Which Technology will Win the Race to the Pump?

We already have biodiesel as a standard item at all of the major fuel stations.

So what race it there if it already in place and where is my local biodiesel coming from now?

Oh wait, I am the customer and I actually don't care about how or where it comes from just as long as it works in what I use it in and it is cheaper than regular diesel.

Right on.

Pumps pump, inside the bowser the same pump pumps petrol and diesel now. The only difference is diesel pumps don't need to be maintained to Flameproof (Exd) standards which petrol and alcohol pumps do. Reality sets in though and all pumps get overhauled and specified to the most arduous duty for simplicity (lack of mistakes), lowest cost and maxmum safety.

Price and availably will win. I'm far less concerned with what pumps will be used to move the product. I want to know what raw source will be used and how many resources will be used such as land, water, etc. will be used in production. Ethanol from corn is a complete boondoggle. It achieved a spike in corn prices because there is less for us and feedstock. The price shot up, which is EXACTLY what the farm lobby wanted in the first place. I for one do not want a product that competes with existing food stocks. All you're doing is price shifting. And of course its awfully hard to grow the amounts we need to supply The American public and their lead feet. A few years ago I read a study that found that if every field in the country was used only to grow corn for ethanol (no food) that it would only yield 10-12% of our annual consumption. At this point I think at best alternative fuels will augment our supplies, not completely replace them.

According to the experts this is where the annual US corn crop goes.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that of the 13 billion bushels of field corn produced last year, 36 percent was used as feed for domestic livestock (beef, pork, poultry), 31 percent was used for ethanol (also resulting in 1.5 billion bushels of distiller grains, a byproduct of ethanol production that is used as livestock feed), 14 percent was exported to other countries (Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan and Egypt are the top recipients), 9 percent was used for human food, seed and industrial use, and 11 percent was carried over as a surplus.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/001849-corn-crop-2010-food-fuel-feed-and-folk-art

I can't find anything definitive about how much of the corn is converted into ethanol

I have seen figures around 20% becoming ethanol & 80% distillers grains

this would make the figure for corn being used to produce ethanol less than 10%

The distillers waste being preferred to straight corn as feed...

Well, no, but rotgut is eminently "wastable" as fuel!

(Stinky Pete might dissent from this snooty view.)

The conversion yields around 2.8 gallons per bushel with the rest of the bulk remains going into animal feed. A Bushel is considered to be equivalent to 9.3 liquid gallons so thats yielding about a 30% conversion to ethanol by volume.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_corn_is_required_to_produce_a_gallon_of_ethanol

One of the things most people against ethanol production from corn do not realize or admit to is that its not human food grade corn that they use or that the larger bulk of what gets processed still passes on into many forms of animal feed and nutritional supplement applications which means is not being wasted as they would like everyone to believe.

In a way its very much like the wind power opposer's who state that a wind farm uses up 50 square miles of land. Well yes it does but that does not mean its not usable for anything else productive at the same time.

Righto--corn don't care about the whap-whap-whap of turbine blades, and every crow that gets whacked is just gravy!

Put mini-turbines in their salad spinners, and let them complain about why they slow down so fast? ΣE = 0, but some people never learn....

The math is a little fuzzy

It doesn't matter if it's livestock or people corn

the point remains a majority of the corn remains in the foodchain

the oil could be extracted prior to fermenting for biodiesel

The oil doesn't help in the ethanol, but does in animal feed :D

I'd be a bit skeptical, even though it might all seem to work out well, that the part of the grain that is removed for the ethanol production also removes some things that the livestock might need to stay healthy. Or maybe it's the other way around. I've heard that cattle raised of off their natural plant diets tend to be sickly and have trouble making it two years needed before being turned to meat.

the distillers grain is actually easier for the cows to digest & helps them put on weight more rapidly.

many of the ethanol plants are operated by cattlemen as a way to get this source of feed for cheap

This is a hidden subsidy, that doesn't get discussed much

Given the ability of the ethanol production byproducts to be used for animal feed and currently about 42.5% of the annual corn crop going directly to animal feed where as 32% of it gets used for fuel production before being returned to the market as animal feed I don't see where a more than doubling of ethanol production would be a bad thing or a stretch of the usage of corn simply by running that 42.5% of corn that normally goes directly for animal feed through the ethanol production proses first.

Or is this just too obvious and simple to make sense?

Don't forget the increase in Yield :D

This is thread is just one more example of how having too large of percentage of the population having so little basic knowledge of and about how the things they buy and use are produced brought to the markets and what goes on along the way creates problems that don't actually exist.

isn't "compression", the best way to ignite fuel for our cars.? The old spark plug idea has run it's course i think. (it makes carbon deposits and the "explosion", which destroys the engine) A good 4 cylinder turbo, high performance engine, running on "bio diesel" is a very efficient way to get from A to B., or for that matter, make steam, or pump water, or run an arbor, etc.

In cold climates the car has to be modified a bit to run properly.