Alternate fuel technical question?

[roofeditor]

I'm sure high grade ethanol can be made from corn or sugar. I'm sure bio-diesel can be made from soy or other organic products.

That said: does any one really fall for the BS that we could grown enough fuel to make a difference? This would easily take up more that 50% of all land in the USA AND the amount of fuel it takes to run a farm to grow the fuel is about a brake even situation with corn and only slightly better with sugar.

I about fall out of my chair when I here politicians talking about this.


I even laugh harder when they talk about Clean Hydrogen! Well hydrogen IS clean, IS powerful, and could work very well with present day technology. PROBLEM where to get hydrogen? OH water made up of 1/2 hydrogen? Well unless we build about 100 nuclear reactors (not all that bad of an Idea) there is no way to make hydrogen from water other than to burn 2 gallons of oil to make the one equivalent gallon of hydrogen.

I touched on the political BS but lets try to keep the discussion on the technical possibilities ONLY because we are prohibited to discussing politics.

Have to it!

[NEG297F]

I agree, wee should build more Nuclear reactors. Or even invest more in Wind energy and solar. But the problem is nobody wants it in their back yard. There was an article in the paper about the largest Uraniam deposit sitting just below the surface in the Western part of Va. Or every morning when I walk down the Navy pier to go to work on the ships and there is always a 10 to 20 mph wind on the water front. Or the guy that wanted to put wind turbins on top of a mountain he owns in the Western part of Va. All great ideas but nobody wants it put in their back yard to spoil their views.

[AggiePSD]

We'll stretch the petro with the alternative fuels, but purely an additive effect. We can't replace the petro with current biofuel technology. Even with cellulosic, etc. there are many other agricultural problems (my area of work) that prevent us from going 100% biofuel. There is so much "math" done to figure land area needed, but is it really sustainable? It will take more land and lower productivity to develop a system that is sustainable in the long term.

We can put a big dent in the petroleum fuel market, but to what end? They'll just increase production and drop prices back to where they were 10 years ago.

Take for instance the Jatropha buzz right now. A large portion is hype - huge yields on poor soil with no water and fertilizer. The problem is, it doesn't work like that. Sure jatropha is very drought tolerant and grows in very low fertility soils, but it may yeild very low in a dry year and nothing at all in a drought. But sock the water and fertilizer to it and it yields just awesome. Problem is somebody combined all these factors (high yeild, drought tolerance, low fertility requirements) and said they can all happen at once.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. Biodiesel research is how I get paid every month. It's a very interesting time and nobody really knows for sure where it will go. To truly displace a large amount of the petroleum fuels will require more than an economic impetus, rather, a social and environmental commitment on man's part.

We'll see...

[Hook'em Horns!]

Originally Posted by NEG297F

I agree, wee should build more Nuclear reactors. Or even invest more in Wind energy and solar. But the problem is nobody wants it in their back yard. There was an article in the paper about the largest Uraniam deposit sitting just below the surface in the Western part of Va. Or every morning when I walk down the Navy pier to go to work on the ships and there is always a 10 to 20 mph wind on the water front. Or the guy that wanted to put wind turbins on top of a mountain he owns in the Western part of Va. All great ideas but nobody wants it put in their back yard to spoil their views.

We’re doing a lot with wind farms. Another large one is going up down in The King Ranch area just off the gulf.

Tried to put a farm up offshore in the gulf, didn’t go over well. If the people who are ranting against these because of the proposed threat to migratory birds could actually see how large just one of these blades being assembled are and how slow they turn, things would be different.

[montanafan]

I agree totally with roofie and hook 'em. Montana's wind farm uses windmills that stan 387 feet tall, three 120 foot long blades that are limited to something like 18 RPM's. They are awesome, and generate quite a bit of power, but I think Nuke is the way to go on major power generators.

[roofeditor]

We have more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil.

[LMJD]

That said: does any one really fall for the BS that we could grown enough fuel to make a difference? This would easily take up more that 50% of all land in the USA AND the amount of fuel it takes to run a farm to grow the fuel is about a brake even situation with corn and only slightly better with sugar.

Couldn't agree more. That was my first thought and still is, when that B.S. started years ago. They had an hour long feature on the corn industry producing ethanol on the Discovery Channel a while back and it was real interesting. It was step by step starting at the cornfields, harvesting, trucking to the ethanol plant, how it's converted, and on and on. It also mentioned how many pounds, bushels or whatever it took to make a gallon of fuel but naturally I can't recall. The program didn't appear predjudiced one way or the other, but overall it confirmed yours and my opinion----B.S., totally impractical. But of course Archer Daniels Midland, who practically own the entire corn industry, pushes the program for all it's worth.

And worse yet, as predicted, it's already affected the price of milk and other farm products. Wyoming is not dairy country and we're far away from major corn country but we do have a dairy north of here and there was a lengthy article in our local paper about the old-time owners. They said they're already having to pay WAY more for cattle corn for their dairy cow feed program due to so much of it going for the ethanol deal.

[Hook'em Horns!]

Our (lobbied) policies over the last 4+ decades has pushed for corn and squashed the sugar industry. Now South American countries that have developed with the sugar industry can produce more than twice as much fuel per acre than corn, and no need for imported oil for their economy.

[Bigshow]

I am a Canadian farmer and we have the same stuff happening here. There are so many sides to the debate. There appears to be a negative sentiment towards using food for fuel. Its hard for most of us to know for sure how the data washes out as far as the economics of doing it. This goes for ethanol production and bio fuels produced from our oilseed crops (canola mostly here). Our grain prices are up because of increased demand but its having a negative effect on our livetock industry due to high feed prices. We seem to be having problems here with escalating costs of production that are nicely eating up a good share of what should be some higher profits for us!

[montanafan]

Coal would be a good way to go, but can you sell it to the "greenies"? It is pretty expensive to build a pollution free coal fired power plant.
There are more and more refinerys building "Coker" units to extract every possible drop of fuel from crude oil. The "coke" makes good powerplant fuel also.

[short_stuff]

Just read an article a couple of weeks ago that laid out the true cost of using corn as an ethanol source. When it's all shook out in the end, it takes 67 years of using ethanol as a fuel to break even with the carbon footprint that is left, compared to if we didn't turn corn into ethanol. The researchers took everything into consideration, from farming and harvesting the corn, to converting it into ethanol, to the carbon cost of clearing land and planting it to replace the existing food corn fields that were being diverted to ethanol production. It was quite an eye opener. Finally, some common sense to our dillema. Not saying that Al Gore isn't partially correct, but it seems like there are two extremes. Either we ARE totally destroying our earth's resources with our current energy policies, and head-in-the-sand attitudes. Or we aren't hurting anything, that the warming of the climate is just part of the natural 10,000 to 20,000 year cycle. At the 100,000 foot viewing level, remember, they've already proven that the earth turned on its axis at least a couple of times in the past millenia. Which means the polar ice caps would've melted and re-established themselves. Could we just be seeing natural things that hadn't yet been recorded by mankind? kinda makes you wonder......

short_stuff

[greenskeeper79]

Brazil uses ethenol for all it's transportation needs. It is completely energy independent buy using sugar cane to produce ethenol.

Why can't we?

Corn is a terrible source, but with advances in science I believe it won't be that long until any green waste could be turned into fuel.

I also don't buy the "burn more oil to produce the biofuel" unless you're using corn, but even then I think you're slightly ahead in positive terms.

The NREL study showed that the energy in a gallon of biodiesel was 3.2 times greater than the fossil-based energy required to produce it when using soybeans as a basestock.

So after a few plants are built, wouldn't you be able to substitute the biodiesel for oil and be independent from oil?

[94_turbo]

Originally Posted by greenskeeper79

Brazil uses ethenol for all it's transportation needs. It is completely energy independent buy using sugar cane to produce ethenol.

Why can't we?

Corn is a terrible source, but with advances in science I believe it won't be that long until any green waste could be turned into fuel.

I also don't buy the "burn more oil to produce the biofuel" unless you're using corn, but even then I think you're slightly ahead in positive terms.



So after a few plants are built, wouldn't you be able to substitute the biodiesel for oil and be independent from oil?

no--because when its real cold--the bio solidifies---and they aint figured it out yet how to keep it liquid at real cold--but then i expect nothing to happen---as i believe the oil cos and the car co's,along with politicians, are all in cohoots together---and we the american consumer pay the price!!!!!!!!!!

[Kanman]

Originally Posted by Hook'em Horns!

We’re doing a lot with wind farms. Another large one is going up down in The King Ranch area just off the gulf.

Tried to put a farm up offshore in the gulf, didn’t go over well. If the people who are ranting against these because of the proposed threat to migratory birds could actually see how large just one of these blades being assembled are and how slow they turn, things would be different.

UGGGGHHHHHHHH 10-4 on the "if people could see", it is such a no brain er if any of these folks had ever see how tall and slow those blades are. Apparently they must make them somewhere just south of here as I see them on trucks several times a week. I am guessing these blades are somewhere between 60-80 ft long. They are awesome!

Another thorn in my side. The less than forward thinking state of Kansas is once again debating the installation of TWO MORE coal plants. In a state where 40 MPH straight line winds are common we need another coal plant like I need another hole in my head!

I do like seeing the coast of beans going up around here. Helps the farmers out a little bit, but these guys have been hanging on to a drowning ship for so long; just don't know if there is anything that can help the American farmer.

[Kanman]

Originally Posted by 94_turbo

no--because when its real cold--the bio solidifies---and they aint figured it out yet how to keep it liquid at real cold--but then i expect nothing to happen---as i believe the oil cos and the car co's,along with politicians, are all in cohoots together---and we the american consumer pay the price!!!!!!!!!!

A little confusion here. Ethanol and Bio Diesel are not one in the same. Ethanol doesn't have a problem with freezing. Ethanol runs years round in gasoline.

Ethanol comes from sugar. Wheat, corn, sugar- cane, potatoes etc.

Bio diesel comes from oils of plants or animals.