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Ethanol - OptimisticOwl - 05-07-2006 04:24 PM
Ethanol has been presented as a partial solution to our oil problems. Today I saw an article(Fort Worth Star-Telegram) saying that because of the high usage of water in the ethanol processing, that it may turn out that we are better off in the long run saving the water and using the oil. Water is becoming imcreasing scarse and valuable in large areas of our country, including the prime corn growing areas.
Opinions, anybody?
- Fanatical - 05-07-2006 07:09 PM
Couldn't we change the water used for the processing?
There are oceans.
Re: Ethanol - ZippyRulz - 05-07-2006 07:38 PM
OptimisticOwl Wrote:Water is becoming imcreasing scarse and valuable in large areas of our country, including the prime corn growing areas.
Opinions, anybody?
Sounds like bullcrap to me. Water is scarce in dry, high-population centers like Phoenix and L.A. Those are not the prime corn growning areas. Texas is an oil-producing state...perhaps they're afraid of some competition.
- OptimisticOwl - 05-07-2006 07:59 PM
For many yearsI have heard have the environmentalists warn us that the aquifers which supply much of the water for the southwest are dwindling. I don't know about east of the Mississippi, but most of the area west of it has limited water supply, and not just the cities. My understanding is that the ethanol process uses large quantities of water in the processing. I don't know what part of that would be recoverable. But there could be environmental impacts from high water usage that could possibly be greater than the environmental impacts of drilling. As for using the oceans, if the cost of desalination was low enough, we would already be processing them to provide fresh water where needed. Like many other things, it may be feasible only when the demand pushes the price to a certain level.
- niuhuskie84 - 05-07-2006 08:02 PM
if anyone watched it, there was a bit on 60 minutes about ethanol fuel tonight.
- ZippyRulz - 05-07-2006 09:09 PM
I guess the obvious solution in my mind is to produce the ethanol in areas where there's lots of corn and water like the Great Lakes region, which is exactly what is happening from what I've read. Water does not get destroyed by using it. Waste water is treated to remove contaminants, then goes back to the evironment where it evaporates, turns to rain and is used again. If this were not the case we would have run out of water a long time ago. The oil companies make more profit by limiting production and charging higher prices so there's no incentive to increase supply, making the use of alternative fuels more and more necessary.
- Tulsaman - 05-07-2006 09:32 PM
Taking the Salt of the ocean water would negate any benefits it would make because of the sheer cost of Desalinization.
- RobertN - 05-07-2006 10:49 PM
ZippyRulz Wrote:I guess the obvious solution in my mind is to produce the ethanol in areas where there's lots of corn and water like the Great Lakes region, which is exactly what is happening from what I've read. Water does not get destroyed by using it. Waste water is treated to remove contaminants, then goes back to the evironment where it evaporates, turns to rain and is used again. If this were not the case we would have run out of water a long time ago. The oil companies make more profit by limiting production and charging higher prices so there's no incentive to increase supply, making the use of alternative fuels more and more necessary.
Or don't use corn. One other problem with corn is that it it takes a lot of energy to produce. Use other crops such as sugar, which is used in Brazil used may be better. They produce the ethanol and the wastes are used to power the plant that produces it. Corn ethanol is not the answer long term but a good start in reducing our ME reliance until hydrogen is ready.
- OptimisticOwl - 05-08-2006 12:19 AM
Brazil just became free of dependence on foreign oil. Switching to ethanol was a part of their plan, but not all of it. Part of it was increasing their domestic oil production.
They are not free of foreign dependence for all their energy needs - they import a lot of natural gas. Some of that comes from Bolivia, where the new president is nationalizing the oil and gas fields. I understand the biggest producer at risk of losing their investment is PetroBras.
Brazil uses sugar cane for their ethanol production, a plentiful crop down there. I wonder, though, how many acres of rain forest have been cleared to plant sugar cane to meet this growing demand. As for water, I doubt that is a problem for Brasil, as the whole Amazon basin is available to them and their population is small compared to their land area.
Yes, water is not destroyed in the process, but not 100% is returned to whence it came. The aquifers and rivers will still see a net drain. Another unknown(to me) is the byproducts of cleansing the used water. Is this stuff that can be safely returned to the environment or used productively otherwise? Or will we end up with toxic dumps for it? I don't know, if any of you know, please share the knowledge.
All this has a cost, both in dollars and effects to the environment. Seems we ought to know what these are before we start a movement for ethanol that might be worse for us in the long run.
BTW, I don't have a dog in this fight. If ethanol production and use is the best way to go, I'm all for it, if not, then I'm not. I just want to find out the facts, because i see a growing number of people advocating a massive switch to ethanol without an understanding of what it entails.
- I45owl - 05-08-2006 10:47 AM
Reference: Billion Ton Vision (without comment from Better Biofuels):
Quote:About a year ago, the Department of Energy released a study (large .pdf file) suggesting that the United States could sustainably produce 1.38 billion tons of biomass annually for conversion into fuels. "If all of the sugar from this biomass is utilized, it could supply 40 billion gallons of fuel a year," says Stephanopoulos. Even if the DOE number is inflated, he says, biofuels could make a major difference in the United States, which currently consumes 110 billion gallons of liquid fuel each year.
I listened to a podcast interview of George Olaf (a Nobel Laureate at USC), who is a big proponent of Methanol as an energy source (vs. gasoline, ethanol, others). Amongst the advantages that he cited for use of Methanol over other alternatives:
- Better properties for transportation than Hydrogen
- Side effect of production is/can be removal of carbon from the atmosphere
- versatile - can be used in flex engines (or regular gas engines ?!?)
- works as a transportation mechanism for energy - creation of methanol may require nuclear or other large-scale energy source, but makes "transporting energy" more practical.
[/list:u]
I haven't done additional research on anything he said, nor can I coherently relate his ideas, but I was pretty impressed with his reasoning and credentials. Perhaps someone could fill in the blanks and make corrections to anything I've screwed up...
Another very interesting article (not directly related) that I've read recently was from the MIT Technology Review that discussed the fact that (most) Hybrid vehicles don't promise to pay for themselves as long as gas is under $4. MIT has developed a turbocharged engine that uses ethanol as a catalyst (perhaps not really the right word). The engine requires two fuel tanks - one for gas, one for ethanol. You'd have to fill up on Ethanol at about the same maintenance cycle as replacing your oil. The gas mileage is comparable to Hybrids. They expect production by about 2010 - the extra cost is about $500-1000 vs. $4700 (?) for Hybrid engines...
edits: actually read the linked article
- OptimisticOwl - 05-08-2006 12:14 PM
What exactly is methanol?
As for hydrogen, when I hear that all I think is Hindenburg. probably irrational, but the buying public is often irrational.
- SouthGAEagle - 05-08-2006 12:32 PM
OptimisticOwl Wrote:What exactly is methanol?
Methanol is methyl alcohol. Ethanol is ethyl alcohol..... now, what does that mean? It's simply counting the number of carbon atoms in the molecule:
Methanol (1 carbon):
![[Image: ch3oh.gif]](http://www.chem.purdue.edu/gchelp/molecules/ch3oh.gif)
Ethanol (2 carbons):
![[Image: ch3ch2oh.gif]](http://www.chem.purdue.edu/gchelp/molecules/ch3ch2oh.gif)
The next in the series would be Propanol (3 carbons)...
![[Image: propanol.gif]](http://library.thinkquest.org/C005377/content/images/propanol.gif)
One form of that is isopropyl alcohol.... aka "rubbing alcohol." Ethanol is "grain alcohol" (drinking kind) and Methanol is "wood alcohol"
- Bourgeois_Rage - 05-08-2006 12:34 PM
Quote:As for hydrogen, when I hear that all I think is Hindenburg.
You're right, that is probably irrational. Many experts think that the reason the Hindenburg was so dramic was not the hydrogen, but instead it was the materials that the Zeppelin was made of that created the intense fireball.
Let me ask you this, are you worried about the gasoline that you tote around every day?
- 99Tiger - 05-08-2006 12:46 PM
A series of random comments.
I don't know anything about the nature of the constituents in the wastewater from the refining process. If it's easily treatable, then a solution would be to disallow once-through practices and force wastewater reclaimation. If the water is not treatable for a reasonable amount of $$$ (the driving force behind all of this) then ethanol production can beome a burden on other natural resources.
Just about everywhere west of the Mississippi has water problems of various natures. The plains states aren't really as suited for agriculture and people think. The original name for the area known as Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, etc. was the "Great American Desert". It wasn't a desert as most think of them with sand dunes, but by the fact that not much grew there other than prarie grasses. The agriculture that developed there was based strongly on pumping of groundwater, which isn't an entireably renewable resource.
When settlers first moved to the midwest, there was excessive rainfall, which made it easy to grow stuff, however, that was an anomaly (sp?) and not the norm.
The materials in the Zeppelin certainly contributed to its grand demise; but the fact is it was the hydrogen that ignited and if there weren't restrictions that disallowed the sale of helium to Germany, it wouldn't have happened.
Desal is expensive, but I don't know if the cost would be prohibitive for refining ethanol. I guess it all depends on to what level you have to remove ions.
I wonder if it would be feasible to use the wastewater (treated obviously, but maybe to a lesser extent) as a water source for irrigation of cropland.
Water is being fought over tooth-and-nail as we speak...and it's even hitting some of the "water-rich" eastern states.
- GrayBeard - 05-08-2006 12:51 PM
Water is going to be a huge problem. Acquifers are drying up on the East Coast as well, which means we will have to turn to Surface Water eventually, and that has all been polluted so it must be treated.
- OptimisticOwl - 05-08-2006 01:00 PM
Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:Quote:As for hydrogen, when I hear that all I think is Hindenburg.
You're right, that is probably irrational. Many experts think that the reason the Hindenburg was so dramic was not the hydrogen, but instead it was the materials that the Zeppelin was made of that created the intense fireball.
Let me ask you this, are you worried about the gasoline that you tote around every day?
Let me preface my remarks by saying I realize that there is a large measure of irrationality involved. My feeling is that hydrogen will be a little harder sell to the American public just because of that irrationality. I have seen gasoline explosions, both live and on TV, but my life experience (involving at least 11 accidents) tells me that the likelihood of me being burned up in an auto accident are small. It is kind of like airplane crashes - I don't worry about them, even though they are possible. I have no background, in life or movies, with ethanol or methanol explosions. Hydrogen - we have all seen the Hindenburg footage. It combines the worst of two worlds - fire and and an aircraft crash. Another association is the H-bomb. So I think that before hydrogen powered vehicles get wide acceptance, there will need to be a heavy PR campaign to get people to believe they are no more dangerous than gasoline engines. Ethanol and methanol, oh the other hand, sound like just different types of gas - not much different than premium unleaded.
My agrument is not that hydrogen is/will be less safe( I have no idea), just that it will have to overcome an image - and the poster child for that image is the Hindenburg. If hydrogen use becomes a debate, look for the Hindenburg to be on posters and placards.
- SouthGAEagle - 05-08-2006 02:08 PM
Well, we could always call it Protium.
Oh... someone beat me to the punch... http://www.protiumenergy.com/
- blah - 05-08-2006 02:29 PM
SouthGAEagle Wrote:Well, we could always call it Protium.
Oh... someone beat me to the punch... http://www.protiumenergy.com/
Well there is still Deutrium and Tritium, so there are more than enough isotopes to go around...
- OptimisticOwl - 05-08-2006 03:19 PM
niuhuskie84 Wrote:if anyone watched it, there was a bit on 60 minutes about ethanol fuel tonight.
I had it on DVR, but just now watched it.
Showed an ethanol plant in Iowa. Dan Rather made a point of telling us that the clouds of smoke issuing from the plant were steam, not pollutants. But apparently a lot of the water is released as steam.
the ethanol factory was described as a big still. The corn mash is distilled down to beer, then eventually to ethanol. Since it is a liquid, another share of the water goes into your car, to be released back into the atmosphere from your exhaust. It was not shown how much, if any water was not used up in either steam or product.
They are working on ways to make ethanol from cellulose, thus making it even cheaper. Imagine, weeds as a cash crop.
Rather asked an expert if this was the best alternative. The expert sidestepped the answer, saying it was a good one and was available now. He also said it would have a marginal positive effect on greenhouse gas emmissions.
Rather failed to mention the part about Brazil pushing their domestic oil exploration/production, making it seem as though their independence from foreign oil was entirely the result of ethanol.
Only about 5 million of 133 million cars in America are FlexFuel cars. Only 615 stations currently sell E-85.
- JTiger - 05-08-2006 03:25 PM
OptimisticOwl Wrote:What exactly is methanol?
As for hydrogen, when I hear that all I think is Hindenburg. probably irrational, but the buying public is often irrational.
What do you think gasoline is? It's another flammable material.
It is quite irrational to always link hydrogen with the Hindenburg. Just think if it was filled with gasoline.