Ethanol

[geomatster]

Do you think that Ethanol is 'the' fuel of the future!

[cschin4]

No, I think it is a Big Mistake! When you start looking at food sources for fuel, you are big trouble. Corn prices will go out of sight. Farmers will preferentially grow corn for fuel to get higher prices and there will be mass starvation. In addition, ethanol cannot be piped so we will actually be consuming more energy just transporting it, etc. It is a "feel good ism" where we feel so "energy conscious" to be burning corn instead of drilling for oil. What good does oil do anybody if left in the ground. Use it until it is gone, then we will come up with the next logical source. However, the weenie politicians will not say anything against it and will instead go with it to make themselves appear "green". The energy industry has been essentially destroyed by the environmentalists. Burning ethanol on a mass scale is going to have "unintended consequences" that we do not yet know.

[disneysteve]

cschin4 makes some excellent points. We are already seeing some unintended consequences. They reported last week that food prices have risen dramatically and the main reason attributed is corn. A great many food products are made with corn. As demand for corn to make ethanol has increased, the price of corn has increased as well. So things made from corn have gotten more expensive. The same thing is happening in South America where they make their ethanol from sugarcane - the cost of sugar and things made with sugar has risen.

The point about transporting the ethanol is also often under reported. We are probably burning MORE gasoline to use ethanol than if we just used gas in the first place.

[frugalfarmwife]

Good points made above, and yes a HUGE jump has already happened in all feed prices for animals, watch dog food prices, they will also go up. And the higher feed costs will result in a rise in beef, pork and chicken prices. (My horse feed has jumped $2.00 per 50 pounds in the last three months).

And another thing that ties in with this that has not been widely commented on, the vast majority of corn grown now is geneticaly modified, it is resistant to roundup pesticide which I do NOT like, roundup has been proven to be a carcinogin (sp?) and is now being sprayed directly on the corn which is being used for human consumption and being feed to all cattle, pigs and chickens. Add to that the amount of ground beef that is derived from dairy cows that have been fed this corn and had BGH used on them and lordy only knows what we're doing to ourselves. I don't mind the genetically modified being used for ethanol but am strongly against it for consumption.

Also, a LOT of the farmers we personally know are cutting way back on the amount of oats, wheat soybeans and speltz they are growing so there is sure to be a shortage of these crops.

BTW, my husband works in the transportation business (railroad) along with the farming and they're seeing a large jump in business with hauling contracts to ethanol plants being built. Oh, and the byproducts from ethanol will still be used as animal feed.

Yeppers, progress is amazing isn't it?

That's why I enjoy running a small self supportive farm, in fact we're looking into a permit to run our own "still" for ethanol to use for our tractors, but don't see a huge use for it in the general population at this time.

kj

[Scanner]

I personally beleive the future is this:

Hydrogen will be the "intermediary fuel." Primary fuels will be a mixture of oil, coal, solar power, geothermal, wind, and nuclear all feeding into the electric grid.

Hydrogen doesn't naturally occur in the environment but it is distilled from water with a pair of electrodes.

It burns clean and has plenty of explosive power to even run a tractor or crane, from what I know of it.

I agree the ethanol is a silly aversion to what America should be attempting to do - go the hydrogen based fuel cell engine.

We will still need oil for many years to come because it's great for synthesizing polymers (plastics) and is used in fertilizer.

It doesn't make sense to throw oil on our corn fields (which we do when we fertilize it) so we can burn corn ethanol in our engines.

[zakity]

Have they fixed the "Hindenburg" problem with hydrogen yet? I would hate to have whatever I was driving explode or burn up like the Hindenburg.

[geomatster]

Ethanol

Wow that was a whole lot of good points I must say.
But while we are discussing on Ethanol, look at the price of oil!
I really think hydrogen/ethanol/solar or whatever it is would be become a necessity..with the price of oil shooting up this.

An alternate source of fuel must necessarily be found and immediate.

[kimiko]

Ethanol is a bad alternative fuel.

1. The amount of energy required to create ethanol is equal to the energy ethanol produces. So no win there.

2. Even if all the available fields in this country are devoted to ethanol production, there still won't be enough to meet current demand.

3. Ethanol is inefficient. A lot more ethanol is consumed to do the same amount of work.

And of course the problem with transportation.

[JBinKC]

No, unless ethanol is made from a waste product. I think the best temporary economical fuel to help meet demand if it falls short would be oil through coal liquefaction. I highly doubt the alternatives like hydrogen even when in full scale production will be a a low cost product.

[Scanner]

Have they fixed the "Hindenburg" problem with hydrogen yet? I would hate to have whatever I was driving explode or burn up like the Hindenburg.

Gasoline is just as volatile as hydrogen and we put it in our lawnmowers and cars every day.

You don't want to light a match near either.

I highly doubt the alternatives like hydrogen even when in full scale production will be a a low cost product.

It's not necessarily low cost to distill but the main advantage is that the product needed to distill it is in plenty - water. It's also clean.

Picture every Exxon and Mobil in the US actually distilling hydrogen on site rather than having it hauled by truck to the fueling station.

And we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil because it shifts much of energy needs onto the electric grid. Every Exxon and Mobil would be hardwired into the electric grid.

Truth be told - the answer is nuclear fusion. That should power our electric grids and uses heavy water for fuel. However, I don't think fusion is going to happen until the end of my lifetime (2040-2050) because of technical problems. And even if somebody invented it tommorrow, it will take probably 3-5 years to just build a plant.

Think about it like Bill Gates - he created wealth out of sand, which is the basis of the silica chip.

The same thing with our energy needs. Water is everywhere on the earth - we can create our energy out of a very common product. The guy who does this will be the Bill Gates of energy and will make Bill Gates seem like a small time saver like us.

[disneysteve]

I've seen several stories on tv about folks who converted vehicles to run on used cooking oil. Other than the exhaust smelling like french fries (which isn't such a bad thing), I wonder how feasible it is to do that on a larger scale.

[mom-from-missouri]

I've seen a car on TV several times that runs on water.

Of course, to do build a thing on a large scale would put the gas companies out of business....

[geomatster]

Ethanol - Stocks

Talking of Ethanol. It does look like ethanol stocks are doing good. Like that of Exelon.

Looks like Exelon is a good buy! what do you think

[tinapbeana]

I've seen several stories on tv about folks who converted vehicles to run on used cooking oil. Other than the exhaust smelling like french fries (which isn't such a bad thing), I wonder how feasible it is to do that on a larger scale.

it's pretty viable, and you can buy conversion kits to make a regular diesel engine to run on oil for about $1500. if you don't have a diesel car, you can get a 1980 or so mercedes for almost nothing around here. after that, "gas" costs anywhere from nothing to 50cents per gallon, so it would be quite easy to recoup the 1500 for the conversion and say 1500 for the diesel car.

if you don't want to convert the car, you can always convert the oil into bio-disel and run it in a regular diesel engine. the process involves sodium hydroxide so it is somewhat similar to making soap. assuming you get the oil for free the fuel runs about 75c per gallon after prep costs. still A LOT better than 3 bucks a gallon!

there's a local chain gas station in my area that is going to start selling bio-diesel. they anticipate it'll go for about 2 bucks for gallon, so they'll be making a huge profit, but it'll still cost a third less than regular gass.

[zetta]

Personally I think electric cars hold the most promise. This centralizes all the pollution and greenhouse gas generation at the power plants, where you can install scrubbers and control the emissions more easily. If most two-car families in urban and suburban areas had one electric car for commuting and one hybrid car for roadtrips (or two electric cars and rented hybrids for roadtrips) we could greatly decrease our dependence on oil and reduce pollution at the same time. (Folks in rural areas would probably use hybrids.) Corn and waste parts (such as the stalk and husk) could be converted to electricity via micro-generators near where they are grown and fed to the electric grid, reducing transport costs.

It seems to me that the infrastructure cost of switching to hydrogen cars makes it much less likely to happen -- switching to hybrid and all-electric cars would be much easier.

I remember when the EV1 came out, I thought that by the next time I was buying a car there would be lots of electric cars available, and the technology would have been thoroughly tested out and reliable (I'm not an early adopter for new car stuff.) Sadly, they pulled the plug. My new big hope is that Tesla Motors pulls it off and has an all-eletric 4-door sedan or station wagon for me by 2015!