The Strange Energy Budget of Ethanol Production

joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle published an article regarding research on how much fuel is required to make Ethanol. The results indicate that it make take 6 times more energy than the end product delivers."

Article end statement ignores early Iowa primary.

[rthille]

"If government funds become short, subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully," he said. "When they are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."

Right there the article ignores the politics surrounding ethanol. The politics surrounding other energy sources/storage mechanisms don't have the power that ethanol backers do.

This doesn't pass the smell test

[WolfWithoutAClause]

If it takes 6x as much energy to produce it, you would expect that it would cost more than 6x as much than the original fuel. So far as I'm aware it doesn't, nothing like. Ethanol costs about $1.50 a gallon... Compare that with the cost of gasoline for example; or aviation fuel (last time I checked, about $1/gallon- slightly cheaper).

Also, they've been making ethanol for vehicle fuel in Brazil for years... if it was so very uneconomic I wouldn't expect them to do that.

As in, what gives? I smell politics.

In a nutshell

[Linux_ho]

The author is using data from thirty-year-old production techniques to shoot down the new "buzz" about tomorrow's efficient ethanol production. At the same time, he is ignoring the current research that is generating the buzz: researchers are just now coming up with efficient ways to produce enzymes that can turn raw agricultural waste into ethanol. That means stuff like sawdust, wood pulp, cardboard, corn stems, yard waste etc can be turned into ethanol instead of going into landfills.

Data about how much energy it takes to grow corn is irrelevant, because we won't be using corn. We'll be using lawn clippings, or pulverized construction waste, or re-re-recycled paper, or whatever.

Re:Hmm

[TykeClone]

The corn acres come at the expense of soybean acres (for now). The amount of work, fertilizer, and chemicals that each crop requires is similar, so there isn't much difference in the amount of petroleum used regardless of whether ethanol is a market or not.

Corn (and soybeans) are commodity markets - so farmers will typically sell their crops into the market for what they can get. If there is an ethanol plant nearby, it reduces the basis (this is essentially the difference in the price of corn at the chicago board of trade and the price of corn locally - the price of transporting corn to where it will be used) and has only a slight affect on the price of corn.

Re:This doesn't pass the smell test

[linuxwrangler]

I smell politics.

Good nose. And when the politicians are bought and paid for by Archer Daniels Midland [admworld.com] and friends the result is government subsidies for corn-derived ethanol and a full-court press to keep Brazilian ethanol (sugar derived) out of the US (just google brazil ethanol imports).

Re:Hmm

[jericho4.0]

" How much petroleum goes into petroleum production?"

Good question. In the early days of oil production, it took one barrel of oil to get ~50. Oil was easy to pump (not very deep), and of high quality (pick and choose your oilfield). Nowadays, one barrel of oil gets you somewhere around 5, less in some fields. The big exceptions to this are a few, very large, oilfields in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the former Soviet states. Some might find some insight into recent US foreign policy here.

Return On Energy is being affected by several factors. Oil is now deeper and stickier, and takes lots of force to suck out of the ground. The gushers have gushed. It is also of lower quality, and more energy is required to refine it.

The ROE calculation for a particular oilfield is difficult to do. Oil producers are very secretive about some numbers, so the margin of error is significant. But what is clear is that the ROE is dropping, and will continue to drop. When it hits 1:1, oil becomes useless.

I think the most interesting thing about this, is that we won't know until after the fact. Suddenly the worker will not have enough paycheck to get gas to go to work in the factory that makes refinery bits, or some convulted economic chain like that. Another reason the calculation is so hard to do.

If we were having an oil deathpool, I would guess 15 years.

Re:comparisons?

[RevAaron]

Speaking of cows- if people were so darned concerned about how much energy is spent producing another form of stored energy, then they wouldn't each so much damn beef and other meat. From this site: [britishmeat.com]

Conservation of Fossil fuel. It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein; 35 calories for 1 calorie of pork; 22 calories for 1 of poultry; but just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans. By eating plant foods instead of animal foods, I help conserve our non-renewable sources of energy.

If there was ever an argument to get me to go veg*an, that'd probably be it.

*so i say, as i munch on a really tasty marinated beef tenderloin kabob*

Re:not particularly relevant...

[rabugento]

Ethanol production from corn, you mean. If you use sugarcane as feedstock, there is a significant net energy outcome.

A more thorough article has been http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/patzek/CRPS41 6-Patzek-Web.pdf> published by Mr. Patzek. It could also be argued that he is considering only the current practices in american industry. If best practices were adopted, the results would surely change somewhat.

biodiesel and ethanol are compatable

[bluGill]

Don't forget that biodiesel and ethanol come from different parts of the corn plant. (Substitute your favorite plant) Ethanol is made from sugar/starch. Biodiesel is made from oil. You can extract the oil, without affecting how much sugar/starch is in the product. Then turn the sugar/starch to ethanol.

Don't only is this study heavily biased against ethanol by using outdated data, it ignores the biodiesel production (which is somewhat rare), and that the by products are useful in their own right.

Ethanol alone doesn't need to be energy positive (though it is - if you farm with modern methods), so long as you account for the energy left after producing ethanol.

figures never lie, but liars sure can figure

[rc3105-Riley]

dunno whether to laugh or cry when I see these idiotic analysis

granddaddy used to grow a few acres of corn 'n such just to keep busy. grandma boiled the ears, removed the edible with a butter knife & the cobs went in with the other vegtable waste.

with a homebuilt still and VERY LITTLE extra work granddaddy produced a couple hundred gallons of ethanol a year. he mixed it about 1:1 with regular leaded gas & ran the tractor, his pickup, grandma's sedan and the school bus he drove

it's nice to know the eggheads are thinking about this stuff, but if want to know whether something is practical ask somebody that lives in the real world

--
Riley