just marginally good enough to use. (At least good enough for most, but there are many industries that ask for premium grade coal)
Re:MTBE: Bad, Ethanol: Bad...what's good? (Score:3, Insightful)
In terms of gasoline addatives, I think we should use Ethanol. I mean, Ethanol is an alcohol, which is somewhat toxic, but it isn't nearly as poisonous as MTBE. Also, the article isn't talking about toxicity, but rather about amount of fossil fuel needed to produce it. So, my bottom line for this is: Even if ethanol really doesn't save more on gasoline, it is still far b
Re:public transportation for the short term... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely not. Subsidizing is not the way to go. If you want to improve the environment then eliminate subsidies:
- By eliminating the subsidies used to build freeway systems that allow urban sprawl people will be enouraged to live closer to their places of work and play. PLEASE NOTE While I am opposed to sprawl I am not anti-sprawl. Developers should be allowed to build on their land more or less as they see fit. I am opposed to the spending of public funds to make said private land more valuable. If the developers want to get together and build a 5 line highway out to Clear Hidden Creek Golf Ridge Mystic Forest Hills Estates then so be it. So don't even go there.
- Start charging fair market value for oil/gas lease and exploration rights on public lands.
- Guarantee tax exemption for any and all new forms of energy or energy generation for the five years immediately following patent approval.
Personally I am an advocate of nuclear power. Pebble bed reactors are clean, safe and can take advantage of economies of scale. Somebody (GE, probably) has developed a "disposable" reactor that is comparitively maintenance free, designed as a free-standing generator that can be placed in a village. At the end of its 20-25 year lifespan it is trucked away, waste and all (which is not removed from the structure while on-site) and a new one dropped in its place.Re:Could someone please explain? (Score:3, Informative)
Ethanol is the waste product from various yeasts which consume either sugars or cellulose, which is later distilled. Ethanol is more suited to spark ignition engines which I suppose why it gets the attention it does in
Re:Is anyone surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Biodiesel fans call BS on researcher (Score:3, Interesting)
I also am a member of the TDIClub so I too am biased.
But here's some food for thought:
My TDI motor gets an average of 45 MPG while making around 130 hp and 250 ft/lbs of torque. A comparable gasoline engine will get 25 to 30 mpg. This means the TDI gets 50% better economy.
It's important to mention that this isn't because gasoline engines are inefficient - it's because diesel (and bio diesel) fuel contains more energy per volume than gasoline does.
So in a real world context, this article doesn't make
Re:The real environmental impact of ethanol (Score:3, Funny)
have to be "politically correct" on slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
I get 36 MPG in the summer and 32 MPG in the winter months when 15% ethonal is mandated in my state. That is almost entirely accounted for by energy density calculations. Maybe winter driving or engine tuning accounts for a small amount of it.
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:5, Informative)
No, this "fact" is brought to you by the letter "P", as in "Pimental". Pimental is an an anti-ethanol crusader. Every last study since the 1970s that has said that ethanol is net-negative has either been authored or coauthored by him. I can't locate a single "net negative" conducted without his involvement, amid the many "net positive"s.
All of his previous papers have been widely criticized on relying on grossly outdate information. Using modern information, about a dozen studies have been conducted by widely varied researchers; each come up with between 30-70% net positive, with the higher numbers relying on more modern technology, and the lower on "average" technology. I can only assume that Pimental's latest is more of the same as his previous. His second paper simply reused the data in his first, despite it being outdated the first time.
This is, by the way, a discussion of ethanol from corn, as opposed to ethanol from sugarcane which is more efficient (see Brazil).
Now, even if ethanol *was* energy negative, that's still irrelevant. Everything in the universe is energy negative; we only change forms of energy to produce the work that we want. For example, during WWII, the Nazis made large amounts of oil from coal. It took a lot of energy from coal to produce the oil at the time; by the sort of calculations discussed here, it was a "net negative". Yet, it powered the Nazi war machine.
What matters is if you're making something that allows you to get work done. If you power ethanol production from burning ag waste (common to do so at least partly, for heating), coal power, nuclear power, etc, you're making something that you can burn in your car from something that you couldn't - you're producing something that can get work done. Nobody is advocating burning oil or ethanol to produce ethanol here, just like the Nazis didn't burn oil to power coal liquifaction.
But, this is all a tangent: only in Pimental's little world of outdated farming energy consumption data and ethanol production efficiencies is ethanol "net negative".
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:3, Insightful)
I was kinda pointing at that
we only change forms of energy to produce the work that we want.
And in the process you will lose energy to another underired form (such as heat), my point was that with oil nature has done most of the work, with Ethanol thats not as true. Now if the study is flawed do you ahve anything other than the authors name to show it is so?
What matters is if you're making something that allows you to get work done.
But we are using
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Every study not conducted by him that I have ever located. Need links? I can also link you to critiques of his previous work if you would like, and to how he ignored the critiques and used the exact same numbers again.
Want examples? Pimental assumes that all corn is irrigated (only 16% is, and that corn is rarely used for ethanol production - and Pimental even notes this, but assumes all corn is irrigated anyways!). He ignored life-cycle analysis standards. He includes one-time energy charges such as farming equipment and ethanol plant production, ignoring that oil companies have similar scale one-time energy charges for oil rigs and refineries. Pimental used energy calculations for fertilizer production from the UN's data for worldwide average costs, while the USDA and others use the energy cost of US fertilizer production (these are widely different numbers - a 2.5-fold difference). He uses 1979 ethanol plant efficiency, ignoring the huge process improvements made since (which halve the energy cost per gallon). Etc. He makes no attempt, whatsoever, to be balanced, and repeats the same inaccurate representation over and over.
my point was that with oil nature has done most of the work
You're ignoring the issue: You can't burn ag waste in your car. You can't burn coal in your car. You can't burn nuclear in your car. You *can* burn ethanol in your car. Even if it were energy-negative, which it's not close to being, you'd still be converting a non-car-usable source to a car-usable source.
But we are using oil and natural gas to do something that does the work of oil and natural gas!
False. Over half of our country's electricity comes from coal, and another 20% from nuclear, plus about 10% from renewables. Electricty generation from oil (you can't burn natural gas in most cars) was a mere 3.2% of our national electricity in 1999 (natural gas was just over 15%).
*Furthermore*, almost all ethanol production plants utilize on-site heat production, using electricity only for things like the mashers. Heat is the big energy cost for ethanol production. Typically either coal, ag-waste, or both are burned (occasionally, natural gas is used). When was the last time you shoved coal or agricultural waste into your car?
stop attacking the messenger
When the guy repeatedly uses 1979 ethanol plant efficiencies (we're twice as efficient nowadays), pretends that all of our corn is irrigated (only 16% is), uses worldwide energy costs for fertilizer production instead of US costs (a 2.5fold difference), and other gross distortions, then repeats them after being corrected, there's good reason to call him "dishonest".
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes I would really appreciate the links, thanks.. Thank you also for making points (which had I RTFA I might have already knows) which I can agree really blow holes in his work without turing to flame.
Over half of our country's electricity comes from coal
Not exactly a clean source of energy.
When the guy repeatedly uses 1979 ethanol plant efficiencies (we're twice as efficient nowadays), pretends that all of our corn is irrigated (only 16% is), uses worldwide energy costs for fertilizer production instead of US costs (a 2.5fold difference), and other gross distortions, then repeats them after being corrected, there's good reason to call him "dishonest".
That may be but you got me with the first paragraph attacking his methodology not the previous comment with flippent attacks on someone I have never heard of..
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nature does all of the work putting energy into corn too; it's called the Sun. Corn oil is an energy-rich compound, and all of that energy was solar. The 'P' for Physics argument is absolutely retarded.