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Catching up on yesterday’s news, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it’s investing up to $385 million in six cellulosic ethanol plants. Cellulosic ethanol is the great green hope as an alternative to corn ethanol. That’s because it can be made from everything from fast-growing plants like switchgrass to vegetable waste to wood chips, and it produces significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than corn ethanol. A host of companies are gearing up to produce cellulosic ethanol, which involves a more complicated technological process. Among them, Range Fuels, a Colorado company backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla’s firm, Khosla Ventures. Range is scoring up to $76 million in taxpayer cash over the next four years, which does raise Green Wombat’s eyebrows given Khosla’s not infrequent criticisms of solar energy as dependent on government handouts. The cellulosic ethanol companies that won the Department of Energy money are mainly startups, but they’re backed by some big corporate players. For instance, DuPont (DD) is involved with the Broin Companies of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, while Goldman Sachs (GS) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-B) are backing Iogen Biorefinery Partners of Arlington, Virginia. Waste Management (WMI) meanwhile is investing in BlueFire Ethanol, a Southern California company. The six companies are expected to eventually produce 130 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol year.
I don’t know what the fuss is about ethenol ? has any one looked at the fact that you get less gas mileage? Is the Octane the same? 10% ethenol by sunoco has given me consistent 10% less gas mileage
lets see, which attorneys and well connected people that don’t know anything about this business are going to make the most money?
Ya..not to mention that the price difference between E85 and Unleaded Reg. is within 10-15cents per gallon. Who gives a hoot! Until they make 50cents to a buck different than reg. gas they won’t find a market. Where it is now is NOT very compelling to any consumer!
Fossil fuels are still where it’s at!
But, ethanol has a higher octane rating which today’s engine’s aren’t properly tuned to. If the engines are designed for ethanol only, the mileage will be just as good as gasoline. Today’s flex fuel vehicles are designed for gasoline, but can run on ethanol. Once engines are designed FOR ethanol, mileage will be great.
In order to produce one gallon of ethanol fuel, more than one gallon of gasoline is utilized. This makes ethanol highly inefficient economically and environmentally
Those who say bad things abouot ethanol do not take into consideration one thing: the money that you pay for ethanol stays in America, accelerates rural economies, creates internal markets, sponsors research and development, and contributes to a cleaner environment.
It does not matter that you pay more for ethanol; the development that you are contributing to create will benefit you in the long term. This is the opportunity for America to lead the world for many years; please don´t waste it.
Please don´t be so short-sighted. The wellbeing of America does not depend on my wallet having $50 more or less, it depends on so many things…and not in octane, miles per gallon, etc.
Stop sending money to terrorists countries that hate America and never have done a thing to improve the world.
Ethanol has a higher octane, which burns cleaner and produces more power compared to gas. In contradiction to common myth Ethanol production is more effienct when you add in all the by products which are just as important as desiel, and kersone when producing gas. Not to mention it is a lot cheaper to produce making it better than gas
When reg gas is above $3 this summer, I do believe that you lot won’t be whining about how cheap ethanol is.
The idea that ethanol takes more energy in fossil fuels than it produces is based on twenty year old flawed data. Go to http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/eth_energy_bal.html to read how this got confused.
Also, ethanol has less consumable energy per gallon than gasoline so the price should be cheaper to reach economic parity.
How come the gas compinies with all the profit they are making is not kicking in some money for this fuel.
Well if ethanol is 10% less efficient and cost 10% less, so there is no harm in using ethanol. It breaks even. It is cleaner, plus we are reducing our imports. Which can help in balance of trade and our trade deficit. Plus, if we produce more ethanol, it might get cheaper too.
Remember oil from Alberta, it use to be expensive and is now cheaper to produce cause of advancement in technology. You dont get up one day and say I have the best technology to do this. Its developed over a period of time. Plus if we can use waste material to produce ethanol, there is other social benefits too, arent there?
Bart Garner, I think BP is investing in some bio diesel fuel sources. Read this article it is fascinating, if this could be implemented, it be the next best thing humans have done since invention of wheel (atleast I think).
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GAFCCAB.php
It captures and reduces carbon dioxide released in atmosphere by factories and use it to make bio diesel fuel. Only problem is logistics and mass production of such fuel till now. Hopefully one day we can use this technology at every possible carbon dioxide producing factory in the world.
The argument for ethanol (and all bio-based fuels for that matter) is not about “gas” mileage or octane rating. It’s about carbon emissions. Most of the carbon emitted from burning the ethanol in your car will be removed from the atmosphere by the plants used to make more ethanol.
Personally, I wish there was more of a push for bio-diesel because diesel engines are inherently more efficient than internal combustion engines.
E85 has a higher octane than gasoline, slightly less mpg but much cheaper. For example in 1/07 in Sioux falls sd, unleaded was $2.30/gallon and E85 was $1.60/gallon. This is not a solution to all of our needs but is a start. We should do what ever it takes to quit buying oil from terroist states. This will keep the money we spend inside the us, create jobs and improve the economy. Of course it needs to compete without government help but give it some time.
Correct me if I’m wrong but another problem with ethanol is that it causes gasoline to not be able to be piped. Thus adding cost because of all the semi-trucking costs. Something to do with it absorbing water that is inherantly in pipes.
You have to llok at the big picture, this fuel is cleaner, has a higher octane rating and is renewable!
“Money stays in America” is a straw man. The energy companies have lots of places to get cheap and plentiful oil, but they are choosing to meddle in agriculture. Corn prices to consumers are skyrocketing all over the world. Just last month, 75,000 people demonstrated in Mexico City because corn and corn tortillas have increased in price between 200% and 400% over the last year. If you think foreigners hate the U.S. now, just wait another year or two. BP is NOT an American company. They take our cash while we get to hold the bag.
As someone who has experience with alcohol as a fuel I feel that I can add to this discussion. I have worked with vehicles that are designed to run on E85, E100(denatured ethanol 99.8% ethanol and .02% methanol), and M100 (100% methanol), along with regular gas grades. All of this has been with race vehicles. I like alcohol as a special purpose fuel but as a general purpose save all it sucks.
First more octane does not mean more energy. What is considered to be the octane of a fuel is actually a measure of how likely a fule is to spontaniosuly combust. A higher octane rating is less likely to combust when compressed. The higher compression an engine has the higher octane is required. Higher compression equates to better efficiency. E85 has an oncatane around 110 depending on the blend and season. Keep in mind that the max compression ratio for this octane would be around 14:1, and a regular car that rund on 87 octane has a compression ratio of 8:1. Those FFV (Flex Fuel vehicles) all accept regular 87 octane, but can lean the mixture out when running on E85.
Now on to the energy content of fuels. All of the alcohol fules have a substantially lower energy density than that of the petrolum based ones. 1 gallon of ethanol only has 60% of the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. Methanol is even worse it has half the energy. Thus to go the same distance an produce the same amount of power as 1 gallon of gas you would need to use 1.66 gallons of ethanol.
The efficency gains that can be achieved by having a higher compression ration still cannot overcome this difference in energy density. Also for the person who was compalining that the 10% ethanol blend decreased their fuel economey by 10% it sound like your car is in dire need of a tune up, you should have lost around 4%.
Ethanol is also really expensive, it is hidden from the consumer becasue it is very hevily subsudized. So the 10% cheeper at the pump is a lie, since you already paid the federal goverments for some of the cost and if you live in minnesota you also paid the state.
Now that I have finished berating alcohol fuels the reason I like them as a special purpose fuel is becasue it is possiable to get more horse power out of them. This is because eventhough it takes more fuel to get the same power it is possiable to still burn more fuel per engine cycle. Since it takes 1.6 units of ethanol to produce the same power as 1 unit of gasoline, it is possiable to compleatly burn just over 2 units of ethanol in the same time. Combine this with higher compression and you can produce some huge horse posers at the cost of consuming massive amount of fuel. This is what I am doing with one of my cars it is a 68 MG midget who’s engine originally produced 65 horse power. With the diplacement increased, other tuning, balancing, lightening, plus conversion to being able to effectivly burn the maximum amount of ethanol the engine now produces 140 horse power. The engine consumes almost 3 times the fuel, but is a fun ride.
Today, ethanol is heavily subsidized by the US and state gov’ts. On average 50 cents a gallon. It is not economically viable. Longer term of course it could be one piece of the puzzle to becoming more energy independent. However, I would be putting my money on Nuclear. Japan gets 70% and France 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. No greenhouse emissions and today’s designs are miles ahead and much safe than those of the 3 mi island type. Switching to nuclear could eliminate dozens of high emission coal and natural gas plants in use today. That same natural gas could easily be used in autos as it is in Europe. The answers are there but they take time, money, and some tradeoffs.
With all the fuss being paid to the production of ethanol, what about more research into developing hydrogen powered vehcles.
Are you serious about hydrogen? Oh my.
You all complain about the subsidies for ethanol…..I wonder what a gallon of gasoline really costs……….how many US soldiers lives, air craft carriers in the gulf to safely transport that liquid gold, etc. How much does the US government subsidize oil? Lets compare apples to apples. I grant you that ethanol from corn kernels is pretty damn inefficient so this cellulosic ethanol plants are going in the right direction.
This is a typical government handout to the rich. Wealthy influential people/companies, buy control of a start up and then have the little start up get the money since it would look unseemly for the gov. to hand out that kind of cash to companies like shell. So for these companies, it is “heads I win tails you lose”. If it works they are rich (er) and if it doesn’t then little of their own money was used.
At least this abuse of the taxpayer may eventually lead to a reduction in greenhouse gasses so it isn’t all bad. Still it is another window into how the government in our land of the free/hone of the brave operates.
Of course switching the whole country to bio diesel requires no new tech advances, just the will to push diesel cars. But, and it’s a big one, bio diesel can be made in your garage. Big companies don’t want the competition. At least ethanol leaves control of the fuel supply in the hands of the powerful. Like our government wants.
I would have given you permission to use my photo if you had asked!! Asking would have been nice. Also using the other coding to link back to Flickr would have been within your obligation to Flickr.