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."
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?
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)
ethonal shrinks my gas tank (Score:2, Informative)
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...
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]
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:Meaningless (Score:2, Informative)
Biodiesel fans call BS on researcher (Score:2, Informative)
I run Biodiesel in my New Beetle TDI engine when I can, so I'm biased, but I agree with my fellow TDI'ers. When the study says "It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel," there's no comparison being made against the alternative. How much energy does it take to pump crude oil out of the ground? How much energy is burned loading it onto a tanker, and then refining it into useful products?
How much energy will be used to clean up the hazardous chemicals required to turn prehistoric ferns into internal combustion fuel? How many gallons of gasoline were burned in the funeral procession for the 15 workers killed near Houston [chron.com] when a tank of benzene exploded this year? By comparison, you can make Biodiesel in a converted water heater [liferesear...versal.com], with lye and methanol (hazardous chemicals, but available at any hardware store).
And I won't even touch the issue of how many soldiers must die to ensure the continued flow of addictive foreign petroleum...
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:Sodium (Score:2, Informative)
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:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:2, Informative)
Thank you for the useful information, JH!
Don't forget that there are many people that believe the switch to high-fructose corn sysrup in soft drinks played a major part in the explosion of obesity in the US. (They claim that HFT is much more easily absorbed by the body than refined sugar.)
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:Bah (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Daniels_Midla
and the Brazilians know nothing, right? (Score:2, Informative)
Read about Pimentel here: http://www.pacificviews.org/archives/000653.html [pacificviews.org]
Read about both here: http://www.ilcorn.org/Ethanol/Tribune_/tribune_.h
This argument is mute.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Ethanol vs. methanol (Score:2, Informative)
It is also much more poisonous (and you can bet that some dumbass is going to try and drink the stuff) and dangerous (Methanol flames are invisible).
Cellulosic ethanol (Score:2, Informative)
GELLERMAN: And in the '70s when they had the oil shock prices then in the long gas lines. Ethanol was in the news and people were using it. So, what's new here is that, instead of making it from corn, now we can make it from other things.
COLEMAN: Correct. There's a term called cellulosic ethanol and the end product is the same. However, cellulosic ethanol comes from the leaves, stems and stalks of the plants instead of just the fruits and the seeds. So if today's ethanol producers grow corn to harvest a corn kernel, tomorrow's producers may be choosing from rice, wheat, oat, barley, straw, switch grass. Some companies even want to make it out of urbanized waste streams and municipal waste and even stale beer.
Misleading Study,why factor in energy from the sun (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah (Score:2, Informative)
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 the US. If memory serves gasohol is 5-10% ethanol. For what it's worth I use Biodiesel almost exclusively in my car.
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-sufficient and you would produce no net CO2.
Re:Is anyone surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bah (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:2, Informative)
They're also wrong. There is really very little difference between cane sugar & high fructose corn syrup. From The Straight Dope [straightdope.com]:
Such a small difference isn't going to cause an obesity epidemic, unless you're consuming gallons of soda each day.
-BbT
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 almost nothing about whether corn should work for the US. Also, note that Brazil has dropped its subsidies of ethanol while the US pumps billions into corn each year.
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 for genetic engineering then the production of fuel would be a relatively harmless one. Soy eliminates the need for nitrogen fertilizer so splicing in the correct gene for affixing nitrogen to the soil would be a big win.
Distilling can be done using waste heat from power plants. Seem like it would be a free energy source.
Finally, the leftover mash should have some value for animal feed.
Just my 0.02 USD worth
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:When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:3, Informative)
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, or treadmill, or whatever. (Here's a hint: 60W is lifting 44.25 pounds 1 foot in one second. How many times would you like to do that in a hour?)
If a million people switched all the lightbulbs in their houses from 60W incandescents to those new 15W fluorescents, you'd do more for reducing operating pollution (I don't know how they compare in terms of production and disposal) and strain on the power grids than coming up with a new fuel. And this could happen today, in the span of about 10 hours, assuming there is a large enough supply in retail stores.
Re:dodge! parry! (Score:1, Informative)
Using it as an addative in gasoline is a bit stupid, seeing as you have to get rid of all the water in it before you can mix it. Someone should take them on a tour 'round Brazil.
PDF of Study (Score:1, Informative)
Could some learned person translate this mix of scientific data and social/political commentary into something solid?
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.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
You can design an ethanol plant adjacent to a hog farm. The waste material from producing ethanol feeds the hogs. The excess heat from the hog barn can be scavenged and used to further fuel fermentation. The liquid sewage produced by the hogs will produce methane. Then, after you've scavenged the methane, the liquid sewage is spread on the field as fertilizer.
Another distinct advantage of ethanol is that it _can_ be produced on a very small scale. A farmer can power his tractors using a portion of his corn crop. He can actually produce his fuel on-site, if he so wishes.
Eco-crazies? subsidize voters in agro states? I live in an agro state, and I can tell you that corn and soybean subsidies are nowhere near as large as the tobacco subsidies -- yet, we can't produce anything approaching a power gain out of tobacco.
The eco-crazies I know oppose ethanol just as much as gasoline, because it's still a combustion process, and it still pollutes (just not very much).
Your post strikes me as a bit of a troll.
Ethanol is a real solution in that it gets us a highly portable form of energy. Is it as dense an energy transport as gasoline? No.
But it can be used to keep existing infrastructure running. I have heard that converting a fuel-injected engine to ethanol is as simple as altering the programming, but I do not know for sure.
There are some other advantages to ethanol, in that large scale fuel spills aren't nearly as toxic as petrochemical spills.
Also, trying drinking a glass of gasoline to get a buzz sometime. It does make me wonder if a fuel can full of ethanol counts as an 'open container'.
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.
Brazil reducing imports using ethonal (Score:4, Informative)
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
Brazil does just fine on ethanol (Score:1, Informative)
Nowadays, there is little difference in driving ethanol or petroleum powered cars, although in the past they were prone to misfiring and hesitancy.
As for pollution, the ethanol cars give off a distinct, lingering, sweet sugary smell. I am not sure what's in it, but it's kind of nice in a tropical morning. Whenever I smell something like it I am always reminded of my time in Brazil.
A very practical solution for somwhere like Brazil with vast space for sugar cane plantations, but not having much natural oil resource.
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:c.f. California Gas (Score:3, Informative)
There is currently a lawsuit from several States pending against MTBE manufacturers because they knew about MTBE's ability to contaminate groundwater but lied to the governments and claimed it would not.
However, MTBE blends are not "much cleaner" than ethanol blends. Also, iirc (and i work in environmental air regulations), the federal government does not have the authority to specify what methods the States will use to meet air quality goals, unless there is a pressing health and safety issue. I question your story and would like you to provide a source.
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
The real reason we have ethanol (Score:2, Informative)
So they were faced with what to do with all that excess corn. Ship it to starving nations? Nah. Lets make alcohol from it and sell it as the best thing since sliced bread. While they were at it they created MTBE and we know what a cluster that was.
They'd be better off putting the corn through TDP. At least they'd get oil out the other side.
BS Study -- but also misquoted (Score:2, Informative)
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:3, Informative)
Nature put more enery into a volume of oil than it did into the same corn, and it put it into a form which is easier to process.
Re:When will people stop quoting Pimental .... (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of Pimental rebutters also like to say X will be done to improve plants to Y efficiency, but much of it is pie in the sky. None of these numbers have really changed since I last reported on this so I think that's the answer.
Also, pimental doesn't find biodiesel to be an energy loser like corn-based ethanol. (You didn't say that, but someone else did.) Biodiesel (including some of the veggie car types of things) is something we really ought to look into more. Sadly, the US govt wants to practically do away with diesel cars by 2007. We'll be saving the environment by burning more fossil fuels! Go Congress!
Don't get me started on how manly people think they are in big trucks and SUVs (burning reg gas) that can't even drive standard transmissions. You you are soooo manly, though even my grandma could drive your stupid-looking Dodge Dakota. Standard transmissions often give you an MPG or three AND more power, more control, less brake wear/ability to stop more or less w/out breaks if needed, BETTER off-road/bad conditions/snow driving AND are easier/cheaper to repair than automatic transmissions. But yes, Hummers with auto transmissions are certainly manlier.
Oh and diesels have better torque and are better on gas. That's great for city and off-road driving, but try to find an SUV with standard trans, diesel and 4WD/AWD. Good luck. Only the biggest vehicles come with anything like that. You can't find a normal sized car or small SUV with those options. Why? I guess it is more important to burn more fuel as that must somehow be better for the earth. Also, why are we not looking at diesel hybrid engines with standard trans? Same answer I suppose.
Sorry, back on topic...
Cellulosic ethanol (which is different than corn-based ethanol) is only really being produced by Biogen a company in Canada. I went there and interviewed the director of the plant as well. The plant is experimental. I assume they will build a new larger plant in the future, but cellulosic ethanol so minute that it is not really even a factor when you go to the pump these days. I hope it will be in the future.
Re:Last I checked... (Score:3, Informative)
The evaporation process is the primary reason for the "cool" feeling on the skin, because the heat of vaporization is carried away by the gaseous ethanol as it leaves. Hence: lower boiling point --> cooler feeling.
Here are the numbers:
Skin temp: ~30 C.
vapor pressure of water @ 30 C: 32mmHg
Heat of vap. of water: 41 kJ/mol
vapor pressure of ethanol @ 30 C: 78mmHg
Heat of vap. of ethanol: 37 kJ/mol .
So, since mmHg are proportional to moles evaporated, the relative heat removal of ethanol to water is (37)(78)/((41)(32)) = 2.2.
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Informative)
From: Cola Fountain FAQ [lycos.co.uk]
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.
Re:public transportation for the short term... (Score:2, Informative)
However, I think there are a couple of things that have possible been overlooked.
1) If private companies are to fund infrastructure creation, how is right-of-way for land use determined? This goes back to the issue of seizure of private land for public benefit.
2) There is a huge barrier to entry for companies that would want to enter the mass transit market, simply because more extensive infrastructure is needed before the public would choose to use the system. In addition, the operating costs are likely higher. Given today's corporate environment (c'mon, fix those numbers this quarter!!!), I'm not sure how many companies would choose to enter a market that would take years to get a decent (if any) return on investment.
3) The environmental costs of different systems are basically neglected. Environmental quality is a public good that is hard to assign values to. Would the government bill these companies for the pollutants they produce? Or for noise or light pollution?
4) Federal highway subsidies definitely affect fuel use, but they were a product of the auto industry lobbying the Eisenhower (and others) administration. If both the federal and state governments were to stop, the automakers and fuel companies would need to pick up the slack. I believe this would lead to a collapse of the economy.
I think the best way to handle this would be to preferentially subsidize more environmentally friendly programs, such as train and bus lines. This has the added advantage of allowing the market to steer growth to preferred areas -- for example, near train stations. Over time, the mass transit industry could take most of the market share from the auto industry, but slowly enough to mediate some of the economic problems.
Re:This would be a moot point... (Score:3, Informative)
That and Chernobyl was a stupid design. It had a positive void-coefficient (if the cooling water got too hot and boiled, this would act as a positive feedback into the system and cause the reactor to run-away), and they had more graphite moderator on the bottom of the control rods.
Essentially, the reactor started to run away and boil its water, causing it to overheat more and boil more water, and so on. When they slammed the control rods, the reacto first saw the graphite spacers at the bottom which added moderator to the system, which increased the available thermal neutrons in the reactor, causing the reactor to go full-on supercritical in the period between when the bottom of the spacers hit and when the control rods got fully inserted into the reactor. Once the thing is supercritical, there really isn't any way the control rods are going to help (at least, not enough).
US, Canadian and European reactors are designed to have negative void coefficients (boiling water causes the reactor to slow down), or they are gas cooled and have no void coefficient (coolant boiling isn't a problem because it is already a gas). And nobody, I mean nobody, puts spacers made of the same material as the moderator on the bottom of the fuel rods anymore (all the RBMK reactors got their spacers changed out after Chernobyl).
Modern fission reactors are much more reliable. They dump less radioactivity into the atmosphere than coal plants, and the nuclear industry is much safer (because of tighter regulations) than the coal and oil industry. A lot more people die ever year to bring you coal generated electricity than nuclear generated electricity, even scaling for supply percentages (50% of US electricity is coal based, whereas nuke is in the 7% range).
Jeff
Re:ADM is also why your Coke sucks in the USA (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe, maybe not. Let's look at some facts:
All figures approximate and based on 8oz portions
Water = 0 calories
Cola = 105 calories
Milk = 150 calories
Apple juice = 120 calories
Grape juice = 145 calories
Re:Hydrogen energy? (Score:2, Informative)
I would think that adding industries to the electrical power grid that draw power only during certain times (and coordinating them so that they only draw power when there's extra available) would be helpful for evening out the load. I once heard mention of the idea of hydroelectric power plants pumping water to the uphill side of the dam during these kinds of time (gravity is a conservative force, so the only losses are from mechanical inefficiencies, ie friction). Manufacturing hydrogen or ethanol via electric power during these times could be a good use for the extra capacity, but would necessarily involve turning these expensive machines off when there is not extra capacity. Whether it's actually a good idea depends on the cost of the hydrogen/ethanol production facilities and the marginal profit on the fuel they're making.
While you're ranting about the "Hydrogen Economy", science fiction authors always seem to get this wrong about antimatter too. Last I checked, astronomers are pretty sure there's no (or at least no substantial amount of) antimatter in this galaxy, so antimatter should only be used as an energy storage technology, not an outright power source. I read a book once that involved large-scale antimatter production based on solar power panels on the moon, with the antimatter being used to fuel interstellar slower-than-light spacecraft, but I can't remember the name. Any help anybody?
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)