10% Ethanol

Another interesting point is that approximately 35% of corn crop in the USA is used in ethanol production............while world grain stocks are at a 30 year low and prices are at historic highs.

In 2 years the corn futures price has jumped from $2,40 up to $4,80 per bushel and I believe it is also causing problems in feedstock for cattle and poultry.....................I also believe that quite a bit of the credit for this situation belongs to Mr Bush.

Hi MOBI.

I have said for years that if they use corn or other grain products to produce fuel then we would see their prices as food products go up! I said this on this forum only last year, but I was told not to be silly. You do not need a crystal ball to see this one, but as usual the ordinary man in the street ignores the dire warnings!

I have no problem with ethanol as a fuel, but why use valuable and important foodstuffs as the initial product?

Spencer.

Too true. Especially when it is well known, that at this point in time, sugar cane is the way to go................but let's grow more corn.................stuff the sugar cane.

Good thinking George!!!!!!

LaTourneau's has made electric wheeled log loaders for a long time. You are right, they are very effieicent. A little bit of maintence on the electric drivers, but over all very durable. They have back-orders stacked up with deliveries out three years or more. I think the savings in fuel over straight diesel is is about 10 to 12 %. This is not chicken feed for a machine about the size and weight of a small house.

I also heard about an ex-navy mechanic who converted a semi-truck to electic drivers. He used spare navy parts, and powers the drivers with a 5 cyl turbo charged diesel. The parts would cost $100,000.00 on the open market, but he bought them surplus. He can pass anyone on the freeway. I think we can spawn new industries and save oil at the same time.

Think

In SA we are making fuel from coal. It is going well and it do decrease our oil imports quite drastically. The fuel was mixed with other fuels but lately a lot of dedicated garages were opened.

I am OK with some fuel made from surplus maize / corn as it will provide income for marginal farmers in our arid situation. But i realize market forces will upset the balance and food supplies will decrease and prises will increase.

The SA government did not approve fuel from maize projects but approved fuel from sugar. Our expansion possibilities for growing sugar is however limited. Price hikes in sugar will follow.

Oil supply will eventually fail and the world must desperately work on alternatives.

The position of oil producers must be understood - Having oil left over when switching over to something else would be a waste. They seems to do everything towards that goal.

Has any one had a look at the irrigation schemes at Jabal Tuwaya in Saudi Arabia? Where they are pumping water from 1200m to irrigate (guessed) more than 80000 ha.

This area under sugar or something could produce quite a handsome volume of fuel.

You are making a very intersting point, Hendrik, about the oil companies not wanting to have anything left they could have sold. Also, interesting that the Saudis are planting corn....

What I am missing so far in the thread is any statements about increasing the fuel efficiences of cars, and getting rid of gas guzzlers. Is that still the sacred cow that cannot be touched?

And how about:

Improving public transportation?

Turning the engine of when waiting and not sitting and idling?

NOT using remote starters to preheat the car on cold days?

It is decadent to grow food products so we can drive cars. What was it again that preceeded the downfall of the Roamn empire? Decadence?

And then of course, there is the huge potential in savings in the building industry. Residential homes with 2x4s and batt insulation in between should not be built at all anymore except in really moderate climates.

I could go on and on...we have a long way to go and I do believe that where there is a will, there is a way. Some are willing, not enough yet....

Christiane: thanks for the nice lecture. Maybe you haven't seen the new Hybrid trucks and SUV's being manufactured? How about the new Hybrid cars? How about the new little electric cars?

Would you favor nuclear as a bridge to the future? Most of the nuclear waste is being recycled now. Alernatives are fine, bring them on, but we need a bridge, as we develop new technologies.

Sorry to preach, but there are millons of man hours being spent on all these issues.

I definitely support nuclear power, but the US seems to be decommissioning nuclear power plants and burying their waist in Yucca Mountain... One of the few times you will ever hear me say, "Why can't we be more like France?"

<...It is decadent to grow food products so we can drive cars...>

Interesting comment. Kicking it around:

Food products fuelled transport prior to the nineteenth century, which is a form of solar energy (think about it - sunshine/photosynthesis → oats → horse, or sunshine/photosynthesis → wood → steam → locomotion as a late development). That's called the short carbon cycle.

It's only the machines built since then that have gorged on the planet's dwindling fossil fuel reserves, which is called the long carbon cycle.

Everything is renewable. It's only a question of timescale. For modern-day renewable fuels it is, at most, a few tens of years. For fossil fuels, it's tens of millions.

The idea of a short carbon cycle is true for natural processes. Historical outliers are best described by an abundance of wild fires where co2's concentration in the atmosphere had increased. The idea that corn crops sequester any amount of carbon is at best a theory. The most accurate measurement of any terrestrial sequestering of carbon has been done by woods hole where it was suggested to be negligible. Tilling of fields, fertilizing of crops and large scale burning of bio fuels will actually have a larger impact on co2 concentrations in the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels. The only advantage is that bio-fuels offset the life expectancy of accessible fossil fuels. The true devil's advocate to the Kyoto protocol has received too much fame. Stop burning, start building wind turbines, better solar panels and better fuel cells so that we can harness the power of electricity.

I see that ethanol is a plausible fuel but it is almost always mixed with gasoline. I have an equal fear of irreversible global climate trends that are only amplified by the use of bio-fuels. I'm surprised no one brought up the idea of using cellulose such as saw dust to make bio-fuels. It seems as if everyone's only concerns are profit and available crops to feed the nation. What about our dependency on oil? What about the melting of the ice-caps...? It seems to me that my ideas of revolutionizing the industry will be left unheard until our oceans flood with glacial waters and the sea level rises flooding vast part of our population and devastating our harbors.

Greetings All, Ethanol, as a fuel has excellent properties. It also has dire problems. When burned directly (not as E-85, or any other mixture with gasoline) it produces the burn time of 116 octane gasoline. The multi-million dollars cars at the Indianapolis 500 burn methanol and use castor oil for lubrication. That is how an engine under 5.0 liters produces over 700 bhp.

The problems stem from the fact that if you take into consideration that energy necessary to bring ethanol or any alchohol to production as fuel, you are using between three and five times the energy that you gain. Plus the "carbon footprint" is quite large.

However there is a viable and cheap alternative: hydrogen. Not a "fuel cell". The price range for an automotive fuel cell ranges from $385,000 (Honda) to $493,000 (GM).

Hydrogen can be produced from water on demand. Not stored. As needed. A unique process allows sufficient hydrogen and oxygen to power ANY vehicle produced in the vehicle. I refer you to the work of Stanley Meyer.

Dragon

Hi Dragonsfarm.

It takes an awful amount of energy to produce the hydrogen quantities needed to power an IC engine! First you have to produce electricity, there are many ways to do this, but no matter how you do it, it means there is going to be some initial polution? Here in the UK and Europe we are leaning towards more and more cars powered by electricity, but to charge their batteries makes an awful amount of polution in one way or another.

I believe that until some one comes up with a better solution we the public must make less use of our personel transport, we must start to use more public transport. To be able to do this, our governments must get a grip on themselves and produce a viable intergrated public transport policy!

Personally I gave up my car in 2000 and now use only public transport, you cannot believe the savings I have made because of this. But not only that, public transport uses less energy = less polution!!!

I also believe that everybody who lives in or around a city, should be made to use public transport only to get around during the working week! Radical thinking, maybe, but the general public must understand that we cannot go on like we are doing.

Spencer.