Ethanol-blend auto emissions no greener than gasoline

[knowiam]

Besides if it is so inexpensive then why is it so expensive at the pump?

Californians get Hosed hard with Taxes. (.47 + 6% State Tx+1.25% County Tx. + 7.8% Local Tx+ 1.2 cpg UST Fee) (Premium $3.59/gal. 4/4/07) We are subject to "shortages" while a seasonal switch of two different mythical grades of fuel are formulated. [ Winter and Summer Fuels]. :uh:

I add the "mythical" as it causes me to ponder what a chemical engineer could do to fuel to make it burn cleaner during the two seasons? Our Winter is really not much different than our Summer here in California.... why not pick one that works well all the time?

Weather is here, wish you were nice. :laugh:

Ken

 

[76GMC1500]

If a typical tanker holds 180,000 barrels of oil or 7,560,000 gallons oil. A typical run for a tanker from Alaska to California and back costs around half a million dollars (it's probably getting closer to 3/4 of a mill with today's fuel costs, though). So, at $500,000-750,000 to ship 7,560,000 gallons of oil, that's about 7 to 10 cents per gallon. That's pretty insignificant on the overall cost.

This whole attitude of who cares if it's greener is a dangerous attitude. Ethanol obviously can't work for many reasons, a lot of good ones have already been listed. To ignore the facts and the science for a misguided dream will destroy our economy and do significant damage to our country.

 

[2stroke]

yeah, greener? I never really looked at ethanol that way, simply as a way to cut dependence. I thought that was the general idea anyway. My van can run on E85, but Ive never run across a pump for it yet!

 

[Patman]

I'm not terribly concerned about the green aspect of those fuels but the dependance issues. If I were more concerned about being green I'd drive something besides a F250 diesel, F150 SuperCrew, big Bronco, or even my wife's AWD Pilot. Assuming any one thing is going to fix things is silly as well, I really believe it will take multiple solutions and part of that will have to include something along the lines of E85 / Biodiesel because people will not just change to another type of power plant. Propane is another option that my uncle has used for the past 15 years with good results in his application (towing a 5th wheel for 300K miles). Bio fuels are here now and we have the ability to use them to some extent with reasonable success.

If there really is a better solution somebody please pitch it along with a way make it happen and time line.

 

[XRpredator]

If there really is a better solution somebody please pitch it along with a way make it happen and time line.

Better solution: Trade this Honda Pilot:

for this Honda Pilot:

okay, Hijack over. Back to regularly scheduled thread

 

[friar tuck]

I have no desire to own a quad, but those old Honda's just scream "FUN" to me. lol Sorry, that was another hijack.

 

[KaTooMer]

Some random thoughts on ethanol:

• It's here and unlikely to go away. Alternative fuel or not, it is currently the most economical oxygenate available to blenders/refiners. They will continue to use it for octane requirements regardless of ethanol mandates.

• Although I question the true independence of just about any study I read, the general consensus of recent energy balance studies is that corn-based ethanol produces about 30% more energy than it consumes. Not great, but it's a start. If we ever figure out how to make cellulosic ethanol commercially viable, that number will increase substantially.

• Food vs. Fuel: for those worried about how much more their McRib is going to cost because of higher corn prices, keep an eye out for a study soon to be released by Dermot Hayes of Iowa State University. In a preview shown at the '07 National Grain & Feed Association annual convention last month, his estimation was a 4-5% increase in retail chicken, beef and pork prices if corn prices average somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.30/bushel (about what corn futures were trading last month and roughly 75% higher than cash prices last year at this time). Do the math - your $5.00/lb Tyson boneless chicken breast now costs $5.25/lb. Will that force working families into bankruptcy? Doubtful. Mostly goes to show how much your retail meat price is made up of further processing and how little of it is corn fed to the animal.

• This I learned yesterday: the 87 octane you put in your tank today may contain 10% ethanol whether the gas pump says so or not. In efforts to increase throughput, refiners are dropping production to 83 or 84 octane and then blending 115-octane ethanol at 10% levels to get to an overall 87 octane.

• Subsidize This: two dirty little wars in the Middle East. The current one will probably cost us north of $1 trillion when all is said and done, after factoring in direct costs along with indirect ones like therapy and prosthetic arms and legs for soldiers, wasted trees for all that is printed about the war, and the creation of new generations of American-haters and all that goes with it. If not for oil, would we care about the region's stability any more than we would, say, Eastern Africa? Sudan is one messed up place but I don't see us invading it anytime soon. So to stabilize an area that gives us about 20% of our oil needs, we spend $1 trillion. If it's fair to say that the vast majority of oil imported to the US gets converted to gasoline, then translate that $1 trillion across 20% of our annual 150 billion gallon gasoline appetite and you'll get a big flippin' number on a per-gallon basis. Then compare that to a 51-cent/gallon subsidy on 5 billion gallons of ethanol and you'll probably realize there is no comparison. Whatever energy balance we gain with ethanol that serves as a replacement for Middle Eastern oil, my math shows it makes economical sense.

So in the essence of full disclosure, my present livelihood is influenced by the ethanol industry, but I doubt I'd feel any differently if it weren't. Ethanol has arrived. Don't expect to see it go away anytime soon.

 

[fatcat216]

KaTooMer- thanks for a well written post. I had heard that 87octane 10% ethanol nondisclosure item before.

I have never been a fan of ethanol as presented to us in the US. However, I find the discussions interesting because of the blend of politics, economics and science, and the sociology/psychology of how people react to the information presented to them.

Here is an interesting little blurb article that reminds me how technological innovations can really take a not so good idea and completely change it. Always hard to write the future off, when people are out there looking for better ways.

Fungus Genome: Key to Clean Fuels?
Eric Bland, Discovery News

Fungus Genome: Key to Clean Fuels?
Eric Bland, Discovery News

May 9, 2008 -- By decoding the genome of a green fungus with a hunger for fibrous plants, scientists hope to boost the supply of cellulose-based ethanol, leaving more food for consumption and driving down transportation costs.

"People have had the idea for many years to use the inedible portion of food and turn it into fuel," said Diego Martinez, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and study author.

"Right now it's too pricey," he explained. "We want to bring down that cost."

The high cost of cellulose-based ethanol comes from the expensive enzymes, derived from the fungus Tricoderma reesei, which are used to break down trees, corn stalks, paper, and other wood or pulp-based items.

For years, scientists have tried to economically produce enough enzymes to break cellulose down into simple sugars that can then be fermented into ethanol, but to no avail.

Having the genome of T. reesei "gives you a tool kit with all the tools, where before you were trying to blindly match things up," said Jason Stajich, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the blog fungalgenomes.org. Stajich was not involved in the new study.

Now that scientists have all the tools, it will be "easier to tinker with the genetic machinery to make it efficiently produce more enzymes to bring down the cost," said Martinez.

Currently, most bioethanol is made out of sugar derived from corn kernels (at least in the United States) in large bioreactors -- vats filled with microorganisms that convert sugar to fuel.

Turning corn kernels into fuel has several disadvantages, most notably it drives up food prices, thereby weakening the food supply to vulnerable regions.

Whoever cracks the cellulose code stands to circumvent those problems, and make a lot of money, by potentially turning everything from corn stalks, sawgrass, paper, and other cellulose-based items into fuel.

The enzymes produced by T. reesei are most effective at breaking cellulose down, so scientists expected a large portion of the fungus' genome to be devoted to this process.

But the scientists got a surprise: Only about 5 to 6 percent of T. reesei's genome appeared to be involved.

The next step is to figure out how the fungus manages the conversion so efficiently. Understanding the process could help streamline ethanol production.

"It's a really cool mystery," said Stajich.

The research is reported in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/05/09/fungus-genome-ethanol.html

or
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v26/n5/abs/nbt1403.html

 

[jsned]

Katoomer, will we ever see Midwest farmers grow switchgrass, or other cellulosic stock to make ethanol. Because from what I read if they dont Ethanol will not be the answer to the problem.

When will car manufactures build cars to run strictly on E85 not both so they will get the better gas mileage.

 

[robwbright]

Another ethanol piece - looks like even some of the dems are coming around on the insanity:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz82.html

What? Those Magic Beans Called ‘Ethanol’? Never Mind
by Vin Suprynowicz

For decades, sensible skeptics have warned that government tariffs and subsidies designed to encourage the conversion of corn to alcohol and requiring fuel distributors to mix this corrosive stuff into our gas tanks was not going to “solve the energy crisis,” reduce dependence on imported oil, or do anything helpful for “the environment” – unless by “the environment” you actually meant “the bank account of Archer-Daniels-Midland.”

If the critics failed to mention this expensive boondoggle could also promote starvation and food riots around the world, it was probably only because they were afraid of being ridiculed for “piling on.”

Guess what.

While both Congressional Democrats and Republicans were cheering a fivefold increase in mandated ethanol use as little as a year ago, and President Bush was calling the cornfuel program a key to his strategy to cut gasoline use by 20 percent by 2010, today The Great Ethanol Mandate seems to meet Count Galeazzo Ciano’s definition of an orphan. (“Victory has many fathers,” etc.)

Former “renewable fuels” champion Lester Brown now writes in the Washington Post “It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.”

“Our enthusiasm for corn ethanol deserves a second look,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., in a House hearing Tuesday.

It’s hard to believe ethanol is getting “clobbered the way it’s getting clobbered right now” over something as insignificant as some starving Africans, says longtime champion Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

What happened?

Everyone knew all along it takes 1,700 gallons of water and 51 cents in tax credits to create one gallon of ethanol from corn – at which point the stuff still can’t compete without a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff to block the importation of cheaper sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil.

Everyone has long known we use up more petroleum-based fuel in trucks and tractors and distilleries to produce and transport ethanol than it ever saves us in the tank – and that (speaking of tanks) the stuff is meantime creating unmeasured private costs by rusting out our gas tanks and fuel lines.

It’s long been clear the 30 million acres of American farmland devoted to growing corn for ethanol this year will consume almost a third of America’s corn crop – driving up prices for meats and all other grains, worldwide – while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3 percent of our total petroleum consumption. (If cattle stop eating corn, you have to feed them something else, driving up the price of other grains, even if Sen. Grassley still can’t seem to figure that out.)

In December, the Congressional Research Service warned that even if we devoted every acre of American cornfields to ethanol production – at who knows what human cost in terms of world-wide hunger and starvation – it still wouldn’t be enough to meet current arbitrary and grossly optimistic federal mandates.

In February the journal Science reported “Corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20 percent savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years. …” (Not that this really matters, since current minimal rates of global warming are mostly caused by solar activity and other natural causes, and are a good thing, anyway. More food production.)

Forests? Being bulldozed for more corn production. O, Bambi and Thumper lovers, what hast thou wrought?

Suddenly, inspired by the sight of thoroughly predictable food-price riots overseas, political candidates who were happily hopping on the ethanol bandwagon as recently as 2006 are looking for a way out. Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it may now be more important to help “people get something to eat” than to keep pushing the biofuels boondoggle up the hill.

“Corn ethanol was presented as an almost Holy Grail solution,” moaned Rep. Mike Doyle, D. Penn., this week. “But I believe its negatives today far outweigh its benefits. … We need to revisit this … and back away from the food-to-fuel policy.”

Would those be the same negatives I and the other skeptics have been warning about for years, Congressman? What did someone do in the interim, teach you simple arithmetic and Economics 101?

Meantime, the governor of Texas and 26 U.S. senators, including GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to cut in half this year’s requirement for 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol in order to ease the pressure on rising food costs.

That would be a start. But washing their hands and pretending they don’t know who gave birth to the biofuel boondoggle will not suffice. Congress needs to repeal the ethanol mandates, subsidies, and protective tariffs immediately. The congressmen need to admit they don’t know a darned thing about energy markets, and vow to stop using billions of our precious tax dollars meddling in matters they don’t understand.

Finally, investors and energy companies need to soberly review where it gets them to rush into programs that couldn’t possibly survive in the unmanipulated market, based on the promise that big federal subsidies are going to make everyone rich.

The old warning was “Remember Colorado oil shale.” The new one will now be “Remember ethanol.” But the lesson itself is the same: Depending on idiotic congressional enthusiasms is like trying to buy presents for the kids based on last year’s Christmas list. Best to double-check. By now they’ve probably outgrown the Lego set and the Chatty Cathy, and moved on.

That thing they left you holding? It’s called “the bag.”