If only we were as smart about Ethanol in the U.S...

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
The germans messed up, they allowed doom&gloom about E10 to get out of hand, the consumers revolted.. E10 has been safe in all US cars for a long time. Probably not good for airplanes, boats or lawnmowers.

"One auto industry executive, who preferred not to be identified, admits that the industry "messed up" with the introduction of E10. The manufacturers, he says, allowed a feeling of great uncertainty to develop, even though almost all German-made cars can use E10 without any problems."

Ethanol is a fuel made in the US, keeping lots of farmers growing corn instead of receiveing corn price support subsidies.. yes there are issue like soil degradation but farmers know how to preserve their property, there are also fears about water supplies but very little dent corn is irrigated so its not too worrysome. Even the food for fuel argument is foolish, corn is so cheap and plentiful that some people burn it for heat... dent corn is not usually consumed by humans (in the US) but fed to animals.

In 2009 the US produced 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol.. enough to fuel 17 million cars for a year.
 
I have to respectfully disagree. It has been bad for food prices and supply, bad for many fuel and engine systems, reduces fuel mileage, has very poor storage capabilities, and has questionable environmental returns. It came about primary as a political give away to the midwest without any real thought to the science, or lack thereof, behind it...

Herm said:
The germans messed up, they allowed doom&gloom about E10 to get out of hand, the consumers revolted.. E10 has been safe in all US cars for a long time. Probably not good for airplanes, boats or lawnmowers.
Click to expand...
 
Fuel from food is such a bad idea I can't even laugh at the notion anymore. The only alcohol that should be made from corn is the kind you age in oak casks!

I'm a fan of biofuels, but we can do it using non-food-crops that don't grow on arable land and/or don't need fresh water. It'll put some farmers out of work, sure. But you know what? Nobody has shed a tear for carriage builders in the past hundred years or so either... I'm sure the farmers will get over it too.
=Smidge=
 
You really dont want to keep those farmers idle, with all their equipment rusting away.. dont forget that in a food emergency all that corn can be instantly diverted to feeding humans.. restarting a farm once the famer has given up takes longer.

Corn is used because it is a very efficient crop in converting sunlight into sugars, but it also can be used as food, perhaps if hemp was more efficient we could use that (only sugarcane is more efficient).. and no one eats that. Other crops are so poor that its not worth the effort making ethanol out of them.. non arable land is useless, stuff grows so poorly that its not worth harvesting.

I like American made fuel..I would prefer if we made methanol out of coal and NG but lets not demonize corn ethanol.
 
Herm said:
In 2009 the US produced 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol.. enough to fuel 17 million cars for a year.
Click to expand...
I've made my own biodiesel from waste oil from restaurants. I liked what I thought was the 'carbon neutral' nature of the fuel, the lower price compared with pump diesel, and the domestic nature of the fuel. Unfortunately when I started studying the wider implications it looks pretty bad. It's not nearly carbon neutral with one considers the petroleum used for fertilizer and transport to make the oil, or for the petroleum to make the ethanol or methanol used in the transesterification process.

From an agricultural vantage point, the world's appetite for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The grain required to fill an SUV's 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a while year. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were to be converted to ethanol, it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.79
Click to expand...
Plan B 4.0 page 49

In a world that no longer has excess cropland capacity every acre planted in corn for ethanol means another acre must be cleared somewhere for crop production. An early 2008 study led by Tim Searchinger of Princeton University that was published in Science used a global agricultural model to show that when including the land clearing in the tropics, expanding U.S. biofuel production increased annual greenhouse gas emissions dramatically instead of reducing them, as more narrowly based studies claimed.94

Another study published in Science, this one by a team from the University of Minnesota, reached a similar conclusion. Focusing on the carbon emissions associated with tropical deforestation, it showed that converting rainforests or grasslands to corn, soybean, or palm oil biofuel production led to a carbon emissions increase - a "biofuel carbon debt" - that was at least 37 times greater than the annual reduction in greenhouse gases resulting from the shift from fossil fuels to biofuels.95

The case for crop-based biofuels was further undermined when a team led by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, concluded that emissions from nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, from the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer used to grow crops such as corn and rapeseed for biofuel production can negate any net reduction of CO2 emissions from replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, thus making biofuels a threat to climate stability. Although the U.S. ethanol industry rejected these findings, the results were confirmed in a 2009 report from the International Council for Science, a worldwide federation of scienific associations.96
Click to expand...
Plan B page 131

A third report published in Science indicates that burning cellulosic crops directly to generate electricity to power electric cars yields 81 percent more transport miles than converting the crops into liquid fuel
Click to expand...
Plan b page 132

http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb4

We're living on a different earth now - the things that worked in the past are no longer working. We're up against peak oil, peak food, peak water, a population explosion, and a climate that's warming.

Domestic fuel is a nice thought but it's been seriously overcome by events.
 
smkettner said:
I wonder if 100 acres of corn or 100 acres of solar panels would get more miles?
Click to expand...

If you had an ox cart, and fed the oxen corn.. how much methane would it generate per mile?

One Bushel of Corn (56 pounds) provides 31.5 pounds of Starch,or 33 pounds of high fructose corn sweetener (aka Corn Sugar) plus 13.5 pounds of Gluten Feed and 2.6 pounds of Gluten Meal and 1.5 pounds of Corn Oil..

One Bushel of Corn provides 2.8 gallons of ethanol and 18 pounds of residual grains (DDGS a high protein/minerals animal feed product)

Each acre produces 160 bushels of corn, so 100 acres can produce 44.8k gallons of ethanol... or support about 110 drivers for a year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

The Topaz Solar farm occupies 6.8k acres and will produce 1,100 gigawatt-hours annually, or 16 GWh per 100 acres.. assuming 4miles/kwh then 64 million leaf miles or support 5300 drivers for a year.
 
Lets not talk about fueling every suv in the world with ethanol, how about if everyone drove 13 mile plug-in Priuses that could run on E85?

Every 21 gallons of ethanol needs 1 gallon of diesel (tractors, tankers etc) and 1 gallon diesel energy equivalent in coal or NG (fertilizer and process heat) to make.
 
Herm said:
One Bushel of Corn (56 pounds) provides 31.5 pounds of Starch,or 33 pounds of high fructose corn sweetener (aka Corn Sugar) plus 13.5 pounds of Gluten Feed and 2.6 pounds of Gluten Meal and 1.5 pounds of Corn Oil..

One Bushel of Corn provides 2.8 gallons of ethanol and 18 pounds of residual grains (DDGS a high protein/minerals animal feed product)
Click to expand...
This is the rub. We're subsidizing corn and converting most of it to high fructose corn sweetener. The HFCS is being used in place of quality food ingredients because it's less expensive. And this type of food is damaging the people that eat it. The artificially reduced grain prices are pushing small and family farms out of business in favor of the huge corporate farms. The huge corporate farms cannot survive with the low prices, though - so they lobby for more government aid and incentives. The artificially low prices and our 'feed the world' mentality undercuts farmers in other parts of the world and puts them out of business as well - and they have to move to the cities in live in cardboard boxes.

Yes - we can get lots of corn based cow feed after the sugar is removed. Except a cow's systems are not evolved to eat corn. One of the many side effects is is increased rates of e-coli in the stomach and in the meat. In many cases the animals need heavy doses of antibiotics to keep the e-coli at bay. This results in human illness and death every year.

http://www.research.hsbc.com/midas/Res/RDV?ao=20&key=ej73gSSJVj&n=282364.PDF
The growing sense of confidence that a practical
pathway exists to a clean-energy economy by
2050 is not yet in place for food and water. The
Food and Agriculture Organisation projects that a
70% increase in food production will be needed
by 2050. But growth in yields has been falling
from 3.2% a year in 1960 to 1.5% in 2000. In
addition, the scope for increasing the area under
cultivation is limited by the need to halt the
decline in soil and water resources, the loss of
species as well as the erosion of ecosystem quality
that is proceeding on the back of rising food
consumption. In 1995, about 1.8 billion people
were living in areas experiencing severe water
stress; by 2025, about two-thirds of the world’s
population – about 5.5 billion people – are
expected to live in areas facing moderate to severe
water stress.
Click to expand...

Food-based fuels are bad for farmers, consumers, international trade, the climate, the food supply, and the water supply (use and contamination). It's unsustainable today, and it's going to be increasingly unsustainable in the next 40 years as harvests continue to shrink.
 
Here's an example of what it takes to keep grain yields up. Or, used to. Because we can see from the HSBC report that yields are falling around the world in spite of technology.

Kip Cullers personifies the case for industrial farming...he holds the world record for growing the most soybeans per acre -- 154 bushels, in 2007. The average soybean farmer would need the bed of a single pickup to haul away an acre's worth of harvest; Kip Cullers would need four...

Cullers stars in ads for Pioneer Hi-Bred seeds and DuPont herbicides, and opens his farm for a giant industry-sponsored field day each fall so other farmers can see his secrets, most of which involve incredible amounts of chemistry and petroleum. "What Kip does, to get early season weed pressure out of the way, is spray an herbicide before he plants," one BASF sales rep explained. According to the company, Cullers makes use of the entire "BASF portfolio of crop protection innovations," ranging from Respect and Warrior insecticide to Status, Prowl, and Extreme herbicides. (The company even let him spray its new Kixor brand herbicide before it was registered by the EPA.) His field day in 2007 featured a small tub with four stalks of Optimum GAT corn, an as yet unreleased Pioneer variety that has been genetically modified so that farmers can spray even more herbicide without damaging the crop.

Cullers, whose farm fields stretch across seven counties, drives eleven thousand miles in his pickup during spring planting just checking on his fields. He has fifteen tractors, the biggest of which steers itself with GPS satellite data and retails for $185,000. He irrigates his soybeans early in the season - two or three tenths of an inch of water every day, starting on the Fourth of July.
Click to expand...
Eaarth, p151-152

In the years after World War II, even as human populations skyrocketed, global grain harvests double-skyrocketed. Thanks mostly to Green Revolution technologies of the type Cullers helps to develop, and thanks to the "get big or get out" policies of one government after another, the amount of grain grew from 285 kilograms per person in 1961 to a peak of 376 kilograms in 1986. But since then, grain yields have begun to stagnate, while population has kept growing; by now, the average human is back to 350 kilograms per year. read those numbers again. For the quarter century, despite the rapid spread of massive-scale corporate agribusiness farming, despite the help of Warrior and Extreme and Prowl and Respect and Kixor, despite the advent of genetically engineered crops, despite the $185,000 tractor, the amount of food per person has been dropping. The amount of stockpiled grain on the planet, the stuff sitting in silos and warehouses the help us through rough patches, has fallen from 130 days' worth of eating in 1986 to about 40 days' worth in 2008. Forty days sounds almost biblical. So, too, do the food riots in thirty-seven countries, and rapid rise in malnutrition, which added 75 million people to the rolls of the malnourished in 2007. That is, the number of people with too little eat is now rising instead of falling, and rising fast.
Click to expand...
Eaarth P152-153
 
Not sure if everyone is aware of the research behind the low carbon fuel standard advanced by CARB. Pg 13 of the document below lists the modeled impact of various fuels (accounting for efficiency at the wheel) on global warming:

http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs_uc_p1.pdf

Some ethanol in table ES-3 is worse than diesel or gasoline.
 
AndyH said:
The amount of stockpiled grain on the planet, the stuff sitting in silos and warehouses the help us through rough patches, has fallen from 130 days' worth of eating in 1986 to about 40 days' worth in 2008. Forty days sounds almost biblical
Click to expand...

Sounds like just-in-time farming, recently we have had crop failures in Russia. Seems like a good idea to keep the corn farmers active.

I have read that the recent increased in food cost have a lot to do with the cost of oil and inflation, and very little to do with ethanol. Probably what happened in 2008 with the oil spike.

Corn is cheap, but it is bulky and heavy, so transportation expenses can add up.
 
Herm said:
Lets not talk about fueling every suv in the world with ethanol, how about if everyone drove 13 mile plug-in Priuses that could run on E85?

Every 21 gallons of ethanol needs 1 gallon of diesel (tractors, tankers etc) and 1 gallon diesel energy equivalent in coal or NG (fertilizer and process heat) to make.
Click to expand...

For corn-based ethanol, you get 1.34 units of energy out (PDF) for every unit of energy in.

You need 1.5 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy content of 1 gallon of gasoline.

Please consider those numbers carefully. You might get net energy gain out of the effort, but the total energy flux has to increase to come out even. Are you familiar with the concept of diminishing returns?


Herm said:
Sounds like just-in-time farming, recently we have had crop failures in Russia. Seems like a good idea to keep the corn farmers active.
Click to expand...
Active growing corn for fuel, instead of corn you can eat - Brilliant!

You realize the corn used for ethanol production is not the same kind you eat, right? Ethanol and food supplies are mutually exclusive. Yes, let the food reserves run low while we commit ever growing portion of our arable land to feeding our hydrocarbon addiction rather than our citizens. Farmers can't just switch from one crop to another that easily, and doing so once you are absolutely reliant on one crop would be devastating for either food or fuel prices depending on which way you switch. Let's not paint ourselves into that corner.
=Smidge=
 
Smidge204 said:
For corn-based ethanol, you get 1.34 units of energy out (PDF) for every unit of energy in.
Are you familiar with the concept of diminishing returns?
Click to expand...

The old tired energy argument, let me repeat what I said: Every 21 gallons of ethanol needs 1 gallon of diesel (tractors, tankers etc) and 1 gallon diesel energy equivalent in coal or NG (fertilizer and process heat) to make..

So for every gallon of diesel you end up with 21 gallons of ethanol, that is the real balance. BTW, modern plants have increased the energy balance to 1.6:1.. locate the breweries near a source of industrial heat (nukes, coal power plants) and you could increase that energy balance past 2:1.


Smidge204 said:
Active growing corn for fuel, instead of corn you can eat - Brilliant!
You realize the corn used for ethanol production is not the same kind you eat, right?
Click to expand...

We dont eat it directly but the rest of the world does.. you can make corn flour out of it, tortillas, polenta, tamales etc.. we make Corn Sugar out of it or feed it to pigs. The usual corn consumed in the US is sweet corn, its a young version of dent corn, picked early in the season with high sugar content.. very tender. Dent corn is a similar corn but left at the field to dry out almost completely, sometimes picked up at winter or next spring. The president could shut down the ethanol plants overnight and reroute that corn to other uses, if needed. The farmers would simply not grow it if there was no ethanol market for it, the prices would be too low.

I like American made fuel.
 
Herm said:
let me repeat what I said: Every 21 gallons of ethanol needs 1 gallon of diesel (tractors, tankers etc) and 1 gallon diesel energy equivalent in coal or NG (fertilizer and process heat) to make..
Click to expand...
You're free to repeat it as much as you like. What is your source or basis for these numbers?

My source is the US Department of Agriculture. They spend several pages explaining how they came up wit the 1.34 ratio. If you have specific objections to their methods we can discuss them. Without some kind of reference or explanation the only person qualified to discuss the merits of your 21:2 claim is your proctologist.

Herm said:
I like American made fuel.
Click to expand...
I prefer American made methamphetamine over imports - doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it.

Again, I support and endorse biofuels. They will be an absolutely necessary component to make ends meet in a sustainable energy budget. However, corn based ethanol is an atrocity. We can and should do better.
=Smidge=
 
I have to disagree with the wisdom of using "bio-fuels", whatever their feedstock, for ICE vehicle fuels.

I believe it will always be a better use of biomass to replace coal and natural gas in electricity generation, rather than in converting the same materials into liquid or gas ICE fuels.

Cellulosic fuels can be directly burned in electric power plants and converted into electric energy, and then used to power EV's, at much higher rates of total conversion efficiency, than possible by using liquid fuels to propel ICE vehicles. This is even before taking into account the energy intensive industrial process (currently non-existent, and undoubtedly expensive) of converting the agricultural waste or crop into ethanol, or other liquid fuel.

Biomass electricity generation is even more efficient when integrated with a manufacturing process utilizing the "waste" heat produced in the generating plant.

Here in Shasta County, as in other timber regions, there are many biomass electricity operations, most located at lumber mills, fueled by mill "waste", where some of the "waste" heat can be utilized in kilns to dry the lumber products, while producing electricity to the grid.

Of course, the most efficient use of Cellulosic energy is in meeting heating needs.

I now heat my home primarily with a wood stove, with 80%+ total conversion efficiency, about twice that I will get with my LEAF, assuming a 100% high efficiency combined-cycle natural gas plant electricity supply.
 
The biomass-powered mill, shown in the video below, may not rate the highest on total energy conversion efficiency, But in term of reducing environmental impacts by extending equipment life-cycle, this is surely one of the world's leading operations...

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrShoptaw#p/f/3/AZ-5GCkV_TU
 
edatoakrun said:
I believe it will always be a better use of biomass to replace coal and natural gas in electricity generation, rather than in converting the same materials into liquid or gas ICE fuels.
Click to expand...
Electricity is great, and I'd certainly support biofuel electricity to help fill in the baseline generation gap that wind and solar can't easily cover... but electricity alone isn't going to balance our energy budget. Not for the foreseeable future, anyway.

Electric vehicles can take a chunk of our petroleum requirements. Hydrogen fuel cell technologies can take a bit more. Hybrid technologies will make a small dent, mostly in larger vehicles where the savings can be realized. (See: excellent thread on hydraulic-hybrid garbage trucks!)

You will never replace all the uses for liquid hydrocarbon fuels. The best you can hope for is to make hydrocarbon fuel sustainable - which means biomass.

Of course ethanol is just one of the tools we have. A proverbial hammer in this case, but still a tool. Other tools include biodiesel, which has limited promise with algae production (even when you discard the the wildly overoptimistic production claims) since you don't need fresh water or arable land for that. We have direct gasification (syngas and similar), thermo-chemical and bioreactor technologies. All of these can convert biomass into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
=Smidge=
 

Similar threads

R
My 2015 Leaf has 64,000 miles. Battery still has 9 bars, but at full charge is only showing about 12 miles.
Replies
3
Views
740
rmay635703
R
P
Good buy or Buyer beware?
Replies
4
Views
734
MikeinPA
M
J
2012 Nissan Leaf and 5 others
Replies
0
Views
371
joefriday2
J
G
Reuters: As EV sales grow, battle over U.S. road weight limits heats up
Replies
6
Views
2K
garyacrowellsr
G
SalisburySam
My LEAF has moved on without us…
2
Replies
32
Views
4K
Bombastinator2
B

Latest posts

Back
Top