Okay, I’ll read it but if I don’t like it I’m coming back to demand a full refund....
It takes more oil to produce ethanol than it does to produce its gasoline equivalent. If biofuels were the better deal, there would be no need for subsidies.
....and drumroll please.....
(snip of above below)
“So, where did the claim that ethanol is more energy efficient originate? I believe it originates with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, who developed a model (GREET) that is used to determine the energy inputs to turn crude oil into products (4). Since it will take some amount of energy to refine a barrel of crude oil, by definition the efficiency is less than 100% in the way they measured it. For example, if I have 1 BTU of energy, but it took .2 BTUs to turn it into a useable form, then the efficiency is 80%. This is the kind of calculation people use to show that the gasoline efficiency is less than 100%. However, ethanol is not measured in the same way. Look again at the example from the USDA paper, and lets do the equivalent calculation for ethanol. In that case, we got 98,333 BTUs out of the process, but we had to input 77,228 to get it out. In this case, comparing apples to apples, the efficiency of producing ethanol is just 21%. Again, gasoline is about 4 times higher.
OK, so Argonne originated the calculation. But are they really at fault here? Yes, they are. Not only did they promote the efficiency calculation for petroleum products with their GREET model, but they have proceeded to make apples and oranges comparisons in order to show ethanol in a positive light. They have themselves muddied the waters. Michael Wang, from Argonne, (and author of the GREET model) made a remarkable claim last September at The 15th Annual Symposium on Alcohol Fuels in San Diego (5). On his 4th slide , he claimed that it takes 0.74 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of ethanol, but 1.23 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of gasoline. That simply can’t be correct, as the calculations in the preceding paragraphs have shown.
Not only is his claim incorrect, but it is terribly irresponsible for someone from a government agency to make such a claim. I don’t know whether he is being intentionally misleading, but it certainly looks that way. Wang is also the co-author of the earlier USDA studies that I have critiqued and shown to be full of errors and misleading arguments. These people are publishing articles that bypass the peer review process designed to ferret out these kinds of blatant errors. I suspect a politically driven agenda in which they are putting out intentionally misleading information.
One of the reasons I haven’t written this up already, is that 2 weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Wang bringing this error to his attention. I immediately got an auto-reply saying that he was out of the office until March 31st. I have given him a week to reply and explain himself, but he has not done so. Therefore, at this time I must conclude that he knows the calculation is in error, but does not wish to address it. In the interim, ethanol proponents everywhere are pushing this false information in an effort to boost support for ethanol.
Look at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture claim again: "the energy yield of ethanol is (1.34/0.74) or 81 percent greater than the comparable yield for gasoline". If the energy balance was really this good for ethanol and that bad for gasoline, why would anyone ever make gasoline? Where would the economics be? Why would ethanol need subsidies to compete? It should be clear that the proponents in this case are promoting false information.”
Oil has topped $125 per barrel. and the real answer is to start drilling within view of fancy neighborhoods and in animal reserves.
And it does take far more in total resources to make ethanol than ethanol is worth.
But first, the bad news about ethanol. Ethanol fires are evidently harder to control than gasoline fires.
Ethanol fires hard to controlHopefully, ways will be found to make controlling ethanol fires easier.
On the brighter side concerning ethanol, there's now evidence that people might get as much, or more, bang per buck for their gas dollars with gas / ethanol mixtures.
Gas-competitive gas / ethanol mixturesAlso, I was surprised by the introduction of a machine for making home-made ethanol.
EFUEL100But watch out for fines for violating biofuel regulations.
Fines for violating biofuel regulationsFinally, progress is being made in the development of non-corn ethanol production.
Non-corn ethanol
Nothing that promotes bio-fuels is balanced nor researched.
By themselves, bio-fuels are all harmful to the engine. Ethyl alcohol is highly hydroscopic, and thus promotes rust and corrosion throughout the engine, and causes many soft parts to prematurely fail. Bio-diesel represents a total rejection of all of the advantages of a diesel engine. Regular diesel fuel is an excellant upper engine lubricant, which permits a properly maintained engine to last 500,000 miles or more without major repair, but all forms of bio-diesel deposit massive amounts of varnish throughout the upper cylinder and pistons, reducing their life to 150,000 miles under the best of conditions, and more likely 80-90,000 miles in urban conditions.
All bio-fuels are also quite acidic in combustion.
The final blow is also well known now, as the world prices of grains have escalated, and deaths due to food battles are mounting. This can only get worse.
Bio-fuels are the far-left’s craziest idea yet.
” Flex-fuel cars get a 20-percent tax break at purchase and an approximately $1500 rebate.”
So every body else gets to pay for cars they don’t own?
Good post.
Bottom line for me?
Corn belongs on your dinner plate, not your gas tank.
[singing] Goin’ to surf city...