We are sooo screwed.

Did anybody think that Ethanol was a sustainable path? After all, it's not even clear if ethanol carries a positive energy balance.

Still, we must continue researching ethanol, and maintaining an ethanol infrastructure. Developing choices that will reduce our reliance on foreign oil will help reduce risk in the long term economy, shielding us from supply shocks like the 70s. Unfortunately, at this point, we're even more subject to possible shocks than 30 years ago... so we really need to get on the ball.

My guess is they didn't study (still in its infancy) cellulosic ethanol. And didn't I read somewhere (GCC?) that you can convert part of the conventional ethanol production by-products to biodiesel? Both these would improve the numbers. And another thing, isn't Switch Grass multiples of times better for ethanol production than corn?

They didn’t—they just focused on what are currently the major feedstocks in Brazil and the US. (And yes, there’s a process that allows the development of a biodiesel production line along with the ethanol. :-))

The study is not saying:“Don’t do ethanol.” It’s saying not to expect ethanol to be able to be a complete substitute for gasoline, but that as part of a portfolio of solutions, it may be worthwhile.

The key thing is figuring out what portion of the portfolio.

The number will look better if you’re not dedicating crop land to corn production for fuel—i.e., using the cellulosic approach to biomass waste.

The numbers will also look better if we increase the fuel efficiency of the engines and the applications. One of the reasons the US footprint is worse than the Brazilian is simply the extra fuel consumed in the car selected for the modeling.

Was that study done by the Oil companies?

Frankly - in the short term - we should be going whole hog with BioDiesel. We could grow enough Algae around the Salton Sea to supply ALL of our transportation and heating oil needs if we would just make the commitment.

I doubt that will happen though as long as we have a "president" and "vice-president" in the pockets of the Oil companies.

My concern was that if Brazil's success is in question, then where else would ethanol really work? They've got the climate for sugar cane, which is AFAIK the best sugar crop in the history of the planet. They can grow it year-round. They have low labor rates. They probably aren't too demanding on the environmental impact of the crop or its conversion to ethanol. If the summary is correct, that ethanol is not sustainable even in Brazil ... you better look for some big magic(*) to make it work in northern climes, with high labor costs, and an attentive EPA.

* - those future breakthroughs people so often expect, because, you know, they want them.

The key make or break factor in corn based ethanol is the use of irrigation. Corn grown in Louisiana needs almost no irrigation while corn grown in Nebraska often needs irrigation pumped from a deep aquifer which multiplies the energy use.
Another factor is the use of antiquated distilling methods such as throwing away the cooling water instead of using it to cook the mash.
There is a lot of anti-solar propaganda being spread around by oil and coal lobbyists based on experiments that used stupid engineering.

You don't need to make propaganda to damn corn-ethanol as energetically obscene; quotes from some of its proponents do that quite adequately!  More than thirty-three thousand BTU of natural gas to distill a gallon of ethanol... which yields only 75,700 BTU?

Ethanol plants which burn petroleum-derived fuels or natural gas ought to be shut down by law; the only way they should be allowed to operate is if they use solar energy, waste steam from coal-fired plants, or the like.

It might seem pretty discouraging looking at current technologies
without considering existing ethanol technologies that could
increase land area productive considerable along with
dedicated ethanol engines which would increase compression ratios
to reduce considerably the disparity between flexible fuel vehicle
fuel economy that utilize lower compression ratios designed for gasoline.

We better use coal to distil that ethanol - seriously.

Biofuels are really worthwile when they come from what would otherwise be wasted: Corn stalks that would be burned, agro-business waste, waste wood cellulose, etc.

But the monies and efforts put into growing crops specifically for ethanol/biodiesel probably could better be used in conservation efforts.

I watched that presentation today (pointed to by a few people, I think) by Nate Lewis, Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry at Caltech (second one down on this page

He makes what IMO is a common pont among chemists and physicists: that we have lots of fossil fuels ... if we just count coal, and then goes on to make the point that burning (or not burning) coal is greally a global warming and carbon sequestration question.

Man that's ugly ... is it still running? Sorry.

Ethanol, coal, gasoline, biodiesel, etc. Regardless of what fuel we use for combustion, the less we use, the less we need. The less we use, the less we need to make. The less we need to make, the less we need to use. It is full circle. We need to conserve. If a nation that consumes over 25% of the fossil fuel production of the world, cuts its consumption say by 50% in the next 9 years(Time set by JFK for a man on the moon!), then there will be time to diversify our national energy portfolio. Otherwise, more
COx or NOx or not, we may have no alternatives.

As a matter of fact it would be far better to simply bury paper and burn coal then it would be to burn biofuels. Its even better to convert coal to fuel and burn that while buryin paper to sequester carbon then it is to create most biofuels.

Also one very important point traping co2 at the smokestack isnt much more energy intensive then the mess we have coal plants do now. Its actauly very easy and cheap on an industrial scale to compress co2 into a liquid and pipe it. Hell its easyer to do and cheaper then TRANPORTING natural gas as the pressures are lower.

wintermane:  CO2 doesn't liquefy at room temperature without pressures of hundreds of PSI; according to a friend of mine who was a pipeline operator in a previous life, gas pipelines typically operate at a few tens of PSI.

odograph:  I don't think we should burn coal just to distill ethanol.  If we are going to make ethanol, we should take heat from coal that is already being burned and use that instead.  A steam powerplant will take a small efficiency hit from tapping steam at 250° F and 30 PSIA rather than exhausting to a condenser at 90° F and 0.7 PSIA, but the cost of the lost energy at the turbine shaft is tiny compared to the value of the heat that would otherwise have been made by burning gas or propane.

wintermane again:  If what you say about biofuels is true, it would pay even better to use the biofuels to run an energy cycle which sequesters its carbon throughput.  I'm checking out some of the implications now, so watch The Ergosphere.

How can ethanol be a CO2 emitter? All the carbon came out of the atmosphere in the first place, right? The sugar cane or corn absorbed CO2 from the air and emitted O2, using the carbon to build its proteins and such. Then, later, when we burn the plant or its products, we return the carbon to the air. It can't be a net emitter! The carbon being emitted this year was just absorbed last year.

Somebody's confused here!

Yes, you are.

1. The fuel which plants, cultivates and harvests the ethanol crops is all fossil in the USA.
2. The fertilizer which makes US corn yields possible is derived from natural gas (and produces N2O emissions too).
3. The distillation of fuel ethanol is done with propane or natural gas; AFAIK there are no distilleries using either solar energy or spent steam from powerplants which would come at a negligible cost in additional fuel of any type.

A gas pipeline tends to run at around 2000 psi tho it varies with the age of the pipe. The pipes around here run higher then that. The pipe to your home however runs much lower psi.

A few hundred psi is nothing.

Halfin - the basic idea is that we might do better than break-even in certain situations. Sure, the hypothetical farm that grows its own energy would be "carbon neutral" - but perhaps a farm that bought coal, and sequestered large amounts of biomass would be better than carbon neutral. It might be taking CO2 out of the atmosphere over time.

Such things shouldn't be too hard to calculate.

Oh, and the worst case for the farmer would be if he was buying ethanol or biodiesel from a "bad producer" who was burning large amounts of fossil fuel in the process. We get into these crazy situations where someone might burn way too much natural gas to make ethanol - when he could just run his tractor on natural gas.

E-P - Whether ethanol can/should be distilled with waste energy, that just sounds like another place to run the numbers. Let the most efficient plant design win.

Wintermane:  I've seen cross-country pipeline pipe; it's not that heavy.  Even this thread claims pressures in the "few hundred PSI" range, though higher than what I recalled.

odograph:  Let the farmer run his tractor on the methane from the manure digester of the dairy farm or feedlot down the road.

We could get the most efficient plant designs to "win" if we stopped the outrageous subsidies given to ethanol regardless of how small (or negative) its EROEI is.  Until then....

Oil companies may need the coal in some form if natural gas
isnt readily available for liquefying, distilling and refining
the huge reserves of tar oil sands and shale in western North America
and elsewhere. One could support imminent domain or any means necessary
to access the more easily pumped crude oil and natural gas reserves.
Who knows, they may come online in the not to distant future
then shipped around the world. Will the world continue to strive
for additional energy sources to sustain us and bring,
"Oil Sands To the Fore? 28 June 2004 -- Green Car Congress

MH:  The tar sands miners will never need coal.  They are preparing to gasify some of the bitumen to get hydrogen if/when natural gas gets too expensive.

Engineer-Poet: How are they planing to deal with the water issues?

Odd I guess maybe the show I was watching was wrong on the numbers.... are you sure it was psi and not bar? It could be one or both got messed up in psi to bar conversion numbers.

MH:  The little I've read didn't say, but I think we could expect a serious water project to make certain that supplies are reliable.

Imagine the following:
• the feedstock for fermenting ethanol was not just corn kernels but also its corn husk, stalk, cob, and/or even a damaged crop;
• feedstock could include any agricultural crop or waste, forestry waste, or urban waste (MSW) or even fossil fuel;
• waste conversion to ethanol resulted in a reduction of landfill requirements by 85%;
• the fermenting process took less than 1% (7 minutes) of the amount of time that sugar fermentation takes (36-48 hrs.);
• the conversion process co-generated excess green power with no toxic emissions.

A proven bioenergy process exists that uses bacteria to effect the conversion (see http://www.brienergy.com). With this process, ethanol development holds promise for reducing waste, generating electricity, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

The fact that an infrastructure for its distribution already exists in many states and that the major auto manufacturers already produce flex-fuel cars internationally (i.e., Brazil) means that ethanol is a viable renewable liquid alternative to gasoline.

Comments?

Imagine the following:
• the feedstock for fermenting ethanol was not just corn kernels but also its corn husk, stalk, cob, and/or even a damaged crop;
• feedstock could include any agricultural crop or waste, forestry waste, or urban waste (MSW) or even fossil fuel;
• waste conversion to ethanol resulted in a reduction of landfill requirements by 85%;
• the fermenting process took less than 1% (7 minutes) of the amount of time that sugar fermentation takes (36-48 hrs.);
• the conversion process co-generated excess green power with no toxic emissions.

A proven bioenergy process exists that uses bacteria to effect the conversion (see http://www.brienergy.com). With this process, ethanol development holds promise for reducing waste, generating electricity, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

The fact that an infrastructure for its distribution already exists in many states and that the major auto manufacturers already produce flex-fuel cars internationally (i.e., Brazil) means that ethanol is a viable renewable liquid alternative to gasoline.

Comments?

The only problem with the BRI process is that it is very mass-inefficient; the CO2 created in the gasification process represents carbon lost, as is the CO2 created by the Clostridium during fermentation.  Only a fraction (¼?) of the carbon in the waste will be returned as ethanol.

If the only goal is to slash landfill requirements and generate useful products to offset the cost of waste disposal, you don't care.  On the other hand, if your purpose is to "close the loop" on carbon so that you don't need to fix as much to make your whole system carbon-neutral, it is a very big deal.

Whether hydrocarbon fuels are petrochemically or biologically derived, reducing use seems to be the best policy in terms of climate change, air quality, energy security and land use. Effective fuel efficiency standards should be a integral part of any energy policy.

Can anybody help me in getting a technology of ethanol produced from corn cobs . I'm interested to purchase the technology.

When I first became interested in energy issues in the seventies, we had fuel crisis. At that time, cellulosic ethanol was already an old idea, and there was a lot of talk of plans to build facilities all over the nation to use local resources to produce it. There were 30+ plants planned to produce natural gas from coal, and solar power was ramping up.
Most of that ended with the 80's.
Many things I have learned since that time have been shocking to me: All of the technologies to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil date back to before there was dependence on foreign oil. John D Rockefeller killed interest in ethanol, thereby ending most research as well, around the turn of the century, and the industry has continually worked in the same fashion.
While the petro industry sends it's "whisperers" out into the world to spread the "news" of ethanol's energy deficit, how dirty coal and nuclear energy are, how solar power only works for hippies in southern California, Big Oil is buying legislation like S.158 and others, that got them a tax break for drilling in the Gulf, worth something to the tune of $60 billion.
While I watched any decent research about energy leave this country or get absorbed by petroleum, and saw BOTH political parties play ball with what may be the Greatest Superpower in the World, the american public sat complacent in the ready availibililty of energy into the 1990's.
The twentieth century will someday be known as Petroleum's Century, and you helped make it happen, because you don't really care.
Every time I hear someone ask to end the ethanol industry's several million dollar annual subsidy, or some comment on "pork", I wonder why this runt at the government trough is picked on, when we have let the biggest hog get tax breaks:
$700,000,000 a year for Percentage Depletion; a similar amount for Nonconventional Fuel Production; $200,000,000 for exploration and development; $26,000,000 for the Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit; a billion - $1,000,000,000 - in foreign tax credits; $100,000,000 in foreign income deferral; and depreciation allowances accelerated to the tune of billions annually.
Uncle Saud has also ensured you'd get a good deal at the gas pump with subsidies:
for R&D, $200,000,000; export financing, $300,000,000; and $100,000,000 from the DOI.
There are more millions and billions going into petroleum, but you see how frustrating it is to listen to the whining about politics. If we end ethanol subsidies and tax breaks, it's only fair to cut the same percentage for petroleum, right? No politician worth the price the lobbyist paid is going to back that, and no politician who can't be bought will go very far. For example, now that McCain and Feingold have had their run at money and politics, do you think they still have a chance at being anything but has beens and punch lines?
The problem is global, and it goes way, way back.
Henry Ford's quadricycle of 1880 ran on ethanol.
Cellulosic ethanol has been produced for more than 20 years, fuel cells using ethanol (190 proof is a great way to carry hydrogen for fuel cells) have been around for at least a decade.
Solar energy has been around since the 50's, Truman promoted it. Extracting coke, coke gas, and other fuels from coal goes way back, as well, yet, somehow, we all got talked out of using coal, which could be found all over the nation and was dirt cheap.
It will take only $400 million to build a plant producing commercial quantities of cellulosic ethanol from forest waste in Idaho, similar projects are planned in NY, using municipal solid waste, in Louisiana with rice byproducts. Let's push our politicians to extract some R&D bucks from petroleum and build some plants in the US.

Firstly, throw out the notion that human CO2 emissions cause 'global warming'. There is zero physical evidence that it does and lots of evidence that it does not, (CO2 in ice core samples and the last 8-10 years with no global warming but while CO2 % continues to accelerate thus DISPROVING Al Gore). Ethanol subsidies and oil company tax breaks are NOT the same thing! The ethanol subsidy comes out of my pocket; the tax break comes from (hopefully), a cut in some government entitlement, (60% of the federal budget is entitlement money - not what our federal government was ever conceived to be doing). If you add a $1 per gallon gasoline tax, (no matter at what point in it's distribution), - the price goes up and guess who pays for that? .. NOT THEM. So fine then, give ethanol a -- TAX BREAK! That IS the only fair playing field here. Standard Oil never got a subsidy did it? Ethanol will never be a viable mass fuel source without government subsidies - end the madness now before we tax ourselves to death and starve the rest of the world in the process.

wow i just read this forum abd tend to be inclined to believe the anti ethanol points of view . WHY ? They sound sooo passionate but they have to continuously reformat why we should do it but in the ime ofe the first post one thing i noticed is that they ignore nay sidestep the economical side effects IE food increases in cost , enviromental footprint of the mass production of said biomass to make it ethanol, ignore or do not discuss harvesting the oil we have you know the stuff seeping out of the ground in california alone or th closed wells off southern CA, you see they also provide how much it effects the populace and how detrimental it is as far as wasting a food source to replace something that is plentiful OIL If a well that went dry 20 yrs ago gets capped it was said before and understood that was that yet recently they are finding that the sights they capped are not empty any more they are replenishing themsrelves in TX and CA . the oil is self replenishing it takes time but there is evidance that agrees like the oik seeping out of the ground . i like motors and love engineering and reading about it and i do Comprehend what i read if it isnt twisted, i feel like the pro biofuel group is just twisting the same facts into their own bright light but i dont believe the way they format their argument for biofuel, its the same smoke and mirrors politicians use .oh it also seems based in theory not sscientific unbiased fact just seems twisted , confusing. and it shouldn't need be
oh and if a ford fiesta from the 80's could get in the 40-50 mpg range i know todays engines can as well.
sorry about the rant but that is just my opinion based on what i read here .