Study says ethanol not worth the energy

Denver Rocky Mountain News ^ | July 17, 2005 | Mark Johnson (A.P.)

[steveegg]

Only hundreds of square miles? Try thousands of square miles, and then you'll have the enviroweenies screaming that it's causing global warming/cooling/whatever the malaise-of-the-weak is.

[Wonder Warthog]

"...all those fine uses for ethanol come from sources other than corn..."

I guarantee that Kentucky bourbon uses corn, as does moonshine.

[steveegg]

I stand corrected.

[SauronOfMordor]

IF we use American coal as the source of fossil energy for the distillation process (the biggest "energy hit" during production), this displaces a large amount of foreign crude oil--far more than just the ethanol produced.

If we use American coal (or better yet, nuke) to generate electricity, and convert a bunch of houses from using oil heat to using electric heating, we displace even more foreign oil

[Wonder Warthog]

"If we use American coal (or better yet, nuke) to generate electricity, and convert a bunch of houses from using oil heat to using electric heating, we displace even more foreign oil"

Yup---dig more coal, build more nukes (including breeder reactors), and make more biofuels for transportation uses with those sources as "prime mover" energy providers.

[hgro]

Just more stooges for big oil and on big oil's payroll putting out their phony line. University of California-Berkeley says it all.

[afnamvet]

"Ethanol is good for our economy, it's good for our air," President Bush asserted earlier this week during a swing through Iowa and South Dakota urging passage of the energy bill.

Link : http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1859

[tarator]

Hmm. Merlot and ethanol. I hadn't thought about it. Let me know how it turns out.

Depends on the year and the region, but generally pretty good, even if we are talking "two-buck Chuck".

[HereInTheHeartland]

"Institute for Local Self-Reliance, National Office"

This sounds like a pro-ethanol group that did the study?

[ChildOfThe60s]

more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces

Ethanol is like Jason in Halloween. No matter how many times you slay the myth, it just keeps getting back up.

The counter productivity of ethanol was shown in the mid 70's. Although I blame the efforts of the ethanol industry ($$$), let's be realistic. In spite of their lobbying, we could end it for good *if* the enviro-wackos weren't so much in favor of it. That makes it popular with the MSM.

[jackbenimble]

Hydrogen would be great except the only hydrogen we have in any abundance on earth is hydrogen that has already been burned. It can be manufactured (un-burned) but that costs more energy than you would get burning it as a fuel.

"Burning" is a rather unscientific word for rapid oxidization. I suppose when you are talking about burned hydrogen you are referring to water (H2O) which is in fact hydrogen which has been oxidized.

But to say that water is our only abundant source of hydrogen is far from accurate. It is true that we are running low on economically cheap supplies of many of the preferred hydrogen-carbons like oil and various natural gasses which represent "unburned hydrogen". But we have an incredible amount of a hydrocarbon called COAL and the energy stored in the hydrogen-carbon bond can be released from it in various economical ways. One possibility is the traditional method of burning it. Another is steam reformation which strips off the hydrogen which could be used in a fuel cell and leaves CO2 as a byproduct. Coal reformation is basically the process the Nazis used to turn coal into synthetic gasoline during WWII so it is old technology.

You are correct that to reverse the oxidization (or burning) process for hydrogen that exists as part of the elemental makeup of water requires the input of energy. Most of us probably saw water electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen in elementary school. The trick is getting lots of cheap electricity. Some small amount may be supplied by solar but we really need to get serious about building fission reactors and also try to figure out fusion.

I have full confidence we are going to figure it out. The market is a powerful force. In the meantime we should let the market decide if bio-fuels are a good idea by ending the subsidies immediately.

[dirtbiker]

Not to mention the fact that alcohol is a solvent....any sludge, corrosion, water, etc, in your fuel system, is going straight to the filter....

My older (carburated) vehicles run ok on it, the newer (fuel-injected) ones don't like it.....

[pointsal]

Now boys and girls...try looking at industrial HEMP.

Yes, my populist roots like the looks of HEMP...

not the smok'n kind but the tougher'n nails kind.

[Rodney King]

Brazil uses ethanol based on a sugar cane manufacturing product cycle. The plant fermenting and distilling the ethanol product produces surplus electricity by burning the stalks. Since embarking on this energy independence path twenty years ago, Brazil is now an energy exporter with a huge number of ethanol running autos.

The fact that they found a lot of oil offshore might have something to do with it.

The ethanol is sold side by side with gasoline at local stations, the cost is 30 to 40 per cent less than gas.

Is the lower price due to the market or to government incentives?

Acre for acre, cane from the tropics can convert more solar energy to fuel than corn from the temperate zones.

Source?

[jackbenimble]

Assuming an average efficiency corn farm and an average efficiency ethanol plant, the total energy used in growing the corn and processing it into ethanol and other products is 81,090 BTUs. Ethanol contains 84,100 BTUs per gallon and the replacement energy value for the other co-products is 27,579 BTUs. Thus, the total energy output is 111,679 BTUs and the net energy gain is 30,589 BTUs for an energy output-input ratio of 1.38:1.

This sounds outstanding! I can't imagine that anything this wonderful and efficient is not incredibly profitable. Can we end the subsidies now?

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

Please

Is there no very basic science being taught in America any more?

Maybe so, maybe not, but I know what the sole of my foot or the seat of my pants feels like between the different types of gas!

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

http://www.hydrogenhighway.com/hhop003.htm

[pillbox_girl]

Good Grief, Lady. Magical thinking.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

I've discussed Pimental and Patzek elsewhere:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1430073/posts?page=100#100

Their research is biased and fundamentally flawed. Their conclusions have been disproved (repeatedly).

Now I'm not saying ethanol is the panacea wonder fuel that some from the Big Corn lobby would have us believe, but neither is it the boondoggle that Pimental and Patzek would have us believe.

[Mr. Lucky]

My tractor runs on ethanol.

[pillbox_girl]

Now boys and girls...try looking at industrial HEMP.

By all means, let's look at industrial hemp:

Hemp (Cannabis sativa) 305 kg oil per hectare

Now lets look at soy:

Soybean (Glycine max) 375 kg oil per hectare

Or rapeseed (canola):

Rapeseed (Brassica napus) 1000 kg oil per hectare

Or the avacoda

Avacado (Persea americana) 2217 kg oil per hectare

The lesson here is that just because the government has been unjustly and unconstitutionally suppressing a particular crop does not mean it's a cure all wonder weed.

Guacamoleum anyone?

The feasability of biofuels depends extremely heavily upon the crops from which they are derived. Ethanol from corn is barely feasable. Ethanol from sugarcane is a lot more productive. BioDiesel from soy is also barely feasable. BioDiesel from Rapeseed in imminently do-able (not that you see anything about it in any study by Pimental or Patzek - they prefer to only study expensive to grow, harvest, and press crops from borderline farmland). And BioDiesel from algae grown in wastewater ponds in the middle of the infertile desert wasteland is a damn good idea. Hemp, despite it's legal troubles and value in the fiber market, just doesn't compare as an energy crop.