It's simple...ethanol to run cars, nukes for everything else. We can do this now.
..ethanol to run cars, nukes for everything else. We can do this now.Some analyists point out that we don't have enough of something termed 'farmland' to produce the required ethanal; not to mention the current pipline infrastructure (national piping system) won't handle pure ethanol either ...
Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle
[the] conclusion is that corn ethanol is a net loss to the environment and in energy, and a net contributor of CO2.Corn ethanol research is funded because the farmers are a powerful lobby, not because it makes sense to grow corn for energy.Conclusions
- Excluding the restoration work of decontaminating aquifers, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, the minimum cumulative exergy consumption in restoring the environment polluted and depleted by the industrial corn-ethanol cycle is over 7 times higher than the maximum shaft work of a car engine burning the cycle's ethanol.
- This unfavorable ratio decreases to ~4, when an efficient internal combustion engine is used to burn the ethanol, and to 2.4 when an imaginary hydrogen fuel cell is used.
- The industrial corn cycle is not renewable, and is unsustainable by a wide margin (at least 2.4 -- 7.1 times).
- No process changes can make this cycle more viable.
- The annual corn-ethanol biofuel production is a human assault on geologic processes and the geologic time scale, and it can never work.
- The limiting factors, nutrient-rich humus and water that carries the dissolved nutrients to plant roots are augmented by chemicals obtained in the linear, irreversible fossil fuel-based processes.
- Over the last fifty years, corn yield has grown five-fold, mostly because of the steep increases in fertilization rate of corn fields.
- Sunlight is not a limiting factor, and could be used to great benefit if we were in less of a hurry