Improving Ethanol Production

A good step in the right direction assuming it is commercially realizable. Now if we could get away from using corn.

You do realize that we pay farmers not to grow corn, and have been for decades. A quick check and it looks to be in the billions of dollars per year not to grow.

There is an Canadian company located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada called " Iogen " that has perfected the use of common hay to make Ethanol so corn is not required after all.

Laserlover

There is no need to confine this technology to individual countries. It has global application. "We" need defining more concisely.

Further improvement in efficiency will come when we start thinking about industrial processes in broader terms. I'm alluding to the strategic placement of industries that allow a symbiotic sharing of resources. For example, by putting an ethanol plant next to an electric generating plant, much of the "waste heat" from the turbine exhaust could be used to distill the ethanol. Most any type of Electric Plant that uses heat to produce electricity could potentially be used (Coal, Natural Gas, Nuclear ...).

My long term preference is to have Fast Neutron Reactors generating Electricity and Hydrogen, with adjacent plants producing liquid fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. By directing the "waste energy" from one process as "input energy" to another process, the potential overall efficiency breaks free of conventional limitations.

I agree -- I think there is huge potential along those lines. Already, we have seen dramatic improvements in efficiency when this strategy is applied even on a small local scale, such as in co-generation, which can double the efficiency of an old-tech power plant. Our old habit of taking out of a process the thing we "think" we immediately "need", and letting the rest go off as waste, must change.

I get kind of disappointed when I read about smart folks suggesting co-locating ethanol and power generation plants. A tremendous , often uncounted. energy cost is directly tied to moving the 'feedstock' from the field where it grows to the fermenter. Modifying power plants to utilize 'waste heat' is impractical. Coal fired power plants will be installing mercury and particulate removal systems (maybe even CO2 removal?) and stack gases will be no hotter than required for safe exhausting.

In my opinion, the entire 'ethanol' craze is baloney. Corn is a very inefficient solar energy collector. We really need wide spread (like every home roof) low cost photo-voltaic systems.

Transportation fuels can be made from coal or oil-shale. Household energy can be supplied by solar collectors to a large degree.

I think you are being too focused on today's setup and only on ethanol as it is produced now.

Sure, it would be difficult to retrofit many current power plants to use the waste heat, but there are a lot of new ones coming. Design in the heat exchangers. For decades, power plants have been supplying steam to heat buildings in cities. The concept is not that new.

Power plants are scattered all over. Corn and other farm products are often transported by rail to points all over the world, just like coal. Surely it can't be that inefficient, especially with a little planning ahead on the location of these shared facilities.

I think liquid fuels will be around as long as man has cars, because there is no better energy density then they can achieve. Ethanol as a source of energy is at nearly "break even" partly because we burn natural gas to make it. Using "waste heat" pushes the equation far into the net-gain region. Besides, it is a great anti-knock additive for gasoline engines. Ethanol is just one possible liquid fuel that we might use.

As for coal. I think it is time to leave that dirty, high-carbon emitting, Air-Land-Water-polluting, and dangerous to mine black dirt in the ground. Build Nuclear and do it responsibly. Oil shale is even a bigger waste of effort (and natural gas) than coal.