Nothing good about Ethanol

On Sun, 04 Jun 2006 05:16:40 GMT,
wrote:


On 2-Jun-2006, Roger wrote:

Even mainstream science will have pro and con. Although there has
been a shift to accepting first global warming and the accepting
mankind's contribution as being significant there is still a strong
camp that say it aint so.


Hogwash!

Hog wash what? Ur a wee bit vague there. Hogways GW doesn't exist,
or there is a camp that say it ain't so?

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

-Elliott Drucker

On Wed, 31 May 2006 17:51:14 -0500, "Dan Luke"
wrote:


"180pilot" wrote:

The bottom line is that at the moment producing Ethanol from corn
wastes more energy than it makes according to experts.


I ain't got a dog in this fight, but any time I read a sentence like that,
my bs meter starts to twitch.

What experts? Employed by whom? What are their qualifications? What
peer-reviewed studies did they publish?

Well, you can do a search and find a good many studies by legit?
universities and corporations. Unfortunately the results for "Net
energy Gain" for alcohol production vary from a negative 50% to an
outlandish positive of several hundred percent (by a university). IOW
if you hunt you will be able to find a study that will support just
about any position.

Some of these studies are commissioned and come with criteria. You
some times really have to dig to find said criteria and often it's not
available. Without knowing the criteria under which the study was
undertaken leaves the study pretty much meaningless to me. That is
unless you place complete blind faith in both who ever did the study
and who ever commissioned it.

"Department of Energy" should be a good starting point for the feds
and states although they have a way of cataloging docs that could be
considered camouflage.sigh

The validity of Wipi is often questioned, but it's a good starting
place to find the referenced studies and then hunt for the studies.
The good articles will have references back to specific studies.

I've been following/studying alternative energy sources for some time
and have had to devote far more time digging than I would have liked,
or planed. I've also worked with some researchers with both passive
and active solar as well although it was some time back.

As near as I can discover the "general consensus" is a small "net
energy gain" when producing alcohol. This took into account using the
byproducts as well and came up with about a 50% net energy gain. That
is not a lot and the real price of alcohol when subsidies for both
growing the corn and producing the alcohol is around $3.50 a gallon.

"They" are going to be building a large Ethyl Alcohol plant about 30
miles from here in an industrial park at Alma Michigan. Probably
close to the site where one failed back in the 70s energy crisis.

"Currently" there is no large scale, "wide spread", economical
alternative energy source, but there are several areas where large
farms of wind generators are proving to be viable. They are running
into environmental concerns as far as locations particularly here in
Michigan. We have few areas within the state that would work well,
but we have several "off shore" that would work very well. However
the "shore dwellers" in both Wisconsin and Michigan are basically
saying "Not in the middle of our tourist industry!". Nor are these
farms cheap with a price tag some times passing several billion. (That
was with a "B".)

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

The bottom line is that at the moment producing Ethanol from corn
wastes more energy than it makes according to experts.



Well, use some rational thinking... We grow corn to make alcohol...

What does the tractor that plowed and planted the field burn? diesel
mostly

What do the fertilizer and pesticides put on the field come from?
petroleum base

What does the combine that harvests the field burn? gas or diesel

What does the truck that takes the corn to the local elevator burn?
diesel or gas

What does the train that moves the corn to market burn? diesel

What does the electric motor(s) at the alcohol plant get the current
from - and ditto the lights, air conditioners, furnaces, etc? (natural
gas mostly)

What do the employees at the alcohol plant burn to get there for work
each day? gas mostly

Where does the heat to distill the mash come from? natural gas

What does the truck burn to take the alcohol to the gasoline terminal?
diesel

************************************************** ***********************************************
Where the oil company cheerfully puts 5% of that 70 cents a gallon
alcohol at their cost into the gasoline and charges you three bucks or
so for each gallon of alcohol they sell you - a vastly bigger profit
margin than they get on the gasoline... Plus, the alcohol decreases
your gas mileage so you have to buy fuel more often... Jeez, if you
are an oil executive on a pay plus bonus salary, what's not to like
??????
************************************************** **************************************************

Anyway, those of you who favor alcohol explain to me how burning
alcohol reduces oil imports...

denny

"Denny" wrote:

The bottom line is that at the moment producing Ethanol from corn
wastes more energy than it makes according to experts.



Well, use some rational thinking... We grow corn to make alcohol...

What does the tractor that plowed and planted the field burn? diesel
mostly

What do the fertilizer and pesticides put on the field come from?
petroleum base

What does the combine that harvests the field burn? gas or diesel

What does the truck that takes the corn to the local elevator burn?
diesel or gas

What does the train that moves the corn to market burn? diesel

What does the electric motor(s) at the alcohol plant get the current
from - and ditto the lights, air conditioners, furnaces, etc? (natural
gas mostly)

What do the employees at the alcohol plant burn to get there for work
each day? gas mostly

Where does the heat to distill the mash come from? natural gas

What does the truck burn to take the alcohol to the gasoline terminal?
diesel

Those kinds of questions also apply to the exploration for and extraction of
oil, the transportation and refining of crude, and the transportaton of
gasoline. It takes energy to make energy; this is not news. Also, gasoline
has enormous hidden costs related to our (U. S.) international efforts,
military and otherwise, to maintain the security of imported oil sources.

The question is: what are the real figures on energy margin recovery for
ethanol? I can find a lot of hand-waving pro and con, but I'm having
trouble locating any scientific/economic study that seems objective and
trustworthy.

[snip]

Anyway, those of you who favor alcohol explain to me how burning
alcohol reduces oil imports...

Amen.

--
Dan

'Gut feeling'

Intestinologists concur that the human gut does not contain any rational
thoughts.

What the human gut *is* full of is moderately well known.

In article ,
"Dan Luke" wrote:


Those kinds of questions also apply to the exploration for and extraction of
oil, the transportation and refining of crude, and the transportaton of
gasoline. It takes energy to make energy; this is not news. Also, gasoline
has enormous hidden costs related to our (U. S.) international efforts,
military and otherwise, to maintain the security of imported oil sources.

The same military is used to protect the land and people who would
grow corn for ethanol.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

Exactly. But it makes dumb people *feel* good so lets do it.

ktbr wrote:
Exactly. But it makes dumb people *feel* good so lets do it.


Right up there with the "safety" aspects of vehicles with tendencies to
roll over and terrible panic maneuver habits?

Let the marketeers roll... G

Roger wrote:
: What experts? Employed by whom? What are their qualifications? What
: peer-reviewed studies did they publish?

: Well, you can do a search and find a good many studies by legit?
: universities and corporations. Unfortunately the results for "Net
: energy Gain" for alcohol production vary from a negative 50% to an
: outlandish positive of several hundred percent (by a university). IOW
: if you hunt you will be able to find a study that will support just
: about any position.

Well-said. As has been said before, there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics." Depending on which
studies you want to read making various assumptions on "environmental costs," "incidental costs," and "byproduct
credits," the studies tend to ready anwhere from a 20% on the Joule fossil-fuel energy budget to a 1-4x per
Joule fossile-fuel budget. In any event, it is certainly not the magic-bullet that many people tout. In Brazil
it works well due to the relative ease of conversion sugar cane as compared to corn. Check out the papers by
Pimentel for the last 30 years. He may be at one extreme end of the spectrum (20%), but the other extreme end
(1-4x) isn't enough to devote huge resources to encourage.

-Cory


************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss, Ph.D., PPSEL-IA *
* Electrical Engineering *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
************************************************** ***********************

Dan Luke wrote:
"180pilot" wrote:

The bottom line is that at the moment producing Ethanol from corn
wastes more energy than it makes according to experts.


I ain't got a dog in this fight, but any time I read a sentence like that,
my bs meter starts to twitch.

What experts? Employed by whom? What are their qualifications? What
peer-reviewed studies did they publish?

Coincidently, yesterday the latest Car and Driver arrived in my mailbox
with a long article summarizing the case against ethanol pretty
succinctly -- it quotes several studies including a meta study done by
the University of California. It might be worth picking one up at
the newsstand if this issue really interests you. I checked their
website, the article isn't up there yet.

One thing I learned is that one reason car makers love E85 is that it
gives them a bonus on the CAFE standards. Only the gasoline that is
burned counts, which means they get to multiply the gas mileage of an
E85 car by 7 (1/0.15)when computing its contribution to fleet average
MPG. This was estimated be with $200 million a year to GM alone.

Damn, everywhere you look with ethanol, there's a subsidy or preference
of some sort involved, isn't there?

("xyzzy" wrote)
One thing I learned is that one reason car makers love E85 is that it
gives them a bonus on the CAFE standards. Only the gasoline that is
burned counts, which means they get to multiply the gas mileage of an E85
car by 7 (1/0.15)when computing its contribution to fleet average MPG.
This was estimated be with $200 million a year to GM alone.


Simple enough to correct - call it Fuel Mileage.


Montblack