Posted on 10/23/2007 10:20:11 AM PDT by drc43
FARGO (AP) - Work continues on three ethanol plants in North Dakota, despite a downturn in prices and the temporary shutdown of another plant.
Tharaldson Ethanol near Casselton and U.S. BioEnergy near Hankinson are to begin operations next year, to refine 100 million gallons of fuel a year from corn.
(Excerpt) Read more at bismarcktribune.com ...
In my youth I worked construction on three large sunflower processing plants in ND. One was up and running for a year or two, the other two never were in production.
It must be easier to borrow money to build a plant than it is to borrow money to run a plant.
Ethanol Madness has subsided somewhat due to reality............
So you spend 25 million, you open a plant, you get paid 54 million, you produce maybe 20 million gallons of ethanol, your subsidy gets paid (20 million times .54 cents a gallon), you don’t have to pay back any money for the ethanol you didn’t produce, since your goal is still 100 million gallons, and you close up shop so you can register your next biofuel energy company and build the next plant.
Oh, wait, your budget to build the plant was 75 million, the state gave you 25 million to build it, the county forgave your taxes for two years, etc.
It’s a never ending scam, brought to you by your tax dollars.
Don’t worry, in a couple of years from now the ethanol industry will seek a bailout from the government as a result of all the economic fallout to our economy.
more pollution than Gas. much more expensive to produce. Ethanol is a lose, lose situation.
Drill ANWR and strip mine the tar sands of Utah first.
“Ethanol Madness”
That’s an awfully long pipeline, from North Dakota to Sen. Kennedy’s office.
;^)
You forgot to mention that 1gal pure ETOH has less energy density
than the corresponding 1gal gasoline wrt/ release upon combustion.
MV
Considering that our consumption of gasoline keeps increasing, our refinery capacity is not increasing at the same rate, and our refineries are running at close to their maximum capacity, that seems like a pretty good bet.
The real questions are how soon will the price rise enough to make their business profitable, did they jump in too soon, and will some new technology make their plant obsolete before they start making a profit.
It's already available (now only on the used market)- B4 VW Jetta with a Turbo-Dieseland a manual transmission. 50 mpg x 14.5 gallon tank --> 725 miles.
Who needs a pipeline? He’ll just drive.........
But that can be dealt with via a wide variety of mechanisms, NONE of which involve OPEC.
I do not understand why THIS is not encouraged more, instead of the ethanol fiasco.
We don’t need stupid ethanol plants. We need more nuclear and coal plants.
I hope they all close down. This ethanol boom risks starving people in the third world from high food prices.
HURRAY! One third of a gallon per year for every man, woman and child in America!!! I can't wait to get mine!
That is just fron a couple plants, and the
ethanol plants in total will do over 7 billion
gal this year and much more next. Don’t believe the
crap being thrown at the ethanol industry.
And at present corn prices there is no gov
subsidy. Local tax breaks are given no matter
what type of factory or plant it is.Ed
Balony- Milk in stores is up, and local farmers are
getting less now than few years ago. Corn growers in
Mexico complained we were dumping corn, putting them out of business, as there was too much. Cotton growers
in Africa the same complaint, of too much, to cheap putting them out of business. Here our corn growers
upped acreage 15%, cotton acreage replaced a lot of
that and there is still cotton surplus. Here in my
county, central Michigan, there is 40,000 acres
of weeds that could be used for producing fuel.
Just one county. One of 50 here that could crow
extra. Any high prices of food is just a scam
by middlemen who use erronious perceptions to
stick it to you. Ed.
Most people don’t care that the US imports tons of Islamic Oil. Avoiding same takes a greater investment than to do otherwise along with a strong desire to reduce use of imported oil.
Ethanol is dead. there is a huge glut because they are making it faster than they can blend it.
Plus, BP is now going to butanol, as is ADM. They will wait till the plants go under and then buy them for a song to make butanol.
Maybe you could pedal a stationary bike all evening to charge a battery to allow you to drive (likely well under 40 mi/day) to work and avoid hooking up to the grid. Better yet, open a exercise gym and use the energy of others riding stationary bikes and treadmills to charge your battery.
Not true- Some refiners refuse to use it and out
west the refiners add only MBPT which pollutes the
water and is a carcinogin. It is made in Canada
and they sure don’t have no trouble getting it
to Cal, Nev, Ore,etc. Who could be using ethanol from our
country.Butanol isn’t any better than ethanol
and ethanol setups won’t do butanol as easy.You don’t
even have to use the E-85, just blend 10% etahnol
in all gasoline.Even though it has little less BTUs
than gas it makes the other 90% burn cleaner thus
delivering more energy.That’s what these additives are for to get cleaner burn and less air polution.
There are 4 dumbfuck brands here not using
it and two that do, and we found better milage in our
older, larger vehicles using only ethanol 10%
blends.Ed
MTBE is pretty much phased out in favor of less polluting ethanol for it’s oxygenate properties.
Understand that there are issues with ethanol. It can’t be pipelined because of it’s affinity with water, and it has a high enough vapor pressure that it can’t be blended with gas without first pulling out the hexane, pentane, and other of the more vaporous substances in gasoline. It also has only 84K BTU per gallon v. 120K BTU for gasoline.
That is why oil companies are trying to go with butanol. It can be pipelined, blended with gasoline at any ratio without vapor issues, and it’s BTU per gallon is 104K. Even if it’s slightly more expensive to produce, what it saves refiners a bundle on the transport and blending, while still having oxygenate properties and delivering more BTU’s.
The only modification you’d need to an existing ethanol plant is that the butanol has to be constantly removed as the Clostridium bacteria can’t handle it in concentrations. The fermentation process is the same.
The move to butanol from ethanol has already begun. I think you will see alot of acquisitions by the big boys of failed plants.
The problem is that there are so many ethanol plants, the price for the DDG cattle feed has hit rock bottom. So if you are in a place where you need to ship it, you can’t make any money.
We have barley enough power to keep the grid up. If there are a large amount of electric cars out there, the grid would fail.
There have been a lot of articles lately about the CHEAP price of US grain driving out the third world farmer, and thereby leading to starvation when the supply chain gets messed up. There was even a guy on NPR saying that the third world should unite and put huge tariffs on American grain to protect their own markets.
Yes, corn is up. It is now over what the price was per bushel in the 1970’s (and not much more). What other commodity is the same price range (not adjusted for inflation) for that time period?
Ethanol isn’t driving up the cost of steak and milk. If anything, it should have a slight downward price pressure (all that spent grain for feed is making cattle feed very cheap right now). But that isn’t the picture being painted by the MSM.
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