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FWIW - Natural Gas is cheaper today than it was two years ago costing about 40% of what it did at a peak cost last year....
Grateful11 Wrote:
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> Just read an article in "Successful Farming" about
> Ethanol.
> One of the problems now is that it takes a
> boatload of
> Natural Gas to process it and it's really high
> right now. At
> least the byproduct of it can be eaten by
> livestock.
>
>
> Here's some excellent articles on it, some are in
> pdf form:
>
>
>
> Grateful11
>
>
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I'd love to see some source articles with the science about why ethanol is not good... see a lot of talk, but no source backup in the articles negative on it.
As for Ethanol being break even... that's really not true. The refineries today must be more efficient from where that article was published from.
It made more sense for Brazil since they usually have good annual productions of Sugar, which saves an energy intensive step vs. the conversion from starch to sugars starting from corn. That bateria 'powered' cellulose solution looks extremely promising, btw.
As for how well cars can run on Ethanol - well, if the engine is designed to support it - just as well as it would run with straight gas. Ethonal has less stored energy per gallon, so need more to go the same distance - but that doesn't make it a bad thing necessarily and emission comparisons are mile for mile driven, not gallon for gallon consumed since it's how much energy consumed vs. result that is at issue.
Also - Indy Cars run on 100% Ethanol.... doesn't seem to hold them back.
Ethanol is basically the same thing of alcholic beverages - whereas the chemicals in a small quantity of gasoline will kill you if consumed.
Still got a lot more to read up on both sides of the Ethanol and E85 option.
sscutchen Wrote:
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> Badard's article has a lot of good stuff in it.
>
> Ethanol is FAR from a "green" fuel. The
> evaporative emissions from ethanol-laced gasoline
> are a huge detriment in places like LA. And the
> combustion byproducts are nasty. Formaldehyde was
> already mentioned.
>
> Also, ethanol is hydroscopic. It wants to go into
> any free water phase. And gasoline distribution
> systems are wet. So ethanol cannot be mixed at
> the refinery or even in the tanks at the
> terminals. It has to be mixed into the tank truck
> just before delivery So the logistics are a real
> pain.
>
> Finally, ethanol provides basically no relief from
> oil. The energy required to produce ethanol from
> corn is basically break-even.
>
> What ethanol has going for it is the agriculture
> lobby. That's it.
>
> The real sad thing that's happened is the removal
> of MTBE. It is a very high octane fuel with a low
> vapor pressure. This give refiners the ability to
> add higher RVP stocks to their gasoline pools,
> whtih increases the gasoline from oil yield. And
> 36% of MTBE comes from Methanol, which in turn
> comes from natural gas. So it makes a great way
> to add natural gas to the gaoline pool. And it has
> been shown in the real world to improve air
> quality compared to gasoline or especially
> ethanol/gasoline.
>
> Unfortunately, many underground gasoline storage
> tanks, especially in older gas stations, were
> leaking, and this caused MTBE to leak into the
> environment. There were already federal and state
> programs in place to require and pay for fixing
> the storage tanks. And gasoline is leaking
> regardless of whether MTBE is a component or not.
> But the agriculture lobby wanted to get ethanol
> into gasoline in place of MTBE, and they got the
> wedge issue they needed politically.
>
> Even the oil industry helped. They wanted to end
> all oxygenates in gasoline... MTBE, Ethanol, all
> of it. They want all of gasoline to come from
> oil. Tighter supplies. Higher oil to gasoline
> content. Higher prices and oil yields. Much
> higher profits. They saw the risk that high
> prices would drop demand. But it hasn't so far.
> So they are pushing hard.
>
> MTBE, OTOH, is huge overseas. Europe loves it.
> They have very tight standards for underground
> storage tanks, and no leak issues. Germany
> subsidizes ETBE... where ethanol substitutes for
> methanol. Low vapor pressure. It gets away from
> all of the bad issues with Ethanol, but still gets
> Ethanol into the gasoline pool. But it is not
> allowed in the MTBE-prohibited states in the US.
>
> The US is actually cross-shipping MTBE to Europe
> for gasoline blending stock. That's just stupid.
>
>
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