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Corn Ethanol: Now Things Are Just Getting Stupid
Scalfin
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As noted yesterday by Colbert, it takes 129 gallons of gasoline to handle the processing that produces 100 gallons of ethanol. Now, I knew that the gallon is a unit of volume, not energy, so I suspected that the loss was less than that meter seems, and checked the comparative energy capacity of gasoline and ethanol. Lo and behold, I found this.
Now, I don't know much about the validity of this site, but if it's right, it takes 197 gallons of gas to get the equivalent of 100 gallons of gas. I should note that this only stands true for corn, so I'd guess sugarcane is much better.
I guess the topic of the discussion should be "what the fuck, people?"
Now, I don't know much about the validity of this site, but if it's right, it takes 197 gallons of gas to get the equivalent of 100 gallons of gas. I should note that this only stands true for corn, so I'd guess sugarcane is much better.
I guess the topic of the discussion should be "what the fuck, people?"
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Ethanol can be made profitable energy-wise, and it's nice having an OH FUCK emergency button, but it's mostly a scam.
One of the main guys who passed the rules through is now running an ethanol plant and is doing fun things like getting tax breaks by claiming the leftovers from the ethanol as waste, then SELLING it, which is not what you do with waste.
It's also shitty for the environment.
Best part?
I had a chemistry teacher in the fricking backwoods in 2001 who was already well-aware of this.
Hell, how overpriced must the corn stuff be for the producers to stay liquid with all those fuel costs?
Basically, plants are solar cells with 0.5% efficiency. Then you have the cost associated with watering, fertilizing, maintaining, harvesting, processing and converting it into a usable fuel, just so that you can put it into an inefficient car engine.
I would like to see what would happen if we channeled all of that energy into public transportation.
With sugarcane. Not corn. Different process, different energy-cost.
Well it must be green, politicians say so!
Would I be correct in that assumption?
Anyway, I think that we need to invest more in nanotechnology for electric car batteries and lightweight carbon fiber frames, then start putting that technology in the vehicles that get the highest mileage (and thus, the greatest savings.).
Suburbs are a little trickier. How do you solve public transportation in low density areas that don't require a consistent supply of traffic to begin with?
Therein lies the biggest problem. There are better ways of producing ethanol, but for some reason people seem to focus on corn. I've heard that sugar beets were pretty good, actually.
Also environmental lobbyists who grew up watching Captain Planet!
This.
I am 100% in favour of green/renewable energy. Corn-based ethanol is far from it.
Fuck I was getting annoyed with people claiming a hydrogen based fuel system was the cure to all of our problems, and even that would be better than corn based ethanol, assuming that it was taking grid power from renewable sources.
Ah, and I found that sugarcane, as well as wood chips and switch grass, potentially, produces cellulosic ethanol, which is much more efficient to produce.
Oh, and VC, I meant how well. Sorry.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/program.html
I would go so far as to say that it is pretty much the entire reason that this sort of thing is still discussed. If it wasn't for "Big Corn", it would've been written off a much longer time ago.
Fixed.
Also:
Also: corn subsidies can go fuck themselves.
Also: Iowa can go fuck itself.
Also: ponies.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
And corn farmers.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Where is this from?
To be entirely honest, people, ethanol isn't really that viable no matter what plant you use.
We're currently on the first generation of biofuels, we need to go through this generation to get to the next generation that is a lot more durable and will actually have some net positive effects on the environment. We can't just go about skipping whole generations because we need to get the infrastructure up and companies interested in investing in this (never mind how different the two generations are).
If the politicians and environmental organisations would have presented this whole fuel from corn thing as an alternative source of energy instead of a *better* source of energy we wouldn't all have our panties in a twist over this.
tl;dr giev next generation biofuels damn it.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=22
Honestly, we just need to invest in better battery technology, like nanotech batteries.
"The map shows the relative areas required to offset 50% of the miles driven in the US for photovoltaics, cellulosic ethanol and corn ethanol. Compared to photovoltaics, cellulosic ethanol, which is still unproven at large scale, requires a huge land area, even when using the assumptions of its most optimistic proponents. That is why Tesla Motors will be co-marketing solar panel solutions from partners like SolarCity. With just a small 10 ft by 15 ft solar panel tucked away on the roof of your garage, you will generate enough electricity to travel about 400 miles per week in the Tesla Roadster. If you travel less than that, you will be energy positive with respect to transportation and the excess electricity will offset your home’s power usage."
Whatever the hell they want. Are you going to tell a whale that it can't eat something?
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Oh yeah, I'm not saying that electric cars are viable now. But I do think that we need to be investing a lot more money into R&D.
Nebraska alone grows enough corn to give every person in the united states 320 pounds of corn each year. And we're not even the corn state, our primary export is soy bean.
Plus the fact that a lot of the corn being sold for fuel was going to be sold as feed, and the feed guys were starting to go down because of mad cow scares and other lost business. And now they're not. It works out in the end.
And even that, there's only one gas station (possibly two) in Nebraska that sell E85. The most you can find otherwise is E10, which is everywhere.
Gold you say?
So what you're saying is, we could all be driving electric cars tomorrow, if only Ron Paul were president?
(Sorry).
Anyway, I think what we need to do is figure out which cars consume the most mileage, and target them. Screw the electric sports car, what about electric taxi cabs?
BTW ELM, what're your thoughts on the home kit plug-in-hybrids that people have been building? I mean, just the fact that the batteries weren't designed for this sort of purpose, so what happens with the lifespan/safety issues.
I'm actually doing a project in one of my classes on Biofuels, and specifically, Ethanol. I've had a hard time coming up with solid numbers (i.e. X number of corn ears -> Y gallons of ethanol = Z gallons of gasoline), but one of the studies I saw from the CATO Institute was rather sad. They said that to power the entire U.S. fleet of automobiles on corn ethanol, we would need to convert all U.S. cropland to corn production, and add another 20% farmland on top of that. Never mind the fact that we're not longer producing anything but corn, but a lot of cropland can't even support corn. And, you know... we're burning our food.
My project was specifically supposed to be about Vermont (where I live), and whether corn ethanol would be feasible just within Vermont. Since there is relatively little cropland here that is workable into ethanol, the project would have been about 2 minutes of presentation, so I had to expand to the entire U.S.....
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
No, but I'm not Japanese.
cause they kill whales
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Hydrogen combustion is another transition step, but I think that requires a completely re-designed tank in order to handle it safely.
Also, while corn burns a lot of fossil fuels, a lot of that is probably coal from power plants, and not actually oil. I'm only guessing, though. But it would be nice if we could at least switch up the farm equipment to electric.