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To: thackney
A 10% reduction in the use of oil from the Middle East would be a significant dent.

All you would ever want to know about ethanol here -

http://www.ethanol.org/documents/EthanolFAQs_000.pdf
(PDF)

Their main website -
http://www.ethanol.org

25 posted on 04/25/2006 3:16:36 PM PDT by ajolympian2004
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To: ajolympian2004

From your links:

one bushel of corn yields 2.8 gallons of ethanol.

35,000 BTUs to create a gallon of ethanol gallon of ethanol contains 77,000 BTUs

From http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Energy_Equivalents.htm
One gallon regular Gasoline contains 114,100 BTUs

So it takes 7.6 bushels of corn to equal the energy of one gallon of gasoline.

According to http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/field/pcp-bban/cropan04.txt
142 bushels per acre is a good estimate.

One acre of land then can produce the equvalent of 1,080 gallons or 25.7 barrels.

Let us use barrels of gasoline equal to garrels of crude. An average barrel of crude is made into lots of products, but if you want to replace a portion of the middle east imports, the remaining amount can be made into the other products we use.

from http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm
we import about 2 billion barrels of oil from OPEC last year
10% is 200 million

That is 7,780,000 acres of land not in crop production today.

Do you believe that is a reasonable amount of land we could acquire? And what happens in a drought? Also growing ethanol from corn is a batch process. You will need storage for a lot of that ethanol, at least 150 million barrels, maybe?

For 2000 acres, ANWR would produce nearly twice this amount of oil.


31 posted on 04/25/2006 4:08:59 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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