patdaly

How about we force everyone in the country to live in crowded Tenements so Mass Transit would work?

Thats about the only way you could come close to a reasonable solution.

Sorry, I like to be able to listen to the Coyotes at night........

infidel

One thing many fail to relize is that when the corn price goes over $3 bushel that growers get no subsidies.

The corn craze won't last long anyway, it's just a starting point.
Sawgrass is the future. It's a perennial, only needs to be planted once, very few insect or weed problems, low fertilizer requirements, grows on marginal land not suitable for other crops and best of all produces three times the amount of ethanol per acre as corn.
Problem is that it takes much heat (energy) to release the sugars from sawgrass. Not for long though, scientists are working on genetically modified bacteria that will break it down rapidly and cheaply. Problem should be solved in the next couple of years, this will be the biggest breakthrough in the biofuels industry yet.

timcasbolt

This is probably the most rational discussion I've read on this subject. Personally, I stand on the side of buying less oil from the middle east. If that happens to help an American farmer, so much the better. Shoot, if any American benefits, I'm for it.

74dart

I understand the issue of reducing our dependance for forgine oil and I'm all for it. What I dont get is the ethonal craze. If you run a car completly on ethonal then the fuel milage is decreased by a third. So if you have a car that gets 30 mpg you will get 10 on straight ethonal. But the flip side of the coin is biodiesel. You only see 1-2 mpg diffrence on b100, And in Europe ove 70% of the cars built are diesel and takes no conversion to run on b100. We can use the waste from the resturant industry and fresh veg oil to make it so why aren't we investigating ways to make it instead of ethonal. Also biodiesel can be made from any veg oil, peanut, canola, corn, soybean, etc... Call me crazy but biodiesel just makes more sense to me.

infidel

Because big oil realizes the same as you, sees it as a threat and lobbies congress against it.
Their main ploy is to restrict diesel engines in the US with high NoX regulations that are very hard to meet even though emissions of other pollutants are much lower than gassers.

DBLR

In my wife’s 06 Sebring we lose 2-4 mph if we use 10% Alcohol blended gas and most of the time it’s the same price as regular gas or at the most 5 cents cheaper so we always buy regular gas as I hate the lose in mileage and it is not cost effective. Also by the time we have used 35-40 gallons of it the car starts to run like crap because the injectors are dirty. I have a cousin who has and E85 truck and he will not use it because of the big hit to his mileage even though it cost 30 cents per gallon less then regular gas.

Not sure if many saw the story about 5-6 years ago that Saab had the technology to run 100% Alcohol in an engine and get the same mpg and performance as gas but they have yet to make any car that will do so. It was a higher compression engine with a turbo on it and IIRC it could run any grade of gas as the computer could make the adjustments to the type of fuel that it detected.

patdaly

No, you would get 20 mpg. Ethanol is hardly a craze, look back in history. You are correct though, it is just a wee bit of the puzzle, and the Politicians are overblowing its importance ( but then, what else would they do ). In actuality, if the car is optimized for Ethanol, the mileage differences can be reduced even further, but then you lose much of hte ability to run regular gasoline.

You actually have the same issue with BD. Even if you used every source of waste oil known, you would be but a hiccup in the daily use. Take heart though, because they are looking at everything from waste oil to Pig manure to produce bio. We have a University here in Illinois that has just about perfected the Pig manure process.......... Others are looking to commercialize fat from rendering plants, etc..... What we really need to do is line up the tree huggers and shoot them.......

dieselJon

Ok, I have to chime in here,. I looked at turning my 90 F150 EFI 302 (5.0L) to run on 100% Ethanol. There are a few thing that needed to be cleared up here.

1st~Ethanol in a gasoline engine does take away mileage. BUT if you changed the pistons to a higher compression ratio, you get more mileage. 180 proof (which is a little more than what they are doing now but easily obtainable) ethanol has a octane rating of 106. It burns more than explodes. That is why a normal gasoline engine designed to run on 87-92 octane doesn't like it very well. You wold have to change the oxygen sensor and the computer for a EFI vehicle to make it work right. For carburetor engine, just boring out the fuel jet and manually choking it for cold mornings is what is needed to get it to run on Ethanol.

2nd~Ethanol would extend the life of the engine. It has almost the same cleaning properties as BD. So you would have to change the lines from rubber to a poly-plastic or metal. The gas tank would be throughly clean and all the componets that it contacts. When ethanol slips pass the rings, it doesn't take away the viscosity of the oil. It also help the oil to clean the sludge out of the engine.

3rd~If it takes 1 gallon of fuel to make 1.25 gallons of ethanol, isn't that better than a 1:1 ratio? I would rather have that than something slimmer. Think of the billions of barrels of oil we would save. I can make ethanol for about $1.75 as of December. It is like BD, you can make for yourself and run it and it is dollars cheaper than buying it.

Throughout history, ethanol (corn liquor) was used to power many equipment. When the tractor makers acme out with a IC engine, they had it start on gas but once warmed up they would switch it over to kerosene or ethanol. Ethanol was used because it was cheep and easily obtainable. The farmer could make it in his back yard. Henry Ford designed his car around ethanol.

The mash used by ethanol, once dried, can be used for cattle feed. Then the process of recycling is under way. The farmer feeds his cows mash, which the cow excretes the waste, the farmer applies it to his field with almost no added chemicals, the corn grows, is harvested, sold, and turn into ethanol, and the cycle repeats. Also once the farmer uses the manure, he doesn't need or need as much fertellizer.


Ethanol has less CO2 but more NOX admittance if I remember correctly. The need for a kitty could be eliminated, thus reducing the other fuel needed to make the kitty.

The idea that the farmers build a silo is rediculous! They build what they need and it should last them many years, so that energy is used once out of every dozen years.

Over several months of reading material on the internet, ethanol can help us with the oil but not eliminate it. There are 3 sides to this story, the OPEC companies, the tree huggers, and the actual testers. The oil companies say "Oh no, look at all these different chemicals it produces compared to gas! Also it energy required to make it! How terrible!" The tree huggers don't understand why we can't change it over tomorrow. They shoot down everything the oil companies legitimatly bring to the table (energy required to make) saying it is better for global warming (which is untrue and untested, dont ask!). Then the guys that try this stuff. I have read countless articles, and webpages where guys are getting 30+ mpg and have a vehicle that has over 400,000 miles! All they do is replace the parts on a gas engine to make it more compatible with ethanol.

The only downside that I can see is the farmers planting more and more corn without any kind of rotation. Then our soils will be useless. That is when more and more chemicals are needed to replace what is taken from the ground.

I hope I enlightened you guys. BD and Ethanol are true winners here, but both combined cannot, nor will not, replace all oil. Just reduce our dependence.

Jon

edwinsmith

Very good Jon!

I hate the oil companies as much as the next guy. I'm also not at all fond of big corporations such as ADM getting subsidies from Washington. I think oil companies get subsidies also.

I say we should end ALL subsidies and let the free market sort it all out.

Edwin

Murphy2000

I'll second that ..

Nice post dieseljon..

I'm not as motivated as you to fight the mis-information campain these oil companies and their investors have going..

Thank you for taking some time to post that..

patdaly

Jon, good post, I only saw 2 small problems.

1.) Ethanol is certainly harder on the lubricants, though not as bad as Methanol. The oil change intervals would have to be adjusted down to accommodate the additional acid buildup. Nothing major, but still a factor.

2.) Farmers will not grow corn year after year. They will still run the same crop rotation they always have. Ethanol or not, they are looking to maximize their $$ per acre, but none are foolish enough to kill their ground. They balance the profit potential with the cost of keeping the ground at peak efficiency. This year, I see virtually the same amount of Soybeans planted in this area as every other year. That is not to say they could not do it with less fertilizers and chemicals, because they certainly could, at a loss in profits, however they were doing the same thing long before Ethanol became the craze.
I dont see us returning to the dustbowl days of the 30's anytime soon.

74dart

Their is no quick answer to the problem but every little step we make is a step in the right direction. Also about an hour after I made the post on MPG i relized I had my math wrong. I have heard of studies at NC State where they were cooking pig manure to releast the Methane and then using it to run the tractors on the farms. Is there any way to tap the methane trapped in all the lanfills in america. In Charlotte last year a woman was almost killed at a city park built on an old landfil when she put a lighter in a gass pocket and lit the methane on fire. Now they have pipes coming out og the ground letting it vent in the air. Why can't we caputre and use some of that also.

edwinsmith

I think the problem with the landfill methane is that there just isn't enough of it to make it economical. However that reminds me of fellow who demonstrated a process which is like a pressure cooker that you can put pretty much any organic material in it from wood/paper to cow manure and plastics which are largely oil to begin with and cook it down to diesel fuel.

Basically, anything which has hydrogen and carbon in it can be converted to liquid fuel.

Edwin

infidel

Maybe not all of them but most of the larger landfills tap the methane. The Los Angles County landfill produces enough methane to run generators that power an average of 10,000 homes.

edwinsmith

I wish there was a way to use the methane that comes off my black water tank on my 5th wheel. Come to think of it I saw an article somewhere of a guy who did just that. He was running his stove, heater and a small engine hooked to a car alternator.

I'll see if I can find it.

Edwin