48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

There is a BASF ad in the most recent Popular Science that shows an ear of corn with the caption "48 Miles Per Kernel".
I find it hard to believe. How much ethanol can one kernel produce?

Suppose they were talking about a car that gets 48mpg, and suppose we give them the benifit of the doubt and they were talking about E10 gas. That is still .1 gallons per kernel. or 12.8 fluid ounces per kernel. It seems to violate conservaton of mass.

It gets worse with lower MPG cars or higher percentages of ethanol gasoline.

Or were they thinking of converting matter directly to energy?

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

hmmmm, looks to me as though its corn 10 feet long
powering a matchbox car
heres the link for those who dont have pop sci
http://www.basf.com/stories/

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Silly Silly People......
:confused::confused::confused::confused::confused: :confused::confused::confused::confused::confused:
It's only a play on words of course.
Were you really wondering, or were you also kidding around?

It means 48 miles per gallon of ethanol.
1 gallon of ethanol weighs about 6.7 pounds IIRC.
Just slightly more than gasoline,
But has slightly less energy per pound than gasoline,
but because of it's slower, more complete combustion, you get more power per gallon. Ethanol's Octane rating is about 110, which make it a fantastic choice for sports cars, and high end cars with high compression engines that can take advantage of such a high octane.

If regular gas is 87 Octane, and Premium is 93 Octane,
Can you say Super Ultra Extra "Premium" at the pump???

-Cheers
-John

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Europe has 121 octane gasoline or something like that, so it's nothing new. You know how corn syrup is used in lieu of sugar in the overwhelming majority of foods sold at supermarkets in the U.S.? Know the reason? Corn subsidies. Purely because of them, and some import tariffs, corn syrup is cheaper than sugar in the U.S, but nearly everywhere else sugar is cheaper (not to mention better-tasting and healthier) so it's used instead.

Hence some of the interest in corn-based ethanol. It's not actually good. Saying ethanol doesn't pollute because it's carbon-neutral is like saying forest fires don't pollute.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Forest fires do not pollute in the ways educated people are concerned about. Smoke is a particulate... one that settles out, and does not have lasting effects. Smoke is not a chemical pollutant.

Burning ethanol reduces both airborne chemicals and particles.
You can drink ethanol.
Ethanol does not harm oceans and streams.
A turned over load of ethanol on the freeway can be just washed down the storm drain. 5 parts water mixed with 1 part ethanol makes it virtually harmless, and non-flammable. I don't think you want to do that with any other liquid fuel.

Ethanol has many more pluses than minuses.
And ethanol does not need to come from corn.
It can come from a nearly unlimited number of feedstocks.
Ethanol is GROWING fuel for your car.
Ethanol is SOLAR power for your car.
Whatever you use today, will grow back tomorrow.
It is perfect? No. But is a very good choice at this time.
There may be better choices in the far future.
But for now, it is a good choice.
There are 9 or 10 positive reports for every 1 negative one.
9 out of 10 scientists say ethanol is a good thing.
9 out of 10 scientists say global warming is real.
So if you believe ethanol is not good, then you must believe global warming is not happening either. Is that the case?
-J

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Ethanol...is not the answer. subsidies are good for a very few. Energy useage to grow, fertilize, harvest, refine, and transport ethanol is good for the oil industry. Yes, ethanol is the answer...for big oil.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

The "jacobson" report was a poor April Fools practical joke.
Unfortunately, you cannot get something off the internet, once you post it, so unfortunately, it persists. It's funny to those who know, but not to everyone else. Also, you may see a "Pimentel" report that says ethanol takes more energy to produce than it creates. However, that report was was done in 1980, and just like computers, ethanol technology has improved 10 fold in 28 years. Today, in a modern facility, built after 2000, it takes 23,500 btu of fossil fuel to put 100,000 btu of ethanol into your tank. That includes the fossil fuel used by the tractor harvesting the corn, and the train taking the corn to the distillery, and the truck taking the fuel to the gas station. Funny, people never calculate the energy ( btu) it takes to move crude oil from Iraq or Kuweit to the U.S. and then refine it into pure gasoline. I've heard it takes 100,000 btu of fuel to get 100,000 btu of foreign oil into your gasoline tank.

So the real question is, are you patriotic? Or not?
How many soldiers died this year patrolling corn fields?

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

nice

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Water useage? soils degradation? Land mass requirements?

Big picture? no more combustion...Plug-in electric drive vehicles powered by solar: darelldd.com. He's the hero.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Switch fields usage year to year to avoid soil damage?

Good irrigation?

Land mass = image how much of the third world we could employ


Now imagine how many people solar power would provide a life for.

Corn helps the enviroment and the people.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Yes, the most subsidized, water-intensive, fetilizer-using crop sure does help the environment.

Please tell me you're sarcasm hat is on...

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

I always wear a hat. It helps hide the lost hairline :P

The big thing about the use of corn is we can do it now. We have the technology and the power to turn US auto's into biofeed cars. Crops can be grown naturally you know too. In the future we could even us genetics to produce more hardy corn variety's.

A full electric nation is still years off. Plus we'd need to work out the whole way to power all those electric cars. At the moment we have the choice of nuclear power or lots of importing oil and coal to further pollute the air.

Corn is more practical because its the simplest one to convert to. Electricity is costly, and more polluting.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Wow, I have to disagree with ALL of your statements. This guy would too: http://www.evnut.com/. Corn is not the answer and do the research...electricity is cleaner at the source than all those ICE cars. Please read his website. Internal combustion (gasoline, ethanol, whatever) will ALWAYS be dirty. Electrical generation can be even more clean and renewable in the the future...solar, wind, etc. Gas will never be a clean source. What uses more electricity than refining liquid fuels...nothing! Why not put it directly to use to turn a wheel or 2, instead of all the effort to pump, refine, transport gasoline, then to lose a great deal of the original energy to conversion losses, heat losses, etc. Seems a no-brainer to me. I'm so ready to plug-in and ditch all those inefficient, individually polluting ICE vehicles.:D

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Europe octane rating is different than us octane rating. They come out about the same when you normalize the formula.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

I make ethanol in an industrial size plant. ( 1 million gallons per week )
It takes 19,000 btu of fossil fuel and 489 watt-hours of electricity to produce 1 gallon of ethanol.

That one gallon can move a small car 35 miles.

It will take 7000 watt-hours of electricity from whatever source to charge your batteries and move a small EV car 35 miles.

Ethanol is solar power for your car. The corn sugar is a summer's worth of sunlight stored in a kernel. Corn (or any plant) is a solar battery.
A tree is a solar battery. Burning wood gives off lots of energy, right?
Where did that energy come from? The SUN! A mature tree = 50 years of stored sunlight!

Ethanol will not meet all our needs, but neither will photo-voltaic cells, or wind power. But, if we can get 25% of our transportation needs from ethanol, and 25% of our needs from wind power, that's 50% less demand on oil, and I'm sure you agree that is a good thing.

Photo-cells will NEVER be used for transportation, since the limit is the sun, not the cells. The sun is just not powerful enough to provide real-time transportation. You need a week of sunlight to travel 35 miles in my example. Not practical. One square meter of sunlight at noon = 1500 watts. Less as you move away from noon. And photo cells you can buy cheaply right now convert about 15% of what falls onto them into electricity. That equals 1 mile of transportation per hour of sunlight.

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

"With an average car travelling 1000 miles per month, you use 50 gallons of gasoline, or $150 at current rates. To go 1000 miles in an EV takes only 250 kWh of electric power in a RAV4-EV (less in an EV1), or the energy equivalent of less than 8 gallons of gasoline (35 kWh to one gallon of gasoline)."


Lots of good numbers here too: http://www.evnut.com/


"The energy used to convert corn to ethanol is based on a U.S. survey conducted in 2001 by BBI International. On the average, dry mill ethanol plants used 1.09 Kwh of electricity and about 34,700 Btu of thermal energy (LHV) per gallon of ethanol. When energy losses to produce electricity and natural gas were taken into account, the average dry mill ethanol plant consumed about 47,116 Btu of primary energy per gallon of ethanol produced. "

http://www.ethanol-gec.org/netenergy/NEYShapouri.htm

Six year old data...must be some newer data out there?

I think ethanol will have to exist just to employ all those involved with the process! How many steps are there??

Seems a nice solar/wind array charging an EV would be too simple to employ many people, thus THAT'S the real reason ehthanol will keep going. Same with hydrogen.

Jobs are important. But I can't help but see that a simple solution is not in the cards. We, as humans, love the more complex answers, when the simple one gets discarded. My opinion. YMMV.

?

Re: 48 Miles per kernel of corn?
 

Something needs done, whatever it will be. At least we can all agree to that.