Dept. of Energy Rejects Corn Fuel Future 596
eldavojohn writes "The United States' Department of Energy is stating that corn based fuel is not the future. From the article, "I'm not going to predict what the price of corn is going to do, but I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn," U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in an interview. Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up. In related news, Fidel Castro is blasting the production of corn fuel as a blatant waste of food that would otherwise feed 3 billion people who will die of hunger."
corn and switch grass are NOT the way to go (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, ethanol and bio-deasil will come from algae or other microbes. The simple fact is that it allows for a continual stream of fuel as well as feeds on our waste. Finally, the amount of fuel that it uses is a fraction of regular crops.
Have to laugh at what castro is saying. There is plenty of food for the world. The issue is one of distribution. Correct that, and we could cut back on crops.
I would like to know (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm thinking about it, why aren't the car engines run like the train engines, with the diesel motor running at a more or less constant rate refueling the batteries that run the electric motors that actually turn the wheels - the diesel engine could be much smaller than normal because it won't have to peak to provide power - just a nice steady constant - wouldn't even have to be a normal 4 stroke engine - it could be a stirling engine that is highly efficient but has problems speeding up - though Ford managed to get it's 0-60 speed down to 17 seconds while experimenting with alternate engines during the 70s oil crisis - making it's marriage to this application ideal.
Any thoughts on this? I admit I don't have much knowledge in this area and probably missed something very basic that is wrong with the idea.
Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct (Score:5, Interesting)
Ethanol is not the way forward, the BBC has an interesting article [bbc.co.uk] on this, some excerpts:
So it seems the right decisions are being made here. I'm quite suprised as I thought lobby groups were already springing up around so-called 'green fuels', I've seen some suspicious adverts for ethanol fuels on Canadian TV recently.
How many calories can we grow? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is the Earth big enough to provide 15-20 times the current food production level of biofuel-grade plant material? And if we plant more energy crops won't we be planting less food crops?
The US will be fine, but any one who eats food grown on land that could be used to grow an energy crop will see higher food prices.
Re:corn and switch grass are NOT the way to go (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would like to know (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the link: http://www.leftlanenews.com/hybrid-mini-offers-64
640 hp, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, 160 hp per wheel-motor, and a 3 prong plug-in-the-wall adapter for charging the batteries up.
Cool, huh?
Re:Its about time (Score:4, Interesting)
More data:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1619.html [osu.edu]
Potatoes are still better than corn; for all I know you're right that they're the most efficient. But I just wanted to point out that fertilizers are still going to be necessary.
Re:I would like to know (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:corn and switch grass are NOT the way to go (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sugar Cane fuel is the current answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's [google.com] the froogle results for cane sugar sodas.
They are available if you look.
Re:corn and switch grass are NOT the way to go (Score:3, Interesting)
There is an engineering solution around that problem. I recommend you check out Solaroof [solaroof.org], which is (much more than) a circulation system in which the algae-full water from a tank is pumped and circulated over the roof of a greenhouse. The idea is that the algae don't need permanent sunlight, but can rather be "activated" with short exposures to it, and then sent to the bottom of the pool, where they can continue with their metabolic cycle.
I have met the guy in a pub, and he made perfect sense. This may not be an industry worth setting up in Sweden, Siberia or New England, but I think it would be more than feasible in very sunny, semi-desertic places like you can find in Australia, Southern Spain, Morocco, Israel, Mexico...
Re:The last horse crosses the finish line. (Score:2, Interesting)
You may joke about the "demonstrations" all you like.
me -->
89 F-350 super crew
7.3 liter
B-100 for the last 20,000 miles
Get 15% more HP
Get 20% more torque
Petro Diesel is currently $2.71 per gallon where I live
I can buy B-100 for $2.50
I make it for $1.21 per gallon
I use no fossil fuels in its production.
I use only the oil itself to render the oil (oil feed heater)
All it takes is the gumption to do it and the willingness to tell big oil where to shove it.
As for the crop on my farm, they are not for sale to the government as subsidies.
Nor do I sell to anyone that is not local.
So no whining about the lack of food, grow your own and stop buying from big business
Re:Sugar Cane fuel is the current answer (Score:4, Interesting)
On a better note there is commericial cellulose based ethanol production going on in the USA - it's just still at a small scale apparently. That's the answer to corn ethanol - use the stalks and leaves instead of the kernels.
Cellulosic ethanol is the way to go. (Score:5, Interesting)
The great thing about sugarcane and cellulosic ethanol production is they don't require outside power to run, unlike corn ethanol plants. They take a byproduct of the production process and use it for fuel.
Lot of misinformation here (Score:1, Interesting)
This used to be true when talking about old inefficient ethanol plants. Today's corn ethanol production sees a net gain in energy. It's roughly a 1:1.3 ratio of BTUs in to BTUs out. These are well substantiated and accepted numbers. That paper put out by Berkley that everyone uses to spout that old myth wasn't accurate. It made a lot of assumptions to the low end of crop production, and efficiency, but high assumptions for fossil fuel based fertilizers and diesel farm equipment. It was set up to make corn ethanol look worse than it was, and quickly moved towards an anti agribusiness bias.
I realize that 1:1.3 is barely more, but consider that the goal isn't so much to remove our dependence on fossil fuels, but foreign oil. Natual gas and coal are what fire the distilleries, not oil. So essentially, when using corn based ethanol, we are using coal, natual gas, and a little solar energy to fuel our vehicles. I'm OK with that for now. We have a lot of it. Eventually, other better crops will supplement and perhaps replace corn. The distilleries don't really have to do a lot of retrofitting and changing to take new sources of carbohydrate.
Cellulosic Ethanol From Municipal Solid Waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cuba a potential major sugar producer (Score:3, Interesting)
We can only hope that the new ULSD (Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel) now required in the US will usher in a boom of popularity for diesel passenger cars now that emissions are less of an issue. The diesel Jeep Liberty is a step in the right direction -- we might even dream of someday buying an American passenger car with a diesel engine in it... I'm not holding my breath, though.
Who cares - my gas comes from petroleum (Score:2, Interesting)
The unstated point of the whole question of "alternative" fuels probably has something to do with "global warming" (which probably IS happening) and the underlying assumption that we human critters have a gnat's-ass of influence on said warming (which we do - have a gnat's-ass worth of input, i.e. not much.) Google "The Great Global Warming Swindle" for some interesting links.
You can choose a "side", but think about it a bit first.
Re:corn and switch grass are NOT the way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
This system offers a number of obvious advantages:
1. It reduces the pollutant output far below Kyoto Protocol mandates since the algae absorption of the exhaust gases cuts CO2 and NOx emissions way more than 50%.
2. With a couple of hundred acres of tanks fed by the coal powerplant exhaust, we could produce millions of gallons of diesel/heating oil fuel per year from ONE site.
3. The "waste" from the processing of the oil-laden algae could be processed into animal feed, plant fertilizer or even ethanol.
Re:zombie castro said what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Holding an election does not necessarily imply democracy... Democracy is the ability to vote and have freedoms without the interference of government. The interference part is definitely not happening with Chavez!
Nothing is the future, except ... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is simply not possible, mathematically. Either we want to utilize some renewable energy, then the sheer area of land needed to grow the apropriate crop would not be ecologically acceptable. Or we find a better and cheaper way to exploit still more fossile energy: that would further increase the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere. Finally, even with some "magic" endless form of energy the future looks dim: if e.g. fusion or something similar would finally work then the cheap and endless supply of energy would make it possible to sustain an even larger number of people and give them the means to drive around at will, fly around at will, eat strawberries flewn around the globe and meat at will which would in turn indirectly lead to the exploitation and destruction of an even bigger part of the environment (all these people living in luxury need natural resources, produce waste, produce toxic substances, need their own houses, roads etc.)
So, in order for people living on this planet without eating it up, destroying most of their fellow species, and totally covering it with artefacts and trash at some point, the only chance really is that energy gets more expensive and more precious. The only way to prevent utter destruction is that energy is costly and not available to everyone in huge quantities.
As far as I can see, with a more long term vision of "future", nothing can be the future except precious, expensive energy.
Castro is right (Score:5, Interesting)
How to make yourself unpopular on a US based system...
However, seriously, between 1845 and 1849 Ireland had successive years of record harvests, and in each year exported huge amounts of grain. What's famous about those years? Yes, that's the Great Famine [wikipedia.org]. People worked all day producing wheat which they couldn't afford to buy, so it was exported and they starved. There was no shortage of food in Ireland during the famine; there was a shortage of food ordinary Irish people could afford to buy. Similarly, in the Ethiopian famine of the mid 1980s which led to the formation of Live Aid [wikipedia.org], Ethiopia - so plagued with drought that it could not feed its people - was exporting so many water melons to Europe that it could afford to buy helicopter gunships with the proceeds. Again, people starved not because there was no food, but because they could not afford the food that was plentiful.
The world's agricultural system is at full stretch at present producing enough food for (most of) the world's population. But our machines consume far more calories than we do ourselves. So if we switch our machines from consuming fossil fuels to consuming bio-fuels, then all the worlds agricultural land put together is not enough.
One of the inevitable consequences of capitalism is that it distributes scarce goods inequitably. In a drought, the poor go thirsty while the rich water their golf courses. In a famine, the poor starve while the rich put biodiesel into their SUVs. This flies in the face of every system of ethics we know, and yet it is the inevitable consequence of capitalism. Ghandi said 'the earth produces enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed'. Personally, I think he was an optimist; but nevertheless, one person's biodiesel is - inevitably - another person's hunger.
Re:No, they really don't. It's kind of sad. (Score:2, Interesting)
My wife doesn't like sad movies. When we were watching Peter Jackson's King Kong, right about the point where the ape is spinning on the frozen pond in Central Park, and the army is setting-up, she asks, "Nothing bad happens to him, right?" I didn't know that she didn't know how King Kong ends. So that's where we stopped it. As far as she knows, King Kong ends with a happy beastie butt-skating in Central Park.
If you do that same thing with U.S. History stopping at WWII, we look pretty decent.
The myth of ethanol as fuel. (Score:2, Interesting)
Heats of combustion of Ethanol vs n-Octane from my 1989 CRC Handbook (in kilogram calories per gram molecular weight):
Ethanol: 326.68 (~327 kcal/mol ~= 1367 kJ/mol)
n-Octane: 1302.7 (~1303 kcal/mol ~= 5450 kJ/mol)
Complete combustion reactions:
Ethanol: C2H5OH + 3 O2 = 2 CO2 + 3 H2O (-1367 kJ/mol)
Octane: 2 C8H18 + 25 O2 = 18 H2O + 16 CO2 (-5450 kJ/mol)
Ethanol: 8 C2H5OH + 24 O2 = 24 H2O + 16 CO2 (-10.9 MJ)
Octane: 2 C8H18 + 25 O2 = 18 H2O + 16 CO2 (-10.9 MJ)
So, you can see that to produce equal amounts of energy by combustion of either fuel, one must produce equal amounts of carbon dioxide.
In fact, ethanol from corn will produce more carbon dioxide overall, as the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation of corn to produce ethanol will more than offset the benefits of its relatively clean combustion.
Burning ethanol does nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is a convenient way for the petrochemical industry to prolong its inevitable death. A number of petro stations in Canada have been selling gasoline with up to 15% by volume ethanol for decades now (Sunoco in particular).
Granted, gasoline is of course not pure n-Octane, and contains lots of other crap. Its mostly the toluenes and related aromatics that give gasoline its smell, pure octanes have very little aroma, slightly minty if anything.
Combustion of gasoline is less likely to be complete, so burning ethanol is going to be cleaner in terms of emissions and will produce fewer toxic byproducts of combustion, but will do NOTHING WHATSOEVER to help global warming. I find it amusing how easily the public and businesses are fooled.
Now, what does make some sense to me is to produce biodiesel from rapeseed (canola) or hempseed (marijuana), in terms of ease of production and sustainability, but again, burning these fuels for energy is not going to help global warming, the same amount of CO2 will be produced.
The answer obviously is CANDU nuclear reactors and electric/flywheel vehicles, but this would destroy the profits of many powerful corporations, and so will not happen under democratic capitalism. The market indices must never decrease, regardless of the cost, even if that cost is the future of humanity. We are on a path to self destruction and violent revolution is the only way out, but I fear that will never happen.
The price of corn has nothing to do with it, feeding the poor has nothing to do with it, its all about protecting the financial interests of those in control. The future of man be damned.
Sleep well.
BioFuels helps the War against Drugs (Score:3, Interesting)
There are farmers that would rather grow illegal crops for drug production than sell current unprofitable food researves to be given to countries (that make NO efforts on population control or social resposibility).
Farmers in starving countries are going bankrupt from the free food given to the country so future food supply in that country is greatly harmed.
More free food to starving countries that have no population control simply equals more starving babies and children... a never ending story of starvation and poverty for both farmers and poverty stricken countries.
BioFuels helps the War against Drugs and fighting poverty world-wide.
Re:I would like to know (Score:3, Interesting)
First off. Gear ratios are normally specified as 2.3, 2.4. These are meaning 2.3:1. 2.3 revolutions of the engine per revolution of the tire. 1:10000 is backwards.
Find: Gear ratios required to move 200 car train to 100 mph.
Assumptions:
Gear ratio specified is final engine:wheels gear ratio. I'm not going to deal with separate gear rations, final drives and rear end ratios.
Train wheels are 18" in diameter.
Trains are pulling the same freight that goes over the road in those big boxes that move in between.
Gear ratios from a truck 'scale' well to large size. Meaning if 1 semi needs X:1 ratio to move 1 car. Y*X:1 ratio is needed to move Y cars. This is just to get the same amount of torque multiplication.
50% overlap in powerbands. On manual transmissions redline in 1st gear doesn't match up to idle in 2nd. There is a bit of overlap, allowing you to drive for speed, pulling, economy, etc.
Our manual transmission on highway truck for pulling 1 'car' will be a Cat C13 [cat.com]. With 1550 ft-lbs. Our manual transmission locomotive will be running a Caterpillar C3516C [cat.com]
Since I can't find a torque curve for the 3516. We will use HP=Torque (ft-lb)*RPM/5252.
Diesel torque curves are flat for their operating range, 1000-1800 RPM.
Eaton 13 speed manual transmission, first gear 19.7:1. Eaton rear end ration of 2:1.
Calculations:
HP ~= 500 @ 1000 RPM. Therefore torque is around 2626 ft-lbs for the C3517.
Torque required to get 1 car moving is 19.7*2*1550 ft-lbs=61070 ft-lbs
Torque required to get 200 cars moving is 200*61070 ft-lbs=1.2E7 ft-lbs
If the engine puts on 2626 ft-lbs, the first gear ratio will need to be: 200*61070/2626= 4651:1.
18" wheels * Pi = 56.5 in / rotation.
Speed in First gear at 1400 RPM = Speed in Second Gear at 1000 RPM.
etc
This will allow the 50% overlap for operating in torque bands.
So you're in 1st gear. You're turning 1000 RPM (you finally got your massive clutch pack to sync up). You are going a blistering:
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/4651.1 * 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.012 MPH
By time you're upto 1400 RPM you're now cranking out 0.016 MPH.
So you need to find your 2nd gear ratio
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/X* 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.016 MPH.
Solve for X.
Second gear ratio is 3320:1.
Etc. I set up a spreadsheet to calculate all the gears (With much help from my TI-89 to get numbers). I published it through google docs here: "Manual Transmission Locomotive" [google.com].
So you were correct, my hyberbole numbers were completely off. However I think it illustrated the point. A gear ratio of 4600:1 means one gear is going to have 4600 teeth for every tooth another gear has. In addition you're going to need 28 gears to cruise at 1000 RPM and 100 MPH. Not to mention the size of shafts and gear sizes needed to transmit 1.2E7 ft-lbs. On-highway trucks already have multiple clutch packs to get that amount of torque in a small overall diameter. (If you're patient, I could find my machine design books and I could calculate the number of clutch packs given an overall radius 1 ft/clutch. Heck I could run the numbers required to get the gear sizes to transmit the torques)
Plus you bring up tons of feasability issues. Braking would be quite difficult. Most locomotives use EMF braking. They turn all their electric motors into generators and dump all that energy to a grid. I suppose you could install a compression brake and make the engineer downshift thr
Re:I would like to know (Score:3, Interesting)
I would suggest staying with the stock engine to start, though. In the 3rd gen, you're getting 250 ft-lbs of torque stock out of a 3L I6, and quite a bit more with basic modifications. It'd be a lot easier to keep that than trying to shoehorn in a diesel, at least to start. You could drop out the transmission and try the alternator idea, there's a lot of room under there. But I think the suspension would make the hub motors a difficult idea. Not impossible since there's a lot of space in there, but you'd essentially need to fab new hubs that can fit a motor and still mount to the upper/lower A-arms.
Assuming the stock engine, would replacing the driveline with motors at the hubs be a net gain over normal driveline losses? I'm nearly certain you'd come out ahead with a diesel engine.
Why do we fight nature? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am sorry for being so cold and callous as I enjoy my luxurious life in the US, but why do we fight so hard to have more people living in areas where they apparently shouldn't be living per Mother Nature? I get so frustrated when people talk about the food supply problems and the water supply problems and how are we going to solve all these problems when perhaps, maybe, just maybe it is time to consider that the planet has enough human beings on it and adding to the population isn't the best move? Reminds me of the Matrix and Agent Smith's analysis of the human species as the only one that doesn't live within its bounds.