Sir:
Regarding ethanol, the amount of fossil fuel or equivalent slave labor wage work make ethanol driving a exclusive privilege of the wealthy. Brazil has the world’s highest percentage ethanol from sugar cane for motor fuel. US use of current corn ethanol processes are petroleum negative and only feasible due to massive taxpayer subsidies.
If the readers of SurvivalBlog are expecting to have motor power in the age of ethanol I realistically suggest keeping down to a small displacement engine motorbike and maybe a chainsaw.
Electricity is much higher watt per acre from water solar or wind and bicycle horse or donkey cart is the best mile per acre fuel utilization. Just because a person grew up in the day of (almost) free petroleum does not mean this is a normal situation. Realistic economic study shows that the growth since the industrial revolution was due almost completely to the addition of (almost) free energy (fossil fuel) and using that power in machines that multiplied the possible man hours of work per hour a person could accomplish. Without a rising supply curve of available energy, I can see no realistic way for our 200 year level of progress to continue or to exist again.- David in Israel
Jim,
Engineer Steven Den Beste dealt with “alternate energy” theme some time ago. See this article. And this one.
Bottom line: Unless we’re willing to seriously reconsider reprocessing nuclear fuel and set about building breeder reactors on a monumental scale (as in a project of the magnitude of the ’60s “space race” extended for several decades) we’re not going to rid ourselves of our need for foreign oil. (I’m aware of the need for liquid fuel for transportation. Given sufficient energy, methanol may be reduced from water and carbon dioxide. But, this requires something on the scale of a nuclear reactor to make the process worthwhile.)
Biodiesel, ethanol, solar, wind, geothermal and other marginal sources of energy are fine for limited, small-scale uses. (If you need to fill a stock tank from a desert well 20 miles from the nearest power line, a windmill’s a great idea. Biodiesel is a great way of getting rid of french fry oil.) They are not worth considering as a primary means of powering our civilization. They simply cannot scale to that level. Yet, the problem is not that we are running out of energy. It is that we are deliberately choosing to freeze in the dark in the midst of plenty.
Think I’m exaggerating? Take a look at the nation’s most populated State. Regards, – Moriarty
Hi Jim,
I had a big conversation with a local liberal about Ethanol a few months back. She was all gung-ho about how it would save us and the environment until I presented her with the facts below. Now she rarely talks to me. Oh well.
While it is true that ethanol can be made out of the stalks, etc of the crops that have already been harvested, most of the energy of the plant is directed toward making the seeds – which is where most of the sugars, etc. that are needed to ferment into alcohol are. From what I understand, using the “waste” you get an even lower return on investment (ROI) than what I list below.
From my “conversation”:
Ethanol has some good points but it has many bad points as well. First, pollution – Ethanol, when burned in an internal combustion (IC) engine, produces less carbon monoxide (CO) but it produces more nitrogen oxide which is the main element of smog and because it has a lower latent heat of vaporization it evaporates more rapidly than gasoline which also leads to more pollution. Second, Gasoline has more energy per gallon than ethanol – about 50% more in fact. So you car that gets 30 mpg on gas can get only 20 mpg on ethanol – IF it can run on ethanol. Very few cars can run on more than 10% ethanol. Third – and worst of all – is that it takes a lot of energy to grow the crops used to brew up the ethanol. In some cases it takes up to 6 (yes six!) times the amount of energy to create the ethanol as it actually provides. In virtually ALL cases it takes more than a 1:1 ratio to produce it so ethanol will actually INCREASE our use of fossil fuels.
See this Energy bulletin article.
This accounting includes every step of the process from shipping the grain to its place of planting, plowing, planting, fertilizing and use of pesticides (both of which require fossil fuels to create), harvesting, transportation to the site of distillation, then the fuels required for that process and finally transportation to its site of final use.
Bio-diesel is better in the ROI department with it returning about 3 times the energy it takes to grow it. However this is appallingly low compared to gasoline which supplies 30 times the amount of energy it takes to produce. If you think gasoline is expensive these days, try bio-diesel which is likely to cost 10 times as much.
Now, if you drive your 30 mpg car 10,000 miles in a year using ethanol (now it is 20 mpg) you would need 500 gallons of ethanol to get you through the year. According to this site: (http://science.howstuffworks.com/question707.htm)
that would require 1.84 acres of corn. Since there are about 200 million cars in the US, if even a third of them drive 10k miles per year then we would need 122 million acres of crops just to provide fuel for our vehicles. Since the US has about 360 million acres of farmland and only about 43 million acres of that is considered prime farmland where will we grow all this fuel?
Ethanol sounds wonderful, but it is NOT a reasonable substitute for fossil fuels. Regards, – Tim P.
James:
This link contrasts other reports that ethanol is energy negative. – Bill in Indiana
Dear Jim:
Lately, politicians have been extolling the virtues of ethanol as the cure to our energy woes. For the heck of it, I decided to look into this (energy in vs energy out), after all I am a scientist. Ethanol production makes some interesting assumptions. It assumes that we can produce enough to make it worth our time.
The answer is ‘yes and no’.
As long as the crop, fermentation facility, distillation facility (processing) and end user are next to each other (to negate losses in transportation), it looks iffy, but possibly ok. This ignores the COST of production, only the energy surplus from the crop. However, a bad year may wipe out any energy gains, same for long transportation distances, etc. There was a study done some years ago that looks at several bio- fuels and biodiesel looks to be the most promising to me. NOT ethanol. A synopsis of the study can be found here and here.
This tells me we are putting our time and money into a marginal process with ethanol and that biodiesel looks more promising, at least on paper – implementation may be just as bad. But just based on this study, you would need to burn 3 billion barrels of ethanol to produce 4 billion barrels, giving you a net gain of 1 billion for use in the populace in general. What is wrong with that picture?
Another trouble I for see is the Sierra Club, Earth First, Congress, and similar organizations screwing things up, even if it were feasible and cost efficient. Suddenly we will need to put a LOT more farmland into production; and this may mean such sundry items as forests may need to be cleared, water diverted for irrigation, and vast capital invested into big, oily plants. The iron and synthetics to build those plants need to come from somewhere, perhaps where there are spotted owls…..
I work in the chemical industry, supplying specialty chemicals for pharmaceutical research. I am well aware that petroleum is a finite resource and an extremely useful one:
http://www.ioga.com/special/petroproducts.htm
http://www.anwr.org/features/oiluses.htm
I can see the need to get going on nuclear plant construction and development of these other energy sources. I think ethanol will not be worth it until they can get cellulose ethanol up and running. Even then, depending on costs, it may not be worth it. Right now they have to use expensive sugars (starch), which could be used for something else. Cellulose just gets plowed under each year. And as I stated before, we are just looking at energy surpluses, NOT COSTS. I don’t think anyway wants to burn ethanol if it costs $10/gallon to produce… Then there are other issues, such as the current drought from Texas up into the Mid-west that would also impact your gas tank. And of course you need fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to farm corn.
The problem has never been a lack of an available solutions, only that politicians are seldom legislating based on common sense, looking at cost/benefits, but instead are usually legislating based on who pays their bills. Regards, – Jim
Mr Rawles:
If you can make sugar from something, you can make ethanol. Cows eat hay, which is for the most part cellulose, which is made up of starch. Enzymes in a cows stomach(s) break down the cellulose into molecules of starch, which are further converted into glucose, which is then used by the cow for energy. All animals which eat hay do this. The enzyme responsible for most of the cellulose breakdown is called “cellulase”. See this article for some scientific background on cellulase enzyme research. – H.L.