So much for the biofuel plan

enjenjo · February 08, 2008, 04:04:49 PM

For people food, field corn is used for Corn meal, corn chips, corn oil, corn flakes, and other similar products. The problem isn't field corn VS sweet corn, it's field corn VS Soybeans, and Wheat. Soybeans are used for a lot of products we take for granted.

But ethanol from corn takes more energy to produce, than you get out of it. Several reasons, corn is fertilizer intensive, at least the varieties we grow in the US. For the most part, that comes from oil. For long distances, oil is transported in pipelines, Ethanol is transported in tank trucks and train cars, much less efficent transport. And the distilation of ethanol takes a lot of power to do, which mostly comes from coal and oil. Plus, without the .50 per gallon federal subsidy, it costs more to produce than it sells for. If the price of oil drops much, it won't be economic to make ethanol even with the subsidy.

I don't have the answers, but I think we should be looking elsewhere for ethanol feedstocks. sugar beets and sugar cane make more sense than corn. Converting biomass, waste from vegatable oil, sawmills, even yard waste makes more sense than using food. Plus the byproducts from that can be used for fertilizer. I also think oil from garbage, oil from worn out tires, and other sources should be investigated.

zzford · February 08, 2008, 05:32:24 PM

I think it's time to review the possibilties of rubber band power, you know, like the balsa airplanes we all had as kids. You could have rewind stations just like we have gas stations. Pull your car up, the rear end gets lifted, a roller rises up and you crank a handle that winds the rubber band up by turning the wheels backwards. Set the brake, drop the car back down, release the parking brake and off you go. For more performance, add more rubber bands. The winding stations could even offer a rubber band sling shot service to help you merge back into traffic. People, it's not good enough in this day and age to just think outside of the box. We have to start thinking outside the shipping container! Fred

Uncle Bob · February 08, 2008, 05:45:51 PM

Quote from: "enjenjo"For people food, field corn is used for Corn meal, corn chips, corn oil, corn flakes, and other similar products. The problem isn't field corn VS sweet corn, it's field corn VS Soybeans, and Wheat. Soybeans are used for a lot of products we take for granted.

I don't have the answers, but I think we should be looking elsewhere for ethanol feedstocks. sugar beets and sugar cane make more sense than corn. Converting biomass, waste from vegatable oil, sawmills, even yard waste makes more sense than using food. Plus the byproducts from that can be used for fertilizer. I also think oil from garbage, oil from worn out tires, and other sources should be investigated.

Just a note on tone and intent. I don't bring these things up to be argumentative, but to highlight just how complicated and interrelated these things are to our entire economy. The simple answers we're fed by politicians and media are grossly dishonest. If I were to give them the benefit of the doubt I'd say their intentions are good, but the results of their decisions, statements, and policy decisions are harmful and wrong headed. Certainly that's true for the people that believe them, but on a less generous note politicians and media are driven by power, and they gain power by limiting the freedom we enjoy through knowledge.

Before going to Franks good comments I'll just say to Tom, you're right, 1976 was the last one. In fact, in that same time frame nearly two thirds of the refineries in this country have had to be shut down, the volume made up in improvements to the remaining ones, but that low hanging fruit is about used up. We are now net importers of finished gasoline. This is just the beginning of a whole nuther discussion. If you're interested in the newest attempt at building a refinery go here; http://www.arizonacleanfuels.com/index.htm They've taken down a lot of the old info they used to post, but if memory serves me they started the process in the early '90s, so using their current estimated opening date it's around a 20 year process to get started. Last estimate I read said it would cost about $6 billion to build if the process started today.

As for the argument that ethanol works, that's not really the issue. Is it economically and environmentally better? Does it help the overall economy and well being of the entire nation rather than the small portion of citizens in small portions of the country? The answers remain NO. It only "competes" because we, through our tax dollars and becasuse of artificial mandates, not because of any additional benefit to the overall economy.

Frank, good points all, but you left out one of the biggest uses.......high fructose corn syrup. It is the number one sweetener in a vast majority of our processed foods. Start reading the sides of food packaging and you'll get a feel for just how much is used out there. The argument that "food corn" isn't affected ignores the price having doubled for just the reasons Frank enumerated. There is a short term financial gain to the folks in the regions where corn is grown, but they will end up paying back to the rest of the negative economic outcomes in the future, it just may be in "hidden" costs that that won't be directly apparent.

The thoughts on converting various forms of biomass, and any other alternative you might see on History channel, or read about anywhere else is interesting. Each of the alternatives may have some reasonable outcomes in localized situations. To give an somewhat odd example, let's use the example of the local "mad scientist" type who makes his own diesel fuel out of waste french fry oil. Neat idea. I'm in full support of his program as long as he doesn't dispose of his waste byproduct in a way that harms my community. If he takes himself off the routine fuel grid all the better. Sounds like a neat idea until you start to extrapolate it out to the entire community (and by extension the whole country). His plan works only as long as he has no competition for the feed stock (the used canola oil, or whatever it is). If a couple more folks in town get the same idea suddenly the restaurants will find they've got multiple parties interested and will start having an auction, selling the raw material rather than being glad to have some "nut" haul it away for free. The highest bidder will be the "winner", but if he's sensible only up to the point where he finds that it's more costly to home brew his fuel rather than buy it at a station already made any time he needs it. The other competitors have lost whatever advantage they'd hoped for and returned to the normal fuel grid. I personally would't have any problem with ethanol, or biodiesel, or any othe the other "new fuels" as long as I don't have to pay for it. If the folks in Iowa want to run their cars on ethanol, go for it! Great idea. That'll leave that much more fuel for those of us who aren't geographically advantaged as they are. But that's not how it works today. Now I have to pay the going rate for gasoline AND have to pay for some of their fuel too. I have to earn my money in a competitive market...............I think you should too rather than using the force of government to highjack my paycheck. But hey, that's just me.

Lots of other alternative fuel sources are bandied about. Those BP commercials with the (real or fake?) man on the street "interviews" drive me nuts. It's a full on display of how ignorant (different than stupid) the general populace is about how much petroleum fuel means to our lives. Their blythe responses reveal how clueless they are to the difficulty in developing a fuel source that is as economical, available, practical, and yes, clean as we've used for years. Just a superficial review of some thought points. Someone mentioned hydrogen from sea water on here. Intellectually I think that's a great idea. It the practical application that starts to muddy the concept. First thing would be funding a way to collect the sea watter. Then to desalinate it. Who and how takes care of paying for that. And since most of the coastline communities that would need the fuel are hoity toity clavens of the "environmentally conscious" are they really going to allow them to be built? We got an answer last year when the Malibu swells had a big uprising over a proposed CNG facility nearby (and So. Cal NEEDS a lot of natural gas). But let's say they got sensible, just for the sake of fantasy, and allowed the plant, and since they're so wealthy and care so much for the rest of us, they even ponied up to pay for it, we'd still need to have an economical process to free up the hydrogen, and someplace to dispose of the salt from the desalinization process (forget about dumping it back into the ocean, the greens would go ape over the chemical imbalance that would cause for the little fishies, and other creatures). Then how do you get all that hydrogen to where the consumers would be, and how will the consumers convert their transportation units to run on hydrogen?

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but it gives you an idea of what this, and most other proposed technologies are up against. The current system we have wasn't built by any government program of subsidy. It was done almost entirely with private capitol. In the beginning of the twentieth century steam, electric, and gasoline competed as the preferred power sources for automobiles. Gasoline won out because it was the safest and most economical fuel/propulsion system..............and it still is, especially since we have an existing infrastructure in place to distribute it. And it was chosen and built in the most democratic of methods, by vote of the individual consumers dollar. Any money the government throws around to "try to help start" some new alternative steals money from the free market which, left to it's own efficiencies, would spend that money in a more practical and productive way. History and honest evaluation of outcomes has proven that. Why would it be different today?

Mikej · February 08, 2008, 06:05:08 PM

Is the price of food higher because we're making alcohol or because the price of oil is 3 times higher than it was 3 years ago?
I think the yeast they use is holding them back. The process gets better all the time. As with any manufacturing process they will squeeze every thing out of the corn or any other materiel in time. Right now corn is what we have and what we know how to raise. Switch grass is an unknown. The best place to grow it is probably where we grow wheat. What to do with the bio mass? Can we feed it? Any other product that can be made from it? Time will tell. Will have to leave that to the people at MIT.
Corn chips come from white corn?
The reason for not running alcohol thru existing pipe lines might be that it would clean up the crude in them and they would start leaking. Seals and gaskets could be changed.
This is one of those cases of why it will work VS why it won't. Or which is better for our country or someone elses.
Wheres the hotrodders. e85 = 105 octane that alone should make it GOOD................... :? Nobody has fought a war over alcohol yet unless they drank it. What happened to EPA's standards that we needed MTBE for or Alcohol? The whole country should now be using alcohol since they can no longer use MTBE. Or did the EPA's standards change for the oil companies? I don't have any answers other than the economy is fairly good in the corn belt. And apparently in parts of Texas where they're using new pumping methods in the old oil wells.
Jumped around a bit

Mikej · February 08, 2008, 06:18:22 PM

Bob, you have been paying subsidies for years to keep the price of food down. Now its going to alcohol. Subsidies to OIL Companies for oil on US Gov. land. All you do as a tax payer is pay. More refineries so we can use up the shrinking oil supplies faster?

Dave · February 08, 2008, 06:26:01 PM

number 1.. any one that has stock in oil cant be president.. #2 shoot all the rest of the lying F&*KS
Dave

Entoman · February 08, 2008, 06:27:34 PM

Guys I gotta disagree with a lot of the crud being spouted by the liberal media about ethanol being bad...
First I work in the industry (Univ. of Ill Extension) and have studied many of the projections and outright non truths about ethanol.
First:
There is a net sum gain when ethanol is brewed from corn. If you use figures from the way ethanol was distilled in 1900 then it takes about 5 quarts of ethanol to get 4....That is simply not true today. The exact net gain depends greatly on the process. but in most cases it borders on a 2:1 ratio, very competitive with oil.

Second:
I just read a study about the mileage that is derived from etoh/gas mixtures. contrary to popular belief there is a net gain in mpg in etoh/gas mixtures up to E-30 mixes in non-flex fueled autos. this is mostly due to etoh being an oxidizer that promotes more complete combustion of the mix. Above E-30 the lower energy content of Etoh comes into play and mileage suffers.

Third.
Ethanol production will cause the planet to warm significantly.......What are these guys smoking? Etoh is produced from carbon that is easily accessible on the surface of the planet. And every bit of it has been and will be again released once the source plant dies. FACT! Petroleum is large quantities of hydrocarbons that are sequestered deep within the earth that aren't released until they are pumped up and burned....HOW CAN ANYBODY SUGGEST WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT BURNING A SEQUESTERED CARBON SOURCE IS BETTER THAN RUNNING A CIRCUITOUS SOURCE SUCH AS PLANT MATERIAL?

?
What happens when corn, sugar, switchgrass, miscanthus, or whatever is harvested? it is replanted and the successive crop removes the Carbon that was released. Simplistic? yes, but it works, Reference everyother life cycle on the earth.

Can ethanol completely replace oil? with current technology NO, but as a part of the answer, Yes.

Oh and how to increase the mileage from Etoh, bump the compression a bunch and its efficiency will increase and make it closer to gas....
Doug

Quote from: "wayne petty"i have been thinking about fuel economy....

current engines are running at fuel mixtures to feed the cat... too lean and it does not heat enough to work... too rich and it melts....

ethanol is a great idea to reduce fuel imports... except it reduces fuel economy.... so we are burning more fuel per mile with the 10%+ blends...

the makes the refiners more money ... the goverment more money in collected taxes per mile driven... and we get to pay both...

somebody is going to have to come up wiith an electricly heated or microwave heated cat.... something that does not require a constant amount of unburned hydrocarbons to heat... it is probably not possable now that i think about it as you have to create enough electricity to power it... so i guess we are just stuck.,.....until someone has a brainstorm...

tomslik · February 08, 2008, 06:48:35 PM

Quote from: "jusjunk"number 1.. any one that has stock in oil cant be president.. #2 shoot all the rest of the lying F&*KS
Dave

hey, i bought chevron stock, look where IT'S at

lost 10 bucks a share...
and gas went up...
make me prez, i'll take care of the biggest wastes of money AND the so-called "greenhouse" gasses....
Al Queda doesn't even have a clue on how much we wished they would have succeded in washington.....maybe they should have had ol ted "driving school and scuba instructor" kennedy flying the plane..
...and the rest of the kennedys, al gore, and the 2 johns as passengers...

enough politics.....

ok, somebody answer me this, why is it our problem (U.S.)?
if we're SO * bad, how come everybody wants to live here?
BUILD THE * FENCE ALREADY!!!!!!!
remember, those "foreign exchange criminals" are using fuel too.
i don't just mean mexicans either...
anyway we can turn their bodies in to fuel?
soylent green kinda thing?

tomslik · February 08, 2008, 06:57:49 PM

Quote from: "Entoman"Guys I gotta disagree with a lot of the crud being spouted by the liberal media about ethanol being bad...
First I work in the industry (Univ. of Ill Extension) and have studied many of the projections and outright non truths about ethanol.
First:
There is a net sum gain when ethanol is brewed from corn. If you use figures from the way ethanol was distilled in 1900 then it takes about 5 quarts of ethanol to get 4....That is simply not true today. The exact net gain depends greatly on the process. but in most cases it borders on a 2:1 ratio, very competitive with oil.

it takes 2 quarts to make 1!?!?!
don't sound like progress to me......

Second:
I just read a study about the mileage that is derived from etoh/gas mixtures. contrary to popular belief there is a net gain in mpg in etoh/gas mixtures up to E-30 mixes in non-flex fueled autos. this is mostly due to etoh being an oxidizer that promotes more complete combustion of the mix. Above E-30 the lower energy content of Etoh comes into play and mileage suffers.

tell it to my truck, it's dropped 3 mpg since we've been on this "oxygenated" crap

Third.
Ethanol production will cause the planet to warm significantly.......What are these guys smoking? Etoh is produced from carbon that is easily accessible on the surface of the planet. And every bit of it has been and will be again released once the source plant dies. FACT! Petroleum is large quantities of hydrocarbons that are sequestered deep within the earth that aren't released until they are pumped up and burned....HOW CAN ANYBODY SUGGEST WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT BURNING A SEQUESTERED CARBON SOURCE IS BETTER THAN RUNNING A CIRCUITOUS SOURCE SUCH AS PLANT MATERIAL??
What happens when corn, sugar, switchgrass, miscanthus, or whatever is harvested? it is replanted and the successive crop removes the Carbon that was released. Simplistic? yes, but it works, Reference everyother life cycle on the earth.

ever ask a farmer why he doesn't plant the same crop year after year on the same plot of ground?
what happens with a drought?
disease?
bugs?
hail?
you want me to go on?
i grew up in nebraska, i know where corn comes from...

Can ethanol completely replace oil? with current technology NO, but as a part of the answer, Yes.

Oh and how to increase the mileage from Etoh, bump the compression a bunch and its efficiency will increase and make it closer to gas....
Doug

Quote from: "wayne petty"i have been thinking about fuel economy....

current engines are running at fuel mixtures to feed the cat... too lean and it does not heat enough to work... too rich and it melts....

ethanol is a great idea to reduce fuel imports... except it reduces fuel economy.... so we are burning more fuel per mile with the 10%+ blends...

the makes the refiners more money ... the goverment more money in collected taxes per mile driven... and we get to pay both...

somebody is going to have to come up wiith an electricly heated or microwave heated cat.... something that does not require a constant amount of unburned hydrocarbons to heat... it is probably not possable now that i think about it as you have to create enough electricity to power it... so i guess we are just stuck.,.....until someone has a brainstorm...

Uncle Bob · February 08, 2008, 06:58:55 PM

Mike, we can certainly agree, that as a tax payer all we do is pay!!!

The rest of what you say is perspective. I don't see paying subsidies as keeping the price down (thay might only work superficially for those that are exempt from federal taxes). In that scenario I pay at the store from my right pocket and through taxes from my left. In the end my cost of food isn't lower, it's just that someone in the government has tried to fool me by hiding the cost paid through taxes. In fact the opposite occurs more often. We pay subsidies that keep the cost of a food product higher than competition would allow, I point to sugar as only one example.

As for subsidies to oil companies I say, if they really are subsidies, cut 'em off, along with all the farmers (especially since they are mostly corporate entities rather than family farmers). Let them make rational, market driven decisions.

Your comment about shrinking oil supplies is based on what many believe is a faulty premise. In this country we forbid developement of known sources, that's not a declining supply other than by government mandate. Just last year, in the Gulf of Mexico where they're still able to do some new exploration, they found an incredibly, and unexpectedly, large, new supply. We already know about a huge reserve in ANWR where we choose not to drill. The Chinese are practically drilling on behalf of the Cubans just a few miles from the Florida coast. The California coast has a lot of known potential, but since a spill off Santa Barbara in '69 they've closed that down too. Some recent technological advances in the understanding of how crude oil is formed is causing geologists to rethink how they identified potential geologic formations for potential. Many think they've vastly underestimated the amount of crude oil available. Without prejudice, there could still be centuries of supply left. But, instead of listening to the experts, we've got politicians and special interest groups hostile to energy production that dominate the discussion.

If the whole world that we have to compete with for jobs and economic survival had to use the same material cost as we do to produce energy all of this would be moot. But at this time, it appears we are following political leaders who want to, for whatever reason, lead us down a path of disadvantage.

tomslik · February 08, 2008, 07:03:06 PM

Quote from: "Uncle Bob"
Quote from: "enjenjo"For people food, field corn is used for Corn meal, corn chips, corn oil, corn flakes, and other similar products. The problem isn't field corn VS sweet corn, it's field corn VS Soybeans, and Wheat. Soybeans are used for a lot of products we take for granted.

I don't have the answers, but I think we should be looking elsewhere for ethanol feedstocks. sugar beets and sugar cane make more sense than corn. Converting biomass, waste from vegatable oil, sawmills, even yard waste makes more sense than using food. Plus the byproducts from that can be used for fertilizer. I also think oil from garbage, oil from worn out tires, and other sources should be investigated.

Just a note on tone and intent. I don't bring these things up to be argumentative, but to highlight just how complicated and interrelated these things are to our entire economy. The simple answers we're fed by politicians and media are grossly dishonest. If I were to give them the benefit of the doubt I'd say their intentions are good, but the results of their decisions, statements, and policy decisions are harmful and wrong headed. Certainly that's true for the people that believe them, but on a less generous note politicians and media are driven by power, and they gain power by limiting the freedom we enjoy through knowledge.

Before going to Franks good comments I'll just say to Tom, you're right, 1976 was the last one. In fact, in that same time frame nearly two thirds of the refineries in this country have had to be shut down, the volume made up in improvements to the remaining ones, but that low hanging fruit is about used up. We are now net importers of finished gasoline. This is just the beginning of a whole nuther discussion. If you're interested in the newest attempt at building a refinery go here; http://www.arizonacleanfuels.com/index.htm They've taken down a lot of the old info they used to post, but if memory serves me they started the process in the early '90s, so using their current estimated opening date it's around a 20 year process to get started. Last estimate I read said it would cost about $6 billion to build if the process started today.

As for the argument that ethanol works, that's not really the issue. Is it economically and environmentally better? Does it help the overall economy and well being of the entire nation rather than the small portion of citizens in small portions of the country? The answers remain NO. It only "competes" because we, through our tax dollars and becasuse of artificial mandates, not because of any additional benefit to the overall economy.

Frank, good points all, but you left out one of the biggest uses.......high fructose corn syrup. It is the number one sweetener in a vast majority of our processed foods. Start reading the sides of food packaging and you'll get a feel for just how much is used out there. The argument that "food corn" isn't affected ignores the price having doubled for just the reasons Frank enumerated. There is a short term financial gain to the folks in the regions where corn is grown, but they will end up paying back to the rest of the negative economic outcomes in the future, it just may be in "hidden" costs that that won't be directly apparent.

The thoughts on converting various forms of biomass, and any other alternative you might see on History channel, or read about anywhere else is interesting. Each of the alternatives may have some reasonable outcomes in localized situations. To give an somewhat odd example, let's use the example of the local "mad scientist" type who makes his own diesel fuel out of waste french fry oil. Neat idea. I'm in full support of his program as long as he doesn't dispose of his waste byproduct in a way that harms my community. If he takes himself off the routine fuel grid all the better. Sounds like a neat idea until you start to extrapolate it out to the entire community (and by extension the whole country). His plan works only as long as he has no competition for the feed stock (the used canola oil, or whatever it is). If a couple more folks in town get the same idea suddenly the restaurants will find they've got multiple parties interested and will start having an auction, selling the raw material rather than being glad to have some "nut" haul it away for free. The highest bidder will be the "winner", but if he's sensible only up to the point where he finds that it's more costly to home brew his fuel rather than buy it at a station already made any time he needs it. The other competitors have lost whatever advantage they'd hoped for and returned to the normal fuel grid. I personally would't have any problem with ethanol, or biodiesel, or any othe the other "new fuels" as long as I don't have to pay for it. If the folks in Iowa want to run their cars on ethanol, go for it! Great idea. That'll leave that much more fuel for those of us who aren't geographically advantaged as they are. But that's not how it works today. Now I have to pay the going rate for gasoline AND have to pay for some of their fuel too. I have to earn my money in a competitive market...............I think you should too rather than using the force of government to highjack my paycheck. But hey, that's just me.

Lots of other alternative fuel sources are bandied about. Those BP commercials with the (real or fake?) man on the street "interviews" drive me nuts. It's a full on display of how ignorant (different than stupid) the general populace is about how much petroleum fuel means to our lives. Their blythe responses reveal how clueless they are to the difficulty in developing a fuel source that is as economical, available, practical, and yes, clean as we've used for years. Just a superficial review of some thought points. Someone mentioned hydrogen from sea water on here. Intellectually I think that's a great idea. It the practical application that starts to muddy the concept. First thing would be funding a way to collect the sea watter. Then to desalinate it. Who and how takes care of paying for that. And since most of the coastline communities that would need the fuel are hoity toity clavens of the "environmentally conscious" are they really going to allow them to be built? We got an answer last year when the Malibu swells had a big uprising over a proposed CNG facility nearby (and So. Cal NEEDS a lot of natural gas). But let's say they got sensible, just for the sake of fantasy, and allowed the plant, and since they're so wealthy and care so much for the rest of us, they even ponied up to pay for it, we'd still need to have an economical process to free up the hydrogen, and someplace to dispose of the salt from the desalinization process (forget about dumping it back into the ocean, the greens would go ape over the chemical imbalance that would cause for the little fishies, and other creatures).

SOME RODDER YOU ARE!!!!!
bonneville.......

Then how do you get all that hydrogen to where the consumers would be, and how will the consumers convert their transportation units to run on hydrogen?

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but it gives you an idea of what this, and most other proposed technologies are up against. The current system we have wasn't built by any government program of subsidy. It was done almost entirely with private capitol. In the beginning of the twentieth century steam, electric, and gasoline competed as the preferred power sources for automobiles. Gasoline won out because it was the safest and most economical fuel/propulsion system..............and it still is, especially since we have an existing infrastructure in place to distribute it. And it was chosen and built in the most democratic of methods, by vote of the individual consumers dollar. Any money the government throws around to "try to help start" some new alternative steals money from the free market which, left to it's own efficiencies, would spend that money in a more practical and productive way. History and honest evaluation of outcomes has proven that. Why would it be different today?

jaybee · February 08, 2008, 07:04:15 PM

IMO new technology will make this better just as the media turns it into a big deal...as usual. The newest plants fully separate cellulose for Ethanol, oil for Biodiesel or human consumption, glycerine for manufacturing, and what's left is an almost pure protein animal feed that the animals use more efficiently than whole corn. I'd be willing to bet the new research didn't even touch either the environmental impact or cost structure of such a facility.

Carnut · February 08, 2008, 07:09:01 PM

Uncle Bob, I totally agree with your explanation of the situation.

Any chance you can run for Pres?

Uncle Bob · February 08, 2008, 07:10:11 PM

"SOME RODDER YOU ARE!!!!!
bonneville....... "

Now!!! That's creative thinking and problem solving!!

Think I can get a government subsidy to buy a fleet of trucks to haul it from Malibu to B'ville?

Uncle Bob · February 08, 2008, 07:12:49 PM

Quote from: "Carnut"Uncle Bob, I totally agree with your explanation of the situation.

Any chance you can run for Pres?

Thank you..............................I think? :oops:

I don't think I could get elected though, got a problem with liking to tell the truth as I see it. But I was born in Solomon, so I might get the Kansas vote.