Ethanol - Good, Bad, Ugly? - Page 3 - GreenHybrid

gonavy · #21 (**permalink**) 02-19-2006, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SAM Hybrid

01) The EPA revokes Gasoline-additive mandate. Means potentially no more MTBE or Ethanol in gasoline. This should create economic issues for Ethanol by not having a large market segment. Related GreenHybrid link.

02) California has only one public Ethanol station, two private stations. California has more registered vehicles than any other state.

03) California has the largest concentration of FFV's in the nation, but with no fueling infrastructure.

Revoking oxygenation does NOT imply loss of ETOH market- it was revoked specifically to give suppliers more flexibility in adjusting to the requirement for MORE ETOH in the fuel supply per the Energy Act. This will certainly be in the form of E85- more infrastructure, more stations, etc.

There could be a few isloated markets that lose the E10 as more E85 gets sold in those areas (as in net positive local gain in ETOH use/lowering of emissions). My pure guess is that that is unlikely. But possible. I am not familiar with how the how the Energy Act specifies changes to the fuel supply, or if its left to EPA regulation to sort out.

AZCivic · #22 (**permalink**) 02-19-2006, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lifespeed

This is because ethanol has roughly half the energy content of gasoline.

All else being equal, your fuel economy on 100% alcohol would be halved compared to gasoline.

Wrong, and wrong. Pure ethanol is 77,000 BTU/gal. Pure gasoline us 114,000 BTU/gal, although most gasoline sold at the pumps have additives that that bring it down to 110-112k BTU/gal. Gasoline does have a weight advantage however, weighing in around 6.0lb/gal versus 6.75lb/gal for ethanol. Per gallon, ethanol has about 66% as much energy content. Per pound, it's still 60% as energy dense. Fuel pumps sell by the gallon and pipeline costs are by the gallon, but trucking/shipping costs are by the pound. Either way, it's more than half the energy content.

As for real world fuel economy, engines tuned for E85 or for pure ethanol are able to take advantage of it's very high octane properties and run more timing / higher compression ratios, both of which increase volumetric efficiency of the engine. Well, compression ratio much more so, but you can't be a "flex fuel" engine if you raise the compression ratio to 14:1, it would have to be E85-E100, for example. Like Wayne said though, fully tuned, you can get about 80% of the efficiency.

As for the comments about the US having a sustainable population of 40-100 million, that would be based on current technology. I'm sure 500 years ago they said the sustainable population was 1 million, and at the time it was probably true. If you want an example though, look at Japan and many European countries that are already declining in population. The only reason the US isn't in decline is our massive influx of immigrants. Our population will level off and decline some day too, especially as living costs increase due to the fact renewable resources will drive up the cost of living and make it less affordable to have kids.

Bob259 · #23 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gonavy

Revoking oxygenation does NOT imply loss of ETOH market- it was revoked specifically to give suppliers more flexibility in adjusting to the requirement for MORE ETOH in the fuel supply per the Energy Act. This will certainly be in the form of E85- more infrastructure, more stations, etc.

There could be a few isloated markets that lose the E10 as more E85 gets sold in those areas (as in net positive local gain in ETOH use/lowering of emissions). My pure guess is that that is unlikely. But possible. I am not familiar with how the how the Energy Act specifies changes to the fuel supply, or if its left to EPA regulation to sort out.

It was also revoked due to some states like, NY, CA and CT threating lawsuits that the cancer concerns over the use of MBTE additives along with water contamination problems it poses was not worth the benifts of it's use.

fernando_g · #24 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by phoebeisis

oil at $70 and with the huge added cost-in all respects-of the middle east problems.
1)Ethanol is home grown.We have to depend on our enemies in the middle east for oil-or for oil prices.It really doesn't matter who we import the oil from,folks in the middle east control the price and supply-flow of oil.WE ARE HATED IN THE MIDDLE EAST!!
.

You are so right about this...our foreign oil dependency on countries which basically hate us, is a great National Security issue... And is costing us dearly.

plusaf · #25 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by worthywads

Professor David Pimentel is somewhat surprising in that he is a well know Environmentalist, as far from Big Oil as you can be.

I usually disagree with him as he is a leader in "the sky is falling" type environmental alarmism and doom and gloom predictions.

Some of his ideas include:

The sustainable population of the US is 40-100 million max. How should we reduce our population by 85%?

He predicted massive increases in tuberculosis world wide, yet it's gone down.

He persists that there is an ever growing cancer epidemic, yet age-adjusted cancer deaths and incidence are stable or decreasing. As populations age more people will die from cancer which is highly age dependent. Your average 50 year old today will get cancer as often as a 50 year old in 1935.

He claimed that agriculture is causing the loss of 75 billion tons of top-soil annually, totally unsupported, but somehow based on increased yield per acre. This may be why he's not for crop increases for corn/fuel as it would certainly be necessary to vastly increase yield and land usage for crops, the opposite of bio-diversity. Genetic modification might be beneficial but that's obviously forbidden too.

He is one of the most ardent critics of pesticides and attributes the "cancer epidemic" to pesticides. One of his national articles was published in the local Boulder paper saying don't use pesticides including DEET against mosquitos because of west nile, because your chances of getting west nile are in the millions to one. He was off by an order of 50:1, 7 people died and there were 421 cases reported in Boulder County Colorado. It's unlikely that corn/fuel crops will be organic or sustainable by current definitions, another possible reason Pimentel isn't for it.

I'm not sure if Pimentel concerns himself with alternatives, my guess is he hopes humanity will collapse and return to a pre-industrial utopia as is inevitable and necessary.

Pimental = fundamentalist of his own religion. make all suitable generalizations...

plusaf · #26 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZCivic

<snipped>
As for the comments about the US having a sustainable population of 40-100 million, that would be based on current technology. I'm sure 500 years ago they said the sustainable population was 1 million, and at the time it was probably true. If you want an example though, look at Japan and many European countries that are already declining in population. The only reason the US isn't in decline is our massive influx of immigrants. Our population will level off and decline some day too, especially as living costs increase due to the fact renewable resources will drive up the cost of living and make it less affordable to have kids.

actually, most of the more highly developed countries' populations are decreasing due to lower birth rates. that's what happens when standards of living increase and they are no longer based on agrarian economies where having lots of kids available to "work the farms" is necessary, or where diseases kill off so many newborns and youths that a high birth rate is needed to compensate.

yeah, the US population is increasing, and there are lots of people who want to move here. one view of why?: look at Mexico and note the differences in how hard it is to own land, start a business, etc., there, compared to the USA. it's incredibly hard to do things there, compared to the US. if Mexico made it easy to hold title to land, start a business, etc., their emigration numbers to the US would fall like a rock. see what freedom does to inspire people?

and, back to the original thread, if you don't do all the numbers for ethanol, including subsidies, depletion allowances, windfall profits tax, and all the other market-distorting things Congress does to the energy business, hold off a bit before concluding it is or isn't good, bad or ugly.

CaptainObvious · #27 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 08:25 PM

I did some calculations on corn ethanol. Switchgrass may yield 2 to 2.5 times the ethanol. Prepare to be amused.

1 acre = 328 gallons ethanol
1 sq mile = 640 acres
1 sq mile corn = 209,920 gallons ethanol
1 gallon ethanol = 84,200 btu or 24.67 Kwhr
1 sq mile corn = 17.675 billiion btu or 5.179 gigawatt hours annually

US energy consumption of natural gas, petroleum, and electricity = 24,413 TWhrs = 24,413,000 gigawatt hours

It would take 4.7 million square miles of farmland for corn ethanol to supply the current US demand for all combined forms of energy (electricity, natural gas, and oil). The USA is 3.5 million square miles. What a joke!

worthywads · #28 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptainObvious

I did some calculations on corn ethanol. Switchgrass may yield 2 to 2.5 times the ethanol. Prepare to be amused.

1 acre = 328 gallons ethanol
1 sq mile = 640 acres
1 sq mile corn = 209,920 gallons ethanol
1 gallon ethanol = 84,200 btu or 24.67 Kwhr
1 sq mile corn = 17.675 billiion btu or 5.179 gigawatt hours annually

US energy consumption of natural gas, petroleum, and electricity = 24,413 TWhrs = 24,413,000 gigawatt hours

It would take 4.7 million square miles of farmland for corn ethanol to supply the current US demand for all combined forms of energy (electricity, natural gas, and oil). The USA is 3.5 million square miles. What a joke!

What is the square miles just for oil?

CaptainObvious · #29 (**permalink**) 02-20-2006, 09:15 PM

Well, we use 7,300,000,000 barrels of oil per year, which ends up being about half of our total energy consumption. Therefore, I would estimate that we'd need 2.35 million square miles to replace oil.

I read that 67% of the oil is used for transportation.

It's pretty clear to me that corn ethanol is a complete joke, and even the most efficient forms are extremely questionable. Pesticides, fertilizers (petroleum based), soil erosion etc. complicate matters further.

Back to corn, yeah, let's convert all spare land to corn and have filthy farm equipment polluting the air so we can get a whopping 10% energy gain. Completely ridiculous.

Alex A · #30 (**permalink**) 02-21-2006, 07:12 AM

I like the analysis.

Add to this the extension of daylight savings time - and ALL OF OUR PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED!!!