someone let the Genie out of the bottle

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gonna be hard to put it back in now!!!

"Another solution proposed by Bush is to increase the use of gasoline blended from ethanol. True, less gasoline would be consumed, but so much energy is required to make ethanol in the first place that there would be no appreciable net savings. Besides, ethanol is a much less efficient store of energy than gasoline, so the miles traveled per gallon of fuel consumed drops by 30 percent."

http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/09/autos/pluggedin_taylor_fueleconomy.fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes
 
Well, you can also get much more horsepower out of the same engine since the "30%" is mostly inherent oxygen. See Saab and Koenigsegg and others. A bit like the dragsters on methanol.
And it does not add "new/old" co2 to the atmosphere, but the jury is still out on the importance, but maybe.
I really think its a good idea to use ethanol or metanol isf. of arabian oil. Less dependencies and (maybe) good for the atmosphere.
Junk engines with bad material choices and carbs instead of electronics and turbos will suffer but who cares? They are old anyways.
Don't buy the "no net effect" talk. It's just heresay. It's a bit like saying "theres no net effect of burning wood". There may be a shortage of corn in the americas but there are other options, like using leftover process wood and other spoils.
 
lars11, growing crops expressly to produce fuel is a problem, IMHO, and as you say waste to fuels are much better alternatives.

Funny that politically, ethanol seems to only come from corn, and biodiesel from soy...must be somethign special about those crops. Funny also that the Australian specs for biodiesel almost rules out everything but Canola.
 
Would corn ever be better than using plain ordinary diesel? Or is it because diesel is boring, available and already within the infrastructure and on the hit list for being dirty and evil.
 
Alcohol can be burned in super high performance engines that are way more efficient than regular car engines. It's a waste to run regular cars on ethanol blends.
 
here is a question:

if ethanol was so great a fuel, wouldn't farmers already be using it to power the very machines that grow the corn that make ethanol????

HMMMM?

or is that simple physics law still a problem?
conservation of energy!!!
 
There is so much common sense lacking in people who hear and read, but do not think. For example the great leader of Kalif . Arnuld S. Drives a hummer type of vehicle probably used tons more resources in his big house and recreational travels than the normal "I own bigger toys and suv's and breast enhanced women wanting to impress type" , yet signs global warming bills that cost the people who can't afford it.
 
How much land would it take to grow corn, to power a Hummer 1000 miles?

-150 bushels per acre per year
-2.5 gallons/bushel
-12 mpg on E100
-25% overall energy profit corn to ethanol

It would take about 1 acre of farmland to travel 1000 miles per year in a Hummer.
 
and how many gallons of diesel did you burn to produce that ethanol?

1 you have to till the land. (tractor)
2 plant the corn. (tractor)
3 insecticides. (tractor)
4 herbicides. (tractor)
5 cut the corn. (combind)
6 haul the corn to market. (truck)
7 now if the ethanol plant is not a conveyor belt away (which would also take electricity) you need to move the corn to the ethanol plant. (truck/train)
8 turn corn into corn syrup (takes heat)
9 turn corn syrup into ethanol (takes heat)
10 distribute ethanol to cities (must use train, cant us pipeline. warren buffet just made a huge play into this area).
11 transport ethanol for use to a station. (truck)

what is really sad is how many people don't know the first steps about how to farm!
 
I'm including the energy used -- use up 4 units of ethanol to create 5. There are about 250 million vehicles (not all Hummers) in the US, and about a billion acres of farmland. If each vehicle went about 10,000 miles a year on ethanol, it would burn up all the food grown in the entire USA. The machines have won.
 
also,
don't forget that U.S. agriculture uses nearly 5 times the calorific content of the food that makes it to the table to manufacture, process, and get it to the table.

When we run out of oil, our food supplies will suffer badly.
 
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