Once-Darling Ethanol Losing Friends In High Places 586
theodp writes "It's now conceivable, says BusinessWeek's Ed Wallace, that the myth of ethanol as the salvation for America's energy problem is coming to an end. Curiously, the alternative fuel may be done in by an unlikely collection of foes. Fervidly pro-ethanol in the last decade of his political career, former VP Al Gore reversed course in late November and apologized for supporting ethanol, which apparently was more about ingratiating himself to farmers. A week later, Energy Secretary Steven Chu piled on, saying: 'The future of transportation fuels shouldn't involve ethanol.' And in December, a group of small-engine manufacturers, automakers, and boat manufacturers filed suit in the US Court of Appeals to vacate the EPA's October ruling that using a 15% blend of ethanol in fuel supplies would not harm 2007 and newer vehicles. Despite all of this, the newly-elected Congress has extended the 45 cent-per-gallon ethanol blending tax credit that was due to expire, a move that is expected to reduce revenue by $6.25 billion in 2011. 'The ethanol insanity,' longtime-critic Wallace laments, 'will continue until so many cars and motors are damaged by this fuel additive that the public outcry can no longer be ignored.'"
We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and so it ends up everywhere, from our stomachs to our gas tanks. High-fructose corn syrup anyone?
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Indeed the problem is the money funneled into corn. This is a foodstuff being turned into fuel. There are better uses for this.. oh like food!
I shudder to think the amount of money lining rich people's pockets on this wasteful redirection of resources. I have always considered cellulosic ethanol a much better avenue for research, as the input could end up being mostly 'by-product' from existing agricultural processes.
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There are better uses for the money. We have enough corn. So much that they are searching for uses.
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All too often people on slashdot conflate so many issues. This is one of them.
Ethanol is not the same thing as corn!!! We current get ethanol from corn because of bribed politicians. The reality is, ethanol is absolutely a viable fuel source - just not from corn!
Hemp is currently illegal in the US despite not having THC (active ingredient in pot). Please note, hemp IS NOT POT. There are literally zero THC strains of hemp available now. And smoking even the low THC strains of hemp (almost all hemps) will not
FUCK. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the implied solution is to stop giving welfare to the megacorps over-producing corn. If you don't like that, why are you supporting welfare for the rich?
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck are you talking about? US destroyed its industry and "outsourced" it to China. Raw materials are worthless if you can't make anything out of them.
"Energy" (oil) is only a noticeable part of the picture because you can do minimal processing of it, then pump the result into your car, so you can drive 100 miles every day to your office job that manages reselling Chinese imports. This is what US economy got reduced to, and messing with green paper can't change it.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
US destroyed its industry and "outsourced" it to China.
Actually there's still a lot of good stuff that's made in the US. It's just the labor-intensive jobs - whatever tasks that can't be easily automated - that've been exported to Mexico, Central America, and China.
For example, about a year and a half ago I met a man who owns a machine shop... His buisness was making tubular parts for telescopes. Mostly he just loads raw material and watches over his machines as the computer tells them what to do... 20 years ago an employee would have been required for each one.
Pinky's Brain (grandparent post [slashdot.org]) had a very good point about stimulus checks for all citizens. No more of this 1 in 7 on foodstamps [cnn.com] crap - everyone should get foodstamps, or a guaranteed basic income [richardccook.com].
There's always work to be done, it's just a matter of organization, and matching available hands with tasks. Money is the organizing principle that allows us to value other peoples' labor. The true distortion in the economy comes from allowing privately owned banks to expand the money supply by a factor of 10+ by making loans. The Fed's recent Quantitative Easing policy is a step in the right direction, because it finally creates a little bit of interest-free money (90% of the money the Treasury pays on the $600 billion in bonds that the Fed will buy will be returned to the treasury - see Ellen Brown's What's Really Behind QE2? [webofdebt.com]).
hope that helps. :)
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a lazy fucking layabout I assure you there are many more of me, and a guaranteed basic income reads as nothing more than me never having to work a day in my life, for anything, ever.
Many, many millions of others will look at it precisely the same way.
Fuck the collective good, I'll get mine.
This is a fact. This is reality. This is why communism never works and socialism always slowly fails. There must be a way to purge the system from those who will suck all they can from society but never add one bit of their own work. That is nature. In a small group you can kick members out -- kibbutz communes and such. On a larger scale, you wind up with the Russian solution -- that is, you kill people.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You don't work -- no large screen TV's for you...but you get your food...
What's wrong with that?
You just want to sit and be a vegetable? We can probably make it so that you'll use very few resources -- you'll benefit the nation.
So the problem with this is?
This nonsense gets trotted out every time someone comes up with providing basics for all guaranteed.
Thing is, is that *MOST* people in the US want more in life.
Your "logic" is very flawed.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok? Good for you? That's a hobby?
I can't tell this to you more clearly.
If my housing and food were guaranteed to be paid for, for the rest of my life, I'd never bother doing a damned thing past that. I'd have endless hobbies and diversions and time-wasters, but I'd not get a job. I know this about myself. I also know I am not alone.
If you look at societies where people are handed all they need to survive without ever having to do anything on their own.. that's about as far as they make it. Sure, some will work hard for really no reason, but many will just choose to exist. And fill the time with drugs, and with sex, and other "vices". This is human nature. We are selfish and exploitative.
Re:We borrow money from China to fund corn... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Guaranteed minimum income" is just another way of saying "subsidies that avoid the phase-out problem". And the thing is, supposed the GMI is $10k , and then a 20% (marginal) "tax" kicks in at $50k. At $100k income, you're still getting your "minimum income" , but you're also paying the same amount in "tax". Money's fungible, people should not get all hung up about the labels attached to it, just figure out subsidies and tax codes so you have a healthy economy, enough money to run the government, and you avoid pathologies like the way current subsidies getting turned off in a narrow income band provide such a disincentive to work.
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Exaggerate much? Yeah losing access to 'cheap' oil would put a damper on our economic recovery, but if you want to look at the mid-term horizon it's an inevitability so we should definitely be making plans to change off it anyways. If we start investing in industry's that can function without a dwindling resource we can reestablish our manufacturing base and set it up for the next century of growth, or we could keep on the current pa
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If we lost access to foreign oil all at once, that's true. But otherwise we have the technology and the resources to replace 100% of our foreign oil consumption with renewable sources. "We" don't do this because there is no one "we", the corporations making the fuel and who have to be displaced in order to move forward are making plenty of profit and see no reason to change. Nobody making decisions today is likely to feel the full effects, so why worry?
Re:I would mod you up if I had the points (Score:4, Insightful)
The USD should be losing value, it's the natural evolution of a currency from a country with a trade deficit. America is uncompetetive with low infrastructure investment precisely because the USD has not been allowed to fall by it's trading partners (which have printed money and buying up dollars to make sure that doesn't happen). In the short term the Chinese rather have US factories through outsourcing than factory output, and is selling it's citizens into slavery to make it happen.
Of course the US should never have gone along with that scam, since at some point the Chinese will decide they have enough factories ... and divert factory output to internal consumption, at which point the US will neither have the cheap goods nor the factories and will be properly double fucked
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Yet the median barely budges ... it's not the rich which create demand, it's the poor and middle class.
Chinese median income (Score:3)
Yet the median barely budges
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That's just the urban rich, though. The rural poor in China don't get to see a penny of that, and Chinese law prohibits them from migrating to the urban areas where they could actually make some money. What's more, they make up the vast majority of the population.
In bad years, the Chinese government needs all its military might just to keep the rural areas from rising up in revolt.
Who extended the tax credit? (Score:5, Informative)
The "newly-elected" Congress hasn't been seated yet.
Ethanol pluses and minuses (Score:5, Informative)
First the jury has been in for a long time that in terms of Energy per dollar Corn or sugar based ethanol are never going to be a good idea in the US for feedstocks that come from the food chain. However cellolosic ethanol (switch grass, poplar tree, cellulosic waste, etc...) may be quite a good idea. There are strong arguments for them that have yet to be defeated. They need less irrigation and can be grown on lands or seasons otherwise unsuited for crops.
The big bug-a-boo with these is that they are waiting for a scientific breaktrhough for a process to change cellulose into simple sugars or directly to ethanol or gasoline. There's lots of ways to approach this but all of them are not at the efficiency needed yet. It's not an easy proposal: if digesting cellulose was super easy then more bugs would do it already. It's actually not the cellulose that's the biggest problem, it's the lignose which is about 30%+ of the plant thats slightly harder to deal with biochemically.
It's likely that some breakthroughs will occur. Theres lots of irons in the fire. Some of them may scale. But if you had to do it tommorrow chances are you'd bet on the wrong pony if you went with one particular approach.
Thus the primary role that starch and sugar based ethanol plays now is that it seeds the pipeline with ethanol now, so the infrastructure will be in place when cellulosic ethanol comes on line.
Now why ethanol and not something else more energy efficient. Butanol for example. Or other liquid fuels. THe problem is that when you ad up the cost of replacing our fleet of existing internal combustion engines and fuel infrastructure it's a huge huge huge sum. You can't just pick the "optimal" fuel purely from an maximal energy standpoint. You have to have a way there that does not start with a non-starter like chucking out all the existing engines. Hence Ethanol looks like the common denominator. It's not bad. It's easier to produce ethanol from grains now than it is butanol or gasoline. and it works in the cars we have up to a point.
As long as we are comminting to cellulosic ethanol, some use of food crops to produce grain-based ethanol now is justifiable. It just can't continue in the long run.
Another route is commit to bio-diesel from algae. This too has some issues to solve to make it scalable. It can use lower quality water. it can use low grade lands. it is easier to "dry" than ethanol because it is not water soluble so there's less energy waste in turning it into fuels. And you might be able to think of some byproduct for the waste stream from algae (maybe animal feed or fertilizer). SOme of the challenges here are very simple sounding, though no one has entirely solved them yet: how do we quadruple the lipid yield, and how to we get enough CO2 into the water (without burning fuel to create it and pump it.).
There is enough bad land to fuel the entire nation if we can solve those scaling products.
It has a path forward through the trucking system (diesel) and through aviation fuels and military fuels. The latter can pay premium prices to subsidize the product effectively since those fuels are more expensive than consume fuels.
Eventually however that path requires replacing the automobile fleet. But given the path forward in the near term this may not be a non-starter.
Re:Ethanol pluses and minuses (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a biotech student who's very interested in this stuff. For anyone looking for an expanded explanation of the challenges facing cellulosic ethanol this blog post [blogspot.com] might be interesting. I've also written about the possible affects that large scale biofuel production may have on food security [blogspot.com].
Cellulosic ethanol would be a big contribution to solving the impending energy crisis. Domestic waste and agricultural waste could be recylced into fuel to supplement demand to some extent, but in order to meet demand grain originally destined for food would have to be diverted. If not regulated properly this would likely cause an increase in global food prices. In a world with circa. 1 billion people starving, this is obviously less than ideal.
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Pelosi hot?
What are you on?
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You must not be following current events (nor have passed basic reading comprehension).
And you're clearly blind to blatant, overt sarcasm.
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Okay, let's set aside the sarcasm for a moment. When I read the little gem in the article summary above that states:
Despite all of this, the newly-elected Congress has extended the 45 cent-per-gallon ethanol blending tax credit that was due to expire, a move that is expected to reduce revenue by $6.25 billion in 2011
(emphasis mine) I have to respond. The newly elected Congress is the 112th congres which as Bedouin X indicated has not yet been seated; it was his comment with which I sarcastically agreed. bkpark's comments actually agreed with this, though he clearly didn't see my comment as being in agreement. So a Troll? Perhaps, and if so, I'll wear that badge proudly here... I certainly hooked y
The newly elected congress? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not exactly sure, but I don't think they've actually done anything yet. Everything so far is the lame duck congress.
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That is correct. They are not seated in office yet. The extension of the subisidies the article mentions and the Republicans the author tries to blame have not been sworn in. I felt that his idiotic attempt at bashing Republicans was pathetic and cast a negative light on the entire article.
Quoting Homer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quoting Homer (Score:5, Interesting)
How apropos! I have already had TWO generators get trashed ($650+ each) and have had several other mechanical issues with ethanol in non-car engines. Ethanol is the worst thing you can put in a lawn mower, boat, or other motor that isn't run every day. It sucks more water out of the air than the average dehumidifier, which will literally RUST out the engine components.
Putting alcohol in my small motor fuel has created hundreds of dollars of damage, and has created MORE carbon than regular gas, due to all the replacement parts that had to be manufactured again, and shipped. It sounds good on paper, but by the time you add the cost of subsidizing Monsanto and adding the damage, it costs more than it saves in both money and carbon.
alcohol in engines (Score:3)
Ethanol is the worst thing you can put in a lawn mower, boat, or other motor that isn't run every day.
No, ethanol is a bad thing to use as a fuel in an engine that is not designed to use it. Engines that are designed to use alcohol run good with it though.
Falcon
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Um I can't find ethanol free within 50 mi of me. Do you have to go somewhere special?
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"So, as I understand it, you put four-stroke engine fuel in a two-stroke engine, it broke, and this is somehow someone else's fault?"
I don't know what country you are in, but here in the US we don't have two-stroke/four-stroke specific blends. All two-strokes in the US either use an oil-injector system to supplement lubrication content of the fuel, or use a pre-mix of oil/fuel that is mixed by the USER in proper proportions.
I understand some countries that have a high incidence of motorcycle usage (they ten
Re:Quoting Homer (Score:5, Informative)
Then you don't understand it. All my generators have been four stroke, as is the boat. Living in a small town, gas without ethanol is not available locally, and in North Carolina, they were mandating ethanol years before the feds due to pollution. Running Stabil in fuel is nice and is done year round but doesn't change the chemical reality that ethanol is hygroscopic. Most engines have steel parts. Water rusts steel. Engines that aren't run regularly and have tanks that vent to the atmosphere build up water. Not quite sure why you don't get it. It would appear the majority here do.
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Not quite true. Pure water with no access to oxygen will not cause most steel alloys to rust. What water does is create conditions that make rusting and other forms of corrosion easier and faster, by disolving salts, allowing ion transport between dissimilar metals, etc.
I've read that ethanol is particularly destructive to magnesium and some other light metals that used to be used in small engines.
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From an environmental point of view, ethanol isn't better in the US, as we can't produce enough to replace gas if we wanted to. And NO cars in the US are designed to run on 100% ethanol. Every single car, boat, lawn mower, piece of power equipment, emergency generator and other small engine would have to be replaced, costing billions of dollars. Ethanol has its place, but it isn't viable as the primary motor vehicle fuel in the USA. Electric might be in time, but not ethanol. Electricity is much cheape
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Alcohol: the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems.
Congress and alcohol -- made for each other.
A little ethanol is good (Score:4, Informative)
Ethanol is a relatively safe octane booster. As long as temperatures are not too high, it is a great idea to add some ethanol to the fuel, even if you lose a little bit of range.
With current production methods you really should not try to use it for its energy content though, except perhaps if you have access to a lot of area where you can grow sugar cane. Wasting corn on making ethanol should not be encouraged.
Re:A little ethanol is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A little ethanol is good (Score:5, Informative)
I hope your little ignorant ass is replaced by an agricultural robot.
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Sugar beets are another lousy way to make sugar. They do not grow in high-solar areas, they capture solar energy less efficiently, and their sugar content is lower than sugar cane.
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What other use would you put that land to?
Wheat perhaps? Yeah, that's proven very healthy over the generations hasn't it.
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Corn is useful for animal feed. It is a reasonably efficient plant if you measure yield/acre (and you use the whole plant, not just the cobs). Burning corn as a substitute for coal is not out of the question, although switchgrass or willow are more obvious candidates.
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That is a minor engineering problem though. We got through the switch to unleaded, from a technical viewpoint we can relatively easily switch to more than 50% ethanol. We just do not have an efficient way to produce that much ethanol, apart from sugar cane.
Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:4, Interesting)
Corn ethanol: bad
Switchgrass ethanol: good
There's nothing inherently wrong with ethanol (unless you're under 21 - shame on you majority of populace!) but how we get our current stock is a terrible deal. Corn and farm policies are troublesome, and current ethanol mandates are indeed another subsidy for a growing and yet still ailing production force, but it need not be. Convert some fields into sugarcane or switchgrass, which is vastly more effective for creating biofuels, and that's without all the genetic advances corn has had. We'll get more efficient energy production, another crop will become incredibly profitable, and the corn cycle of "grow more causing prices to drop so grow more" - that's a win-win-win situation.
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Lucky you. You don't have a sugar cartel controlling supply and jacking up prices like we do.
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Lucky you. You don't have a sugar cartel controlling supply and jacking up prices like we do.
Yes, we have. This cartel makes ethanol and sugar. When they're losing on the sugar, they jack up alcohol prices and vice-versa.
They employ some of the poorest people in Brazil, who work their asses of for cheap money.
It seems the USA and Brazil are not that different...
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:4, Interesting)
Lucky you. You don't have a sugar cartel controlling supply and jacking up prices like we do.
As the other user said, yes we do, the usineiros as they are called have a lot of people on the congress (the Agribusiness Lobby is the second larges non-partisan group on the Congress and Senate), and they have a monopoly of a lot of stuff. That means they jack up prices and try to stiffle the market of other type of fuel.
What happened to balance is that other big farmers decided to jump on the biodiesel wagon, and their lobby was stronger than the Ethanol's, so they got some subsidies to start making Castor Bean diesel. That put them on their place and the prices got a little more controlled. But still that risks upping the price of other produces with more and more farmers jumping at that wagon and forgetting the once great rice, wheat and soy.
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Are you sure that you can grow sugarcane on same location that can grow corn? They have different climate requirements. What grows in Brasil does not always grow in Texas.
Re:Not all ethanol is created the same (Score:5, Insightful)
National Corn Growers Association.
Now there wouldn't be anything self serving on that site would there?
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Ethanol fuels don't store well, as any mechanic who has dealt with them will attest. Their lubricity is poor.
Of course, you can dump STA-BIL in the tank (ignore the directions, use a shitload), but that kind of defeats the purpose.
"Drop-in" petroleum replacements are a better solution deserving further development, and can be run in compression-ignition diesels.
Thank God (Score:2)
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It's typical political maneuvering. Start with something that makes a lot of sense but is against the interests of your backers. Add increasing political pressure to implement the sensible measure. "cave" and implement it but with a catch, do so in the stupidest most destructive and ineffective way you can possibly think of. Wait a few years and point out what a dreadful idea the whole things was and get rid of it.
You get to look like a hero twice, all without pissing your villainous backers off.
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever actually tried to eat the grade of corn used for corn ethanol? I thought not, but believe me, don't try it, you won't be able to, it's a grade lower than that used for silage/cattle feed. It's grown on land too marginal for real human crops and tastes.
Ah, No. Not true.
Ethanol has taken over prime farm corn land.
Ethanol has actually driven up the price of silage corn, and beef.
It is most often the exact same corn as silage, because there is no point in switching to a lower grade. The seed, planting, and harvesting costs the same, and you cut your market options by growing anything other than cattle grade corn.
We don't directly eat silage either, so just because it does not taste good to humans when eaten directly is a hollow argument. It tastes pretty good when you eat the cow/pig.
I'm sure this is where the vegans jump in and pontificate about eating animals, but thats not what this thread is about.
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The amount of corn farmland in the US produces so much corn that corn prices are too low to support corn farmers, so the public subsidizes the corn farmers. If we consume more corn because we added fuel production to the consumers, that should increase demand compared to supply enough to keep prices supported without subsidies. Yet we still have the price subsidies. So is corn ethanol production really reducing the supply of food corn enough to impact the food economy?
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Subsidies once enacted, never seem to go away.
Regards of market conditions.
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought not, but believe me, don't try it, you won't be able to, it's a grade lower than that used for silage/cattle feed.
You are more full of shit that feeder cattle you pretend to know about. The exact same corn can and does go to an ethanol plant or to a feed lot or even human food consumption processing. The by-product of ethanol is distillers grain and is also fed to livestock among other uses. I was raised on a farm and now have a few cattle of my own on an acreage.
You can eat and digest normal field corn just fine(GMO arguments aside), although it's not the sweet corn variety which what most people are used to.
FWIW, most small farmer don't get much or any subsidies for corn production and we nearly all have recognized for years that the ethanol pitch is bullshit. If you want to rage about farmers getting too much unwarranted subsidies, make sure you focus the anger on the big corporate farms because they're the one's that have Congress's ear. About the only benefit small farmer's have seen is the relatively recent sustained rise in corn prices due to the OP's point. The small farmer subsidy era largely went away during the Reagan Administration and has never returned. If you want to check your "fax", look at how many family farms went under in the 80's and the farm bill provisions before, during, and after that time.
You may also want to consider the reasoning behind subsidies as well. It's essentially a safeguard so that American food supply will be adequate on a yearly basis. If you let market forces run it entirely, there would be large swings in price and availability. Some might say fine, that's the way it should. The problem with is when a core need like food supply become volatile then so does everything dependent on the supply. The society we live in today would not be possible without subsidies to encourage farmers to plant even when there is excess. The argument "There shouldn't be subsidies" is completely different than "We have too many subsidies".
Why engines are falling apart (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a great article about what is happening today with ethanol:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/too-much-alcohol
"He explains that the legal limit is 10% but that all the fuel distributors cheat and mix in some extra alcohol so they can make a buck. When the mix gets to 15% it’s toxic for two cycle engines. And that is what killed my machines."
Kiss your chainsaw or gas boat motor goodbye. And your car engine, if the EPA gets their way of increasing the "limit" to 15%.
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The US has those, too. However, they are far outnumbered by existing engines that are not built for it.
What the US needs is a supply chain that doesn't introduce ethanol into the entire fuel supply. And it doesn't need ANY ethanol in the fuel supply until it has a way to produce it that isn't at a loss.
Unfortunately ethanol requires more land use (Score:2)
Unfortunately ethanol requires even more land use, in an already overcrowded planet.
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Unfortunately ethanol requires even more land use, in an already overcrowded planet.
And the other problem is it takes two barrels of crude equivalent to manufacture one ethanol equivalent of a barrel of oil.
ETOH? No, thanks.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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The same is true for mountaintop mining. The issue right now is how much are the operations going to have to pay for cleanup. The operators think they can pollu
Ethanol 10% causes more gasoline usage. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have stumbled on "real 100% gasoline" three times in a 2008 Honda Element. Each time, my mileage increased for that tankful from 265 miles to 300 miles.
Honda: 10% Ethanol, 13 gallon tank mileage to fill up (about 12.25 gallons).
265 miles. About 21.6 miles per gallon.
Honda: Gasoline, 13 gallon tank mileage to fill up (about 12.25 gallons).
300 miles. About 24.4 miles per gallon.
12% more miles with gasoline than with 10% Ethanol.
You see the problem, right?
When using 10% ethanol, I actually burn MORE GASOLINE to travel the same number of miles.
So ethanol is worse than useless.
I keep putting this out there so hopefully someone who can reliably get 100% gasoline can perform a formal study.
This is increasing the amount of gasoline we use, not reducing it.
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I have the same (or similar enough) measurement in my 2009 civic, and worse in my 2001 chevy truck.
Holiday stations here do the 10% ethanol thing, I get 13.8mpg on it
Conoco stations here advertise 'no ethanol' and I get 15.6mpg on that.
as the previous poster showed, Ethanol is actually worse than water as a fuel additive for some situations, including mine and his.
This is known. (Score:2)
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You mean someone who can get comparable mixes and run controlled tests... Like NREL?
http://feerc.ornl.gov/pdfs/pub_int_blends_rpt1_updated.pdf [ornl.gov]
They found a decrease in fuel economy of 3.68+/-0.44% at 95% confidence for E10, which is consistent with the ~3.5% decrease in energy density for the fuel.
I would argue that their tests on 16 vehicles are much more reliable than comparing unknown amounts (only counted the number of miles to get near empty) of unknown fuels (one of which might have about 10% ethanol)
Re:Ethanol 10% causes more gasoline usage. (Score:5, Informative)
With the 10% Ethanol mix, his 12.25 gallon fill-up contained 11.0 gallons of gasoline. He was able to travel 265 miles. That gives us 265/11 = 24.1 mpg, where gallons refers to only the gasoline portion. Yes, I'm ignoring the ethanol portion of the fill-up on purpose.
With pure gasoline, he went 300 miles on a 12.25 gallon fill-up, giving 300/12.25 = 24.5 mpg.
Do you see what happened? At best, the ethanol does absolutely nothing useful! At worst, it actually makes your car use even more gasoline. You don't even need the other arguments about it costing more and eating away at engine components to realize that it's a complete waste.
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I get your point.
Consider these
1) A 265 mile or 300 mile trip is the sum of many smaller events. Multiple days of travel (about 8) with 20 to 25 travel events.
2) Wouldn't you think that a 35 mile travel distance is normally a pretty spectacular difference?
3) It's been repeated three times so far -- and similar reports from others in this thread.
3a) So that's about 210 travel events which lead to 900 miles of travel vs 210 travel events which lead to 795 miles of travel.
4) Regardless of weather, wind, etc.
Maize ethanol was never a good idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Corn ethanol diverts field corn from the already-mammoth agribusiness industry that pumps field corn into just about every foodstuff in the country-- everything from livestock to all processed foods and fast foods (corn oil, high fructose corn syrup). It thus encourages the expansion of that industry, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuel and its derivatives to grow corn-- that's why many experts say that you don't get nearly as much bang for the buck as you do when you process sugar cane into ethanol. And that doesn't even account for the fertilizer and pesticides/herbicides that end up in the Gulf of Mexico due to runoff (not that it will matter much for the foreseeable future).
It would be a lot more worthwhile for the government to reduce corn subsidies and use that savings to either cut the deficit or invest in things like renewable energy infrastructure or non-corn biofuel research or even tax breaks for efficiency upgrades. Alas, ADM and Monsanto contribute hugely to PACs of Congressmen who vote to continue the subsidies (and no doubt hire them as lobbyists when they retire), therefore we do not see any change in this regard.
issues (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue with Ethanol is really 2 fronts.
1, corn has a low output per crop for food or for fuel.
2, Ethanol is hard on an engine, even an engine designed to handle it.
We are propping up the corn industry claiming that we are saving farmers. The subsidies that keep those farmers on corn is also keeping the from switching to a more appropriate crop.
Ethanol really tears up engine components such as gaskets and seals. As these items wear at a faster pace with Ethanol, they become less efficient and less reliable.
I understand the draw for ethanol, it acts sort-of like gasoline which keeps the many millions of cars on our roads compatible with the 'next-gen' fuel. The problem is that it is from a low yiel crop and has an intense and expensive manufacturing process.
We could product a diesel-compatible biofuel much more easily and out of crops with significantly higher yield. A significant percent of fuel used in America is diesel through trucks and tractors and a push for a more sustainable fuel in a diesel form would change the focus of automakers selling cars in the US.
It is easier and cheaper to make diesel from corn rather than ethanol, but still not efficient.
Rapeseed can be be broken down by simply crushing the seed which is ~40% oil. This crop produces about ~127 Gallons per acre. The US in 2009 used about 137Billion gallons of gasoline.
with some math 137B/127Gallons = 1.07Billion acres. The US is 2.428Billion acres. There are only 922Million acres of farmland.
hmmmm, so we dont have enough land to grown a renewable fuel unless we both a, stop eating AND b, come up with something that has a ~50% oil content.
You dont have to be a rocket scientist to do the math from numbers freely available at usda.gov. I would think that any person pushing to eliminate our need for foreign oil or oil in general and actually expecting some level of success would have done a tiny bit of research. We can't grow our fuel, or at the very least we cant grow all of it. We are going to have to use technology to handle this issue, not brute force.
And on that subject, only ~27% of our energy usage is in transporation. petrolium is about 38% of our energy sources.
So the real question is, should we really be looking at changing the fuel source for cars right now? Shouldn't we continue to improve out technology for electric and/or hybrid systems, batteries, and more efficient engines while targeting industrial and commercial power uses? This way in the future we can make a much better change in cars when the technology is ready? We could reduce our need on oil by a massive amount with nuclear power and converting many fuel burners to electical heating and cooling. With nuclear power alone we could see as much fuel energy savings as completely replacing the fuel in our cars. We already have nuclear power technology and building more plants will push that technology further ahead. btw, nuclear is just 8 1/2% of out power source.
I am not saying that we should ignore oil use in cars, just that it is not the best place to start. Batteries and power production, probably nuclear, is what I think is the best route. if we try, we might actually be doing nuclear fusion this century, but fission is proven and reliable and safe.
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i didnt give any sources, oops. mostly usda.gov but also some wikipedia and lawrence livermore natial laboratory.
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Ethanol really tears up engine components such as gaskets and seals. As these items wear at a faster pace with Ethanol, they become less efficient and less reliable.
This is a design issue. All the same issues were raised when leaded petrol was phased out. We made do. We advanced. The problem is we don't have a constant spec on petrol. If the government simply said you put x ethanol in all blends of petrol you could come up with the right gasket material and right lubrication system to make the engine run really well on ethanol.
In Australia we had yet the same problem again when we changed the sulfur spec on diesel. When the first sub 10ppm sulfur diesel hit the mar
We need multifuel vehicles (Score:2)
Multifuel vehicles run on gasoline, ethanol, methanol, and other fuels. Brazil has them. They don't cost much more than our vehicles (I think the difference is about $35).
Alternative fuels based on algae include both oil and ethanol. The oil gets squeezed out and the remainder is fermented into ethanol.
We will need it when the price of petroleum oil skyrockets, which it is expected to do in the next few years -- permanently, due to peak oil and the disappearance of the excess capacity in the oil industry
Multiple Problems (Score:2)
1: It's simply not economic. If it was there wouldn't be the need for subsidies or mandates to include it in fuel.
2: It's really stupid to burn food, which is what is happening here. Especially with other, lower cost, fuel alternatives remain available now and for at least the next couple of decades -- after which it's impossible to predict with any certainty what we'll be facing anyway. If you can make it efficiently out of non-food biomass this
What is the deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. The infrastructure to deliver it is already in place and is far less complicated than say what is needed for a hydrogen system.
2. The conversion costs are small and will work with most vehicles. Pickup trucks being the easiest to convert. (Cool trucks, no gay hybrids required.)
3. It's readily availabe just about everywhere. You can drill a hole in the ground to get it. You can make it with crop and animal waste on the farm. You can make it from sewage waste in the city. You can collect it as a by product from the petrolium industry. You could make your own fuel in your backyard if you were so inclined and had the space.
4. It is environment friendly. No bad polutants when you burn it and can come from "carbon neutral" sources if you still buy into such things.
5. We can make it in our own country and stop funding the overseas assholes. Let them try to eat their oil after we stop buying and see how far that gets them.
Win, win, win, win, win.
Ethanol is a maritime disaster (Score:4, Informative)
I work in the marine engine trade. (western U.S.) Ethanol has been a boon to the gasoline engine repair and maritime rescue business. It is estimated by marine trade originations that gasoline and ethanol mixed fuels currently cause about 70-85% of engine failures. Not really a type of additional work we want.These engines (and outboards) and fuel tanks were never designed for this fuel. Unlike modern autos, marine fuel tanks are vented and absorb moisture rich air. Water related corrosion adds to the alcohol damage. I do not think anyone has worked out just the cost in lives lost at sea, lost boats, and the damage to the marine trades has resulted from this fuel. We only get to work on the boats that made it back.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Pollution shift allows pollution control and avoids depending on the owners of autos to maintain them. Central powerplant upgrades cost less than dispersed vehicle fleet replacement.
"Smaller (lighter) cars are the only solution."
Their is no "only solution", there are a vast number of partial, complementary solutions. The "central solution" idea is both stupid and a distraction from intelligent comprehension of the systems that need changing.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Alright, who's in charge of deciding who gets to live and who gets to die? Population explosions are usually a survival mechanism. Past a certain level of prosperity and education, you have bigger problems with population decline. If you want to 'control populations', give them liberty and education. There are more than enough resources left on earth to reach that goal but our great civilized cultures would rather see the starving masses die off than elevated to our own level if one is to believe people like you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This dumb argument comes up each and every time. Less reproduction is the answer, not culling of the current population.
Agreed (Score:3)
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Informative)
The only reason we have this much food available is mechanized farming which is highly dependent on fossil fuels (both to run the machinery and to make the fertilizers). Take away the cheap fossil fuels and there would be mass starvation.
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Your position is both irrational and not founded on empirical evidence.
World population has exceeded 3bill since 1960 : 50 years ago. We are now just shy of 7bill and expectation is that population will plateau at around 10bill. If this 3bill figure represented some sort of high water mark then I would expect that some solid empirical evidence of this high water mark would of eventuated by now. The absence of such evidence makes such claims even more extraordinary, burden of proof is on you to demonstrate
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Oil [theoildrum.com] and
Fresh Water [nature.com]
Quit watching so much Star Trek. Reality can be a cast iron bitch at times.
I'd start doodling if I were you. If your talents don't run that way, try some readin [amazon.com]
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Empirical fact remains that all in all, from one generation to the next, our individual quality of life has been improving since as far as our capacity to understand what historical conditions where like and there is no basis of fact to suggest that imminent change is looming in the next couple of generations. In fact there are plenty of signs to the contrary: world fertility is stabilizing, our relationship with the environment is steadily improving on a number of fronts over the past 30 years; etc etc.
Yes innovations frequently provide unwanted and unintended consequences; anti-biotics has spawned us the problem of super-viruses, but we are still overall better off. You say "get us out of the mess that the intelligence and resourcefulness of mankind got us into.". So does this mean you shun all technology and innovation (including your computer and your Internet); if so that is your personal wish but it is in my view a sub-optimal position.
In additional to this, our capacity to weather calamities has improved too. Inspite of this, as far back as our history allows us to perceive, there has never ceased to be a parade of people who insist that the worst is just around the corner, or an appreciable audience for such doom-sayers.
Yes - the big one may come; an asteroid impact, a zombie virus apocalypse, or some other biblical end-time event. The closest credible threat in living memory, and what I consider to be a real threat was the threat of nuclear annihilation that pervaded from the 60s to the 90s
I minimize 'alarmists', such as what you admit to be, and with respect, because I once perceived the world as I believe you now currently perceived it. I minimize them because although the alarm bells they ring resonates deep in all of us and trigger deep seated fears, including myself, their position has no empirical support and as such their instance that their concerns require broader community mindshare without basis; and as such are deservedly minimalised. Should an issue materialize where there is no reasonable, rational doubt that it is a real and significant problem, we may indeed find ourselves in a position we cannot do anything about it, but you can be personally assured that everyone around you, including myself, all 7 billion of us, will be thinking very very hard about the problem. Of course, to this I can always count on people with your mindset to point out - too little! too late! You need to starting thinking about these things now! This is what this meme demands of us in order for the meme to continue to thrive and propagate.
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There is one only solution. It's getting the population back down below 3 billion.
Or below ten billion.
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Well, the electrical car can actually help the issue a bit, since large engines in power plants can run more efficiently than small ICEs. Not to mention that the former can run on non-polluting power sources (solar, water, wind...).
But the true solution is simply to make cars run on less fuel. We have to aim for a car that gets 50, 60, 100 mpg.
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The efficiency of a heat engine depends on your engineering skill and care(precise machining, close tolerances, minimal friction, etc.); but the theoretical maximum efficiency depends in large part on the delta betw
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Instead of making smaller and lighter cars, how about making an electric car that is as big as the gasoline or diesel powered cars and has a decent range?
My car was modified to burn LPG as well as gasoline (originally it was gasoline only), my experience in driving it did not change much (it's a bit more difficult to use LPG), however, I can use cheaper fuel now (where I live, LPG costs about half of what gasoline costs, so even though my car burns more of it, in the end it's still cheaper to use LPG), but
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Easy? Smaller lighter cars?
Yea right. We only get small cars when we can't afford the big ones. And none of the hippy but Europe does this nonsense.
1. The United States has a low population density. That means...
A. A lot of us are located far apart. Making travel long and in the winter more difficult.
B. Long distances to stores we need shop and get more stuff per shopping.
C. Public transportation is too cost prohibitive for many municipalities.
2. Wide weather pa
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People don't like living stacked on top of one another, so they leave. I like, along with many others, space. It's fine if you like it, but you shouldn't be forced to.
I don't live in the suburbs though, but in a house on a 35 acre plot.
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You are really in a minority in the developed world. I live in the UK, and I cannot say I much love the small size of houses/flats here. But there ought to be a reasonable density that allows us to have space, and still mean we can have good mass transit.
Britain has some of the smallest and most expensive housing in the world, because the post-war Labour government wanted to push people into Stalinist apartment blocks while the Tories didn't want riff-raff living in their country villages; hence there was pretty much unanimous political support for preventing said riff-raff from buying up a piece of land and building a house on it. If development was allowed, there would be about an acre of land per person, and every family could have a house on four acres
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The U.S. has a "low population density" because a lot of Americans live in suburbs, not because a lot of people live in rural areas. The solution is to move people into the city. This in my opinion is the #1 challenge, because it requires redesigning cities.
US suburban population density isn't so different from many European cities. The difference is that the US tends to employ insane zoning so that you can't have shops and offices anywhere near to where people live. Don't move the people into the cities, move shops and workplaces out of them.
Re:A note (Score:4, Informative)
I don't care to argue about eco friendliness, what I care about though is where my money goes. In my case the choice is between brazilian farmers and some saudi trillionaire.
America imports twice as much oil from Canada as from Saudi Arabia...
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Well first off, the USA is an Ethanol EXPORTER. [ethanolrfa.org]. So nothing is going to Brazil.
Second, it all comes down to dollars and cents. 40% of US petroleum is produced locally. That percentage of it that goes to foreign oil goes to Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria in that order. Saudi Arabia is a distant 4th.
You pay (currently) about 13% less at the pump for E85 [e85prices.com] but you get 35% less mileage: you've made a fools bargain.
E85 has never been cost effective at the pump IN SPITE of the massive subsidies and tax breaks.
Re:Thank the electoral college (Score:4, Insightful)
The correct terms for subsidies given to favored corporations, Real Americans($100,000/year+ preferred), professional sports teams in need of new stadiums, or politically vital constituencies, are (depending on the exact structure of the subsidy) "Price Supports", "Providing Market Stability", "Job Creation", or simply polite silence backed by an impenetrable wall of densely legal technicalities.
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Exactly so.
North America has precious little land suitable for Sugar Cane. Beets many. Switchgrass maybe.
The US isn't Brazil, and Brazil's methods were, as you pointed out an ecological nightmare.
Corn for ethanol has unfortunately been grown on Class 1 Farm Land, competing with animal feed stocks. (Its often as not the same exact corn).