Yeah, but they sure make you feel better!
Posted on 01/31/2006 5:29:57 AM PST by SouthernBoyupNorth
(FORTUNE Magazine) - You probably don't know it, but the answer to America's gasoline addiction could be under the hood of your car. More than five million Tauruses, Explorers, Stratuses, Suburbans, and other vehicles are already equipped with engines that can run on an energy source that costs less than gasoline, produces almost none of the emissions that cause global warming, and comes from the Midwest, not the Middle East.
These lucky drivers need never pay for gasoline again--if only they could find this elusive fuel, called ethanol. Chemically, ethanol is identical to the grain alcohol you may have spiked the punch with in college. It also went into gasohol, that 1970s concoction that brings back memories of Jimmy Carter in a cardigan and outrageous subsidies from Washington. But while the chemistry is the same, the economics, technology, and politics of ethanol are profoundly different. Instead of coming exclusively from corn or sugar cane as it has up to now, thanks to biotech breakthroughs, the fuel can be made out of everything from prairie switchgrass and wood chips to corn husks and other agricultural waste. This biomass-derived fuel is known as cellulosic ethanol. Whatever the source, burning ethanol instead of gasoline reduces carbon emissions by more than 80% while eliminating entirely the release of acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide. Even the cautious Department of Energy predicts that ethanol could put a 30% dent in America's gasoline consumption by 2030.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
What's more, powerful political lobbies in Washington that never used to concern themselves with botanical affairs are suddenly focusing on ethanol. "Energy dependence is America's economic, environmental, and security Achilles' heel," says Nathanael Greene of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a mainstream environmental group. National- security hawks agree. Says former CIA chief James Woolsey: "We've got a coalition of tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, hawks, and evangelicals." (Yes, he did say "evangelicals"--some have found common ground with greens in the notion of environmental stewardship.)
The next five years could see ethanol go from a mere sliver of the fuel pie to a major energy solution in a world where the cost of relying on a finite supply of oil is way too high. As that happens, says Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has become one of the nation's most influential ethanol advocates, "I'm absolutely convinced that without putting any more land under agriculture and without changing our food production, we can introduce enough ethanol in the U.S. to replace the majority of our petroleum use in cars and light trucks."
Filling up on ethanol isn't new. Henry Ford's Model Ts ran on it. What's changing is the cost of distilling ethanol and the advantages it brings over rival fuels. Energy visionaries like to dream about hydrogen as the ultimate replacement for fossil fuels, but switching to it would mean a trillion-dollar upheaval--for new production and distribution systems, new fuel stations, and new cars. Not so with ethanol--today's gas stations can handle the most common mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, called E85, with minimal retrofitting. It takes about 30% more ethanol than gasoline to drive a mile, and the stuff is more corrosive, but building a car that's E85-ready adds only about $200 to the cost. Ethanol has already transformed one major economy: In Brazil nearly three-quarters of new cars can burn either ethanol or gasoline, whichever happens to be cheaper at the pump, and the nation has weaned itself off imported oil.
Oh My God! Brazil is no longer dependant on forgien oil... Why aren't we? Good for Brazil.... If they can accomplish this with thier economy why can't we?
Brazil has a lot of offshore oil, we can't tap into ours.
It would help, but you still need natural gas for the boilers. You can use stuff like landfill and sanitary sewer gas but that is limited a bit.
I say the faster we burn up the world's crude oil, the faster we'll switch to new energy sources.
Let the revolution begin.
Probably the only correct statement in this entire article.
Even with our amazing agricultural abilities, we do not have the current ability to keep up with the demand that would be incurred, should we attempt to go to even 20% replacement.
I can't recall the source for that, but I distinctly remember reading it, along with the fallacy that we can all sometime just pull up to McDonalds and order a fillup of the oil that was just used to cook our french fries.
Most folks simply do not realize the absolutely mind-boggling amount of energy consumed in this nation on a daily basis.
Corn and grain spirits ain't gonna solve it.
Granted, there is potential for making a dent, but as of right now, it is a small dent.
Yet another ill-informaed article from a major "News" provider - how this stuff gets past reporters who passed third grade science is beyond me.
Ethanol blends can reduce overall CO2 emissions, but only by around 5 percent compared with regular gasoline, so such vehicles still produce substantial amounts of CO2.
Yeah, but they sure make you feel better!
Good one!
But why work? The technology to distill ethanol is simple. Compare the capital and operation costs of bubble towers, catalytic crackers, etc. needed in petroleum refining to the cost of a cellulose----cellulase--->starch--->acid/diastase--->sugar---zymase---->EtOH process and you could throw more than half a petroleum plant's hardware away. You could do most of it in a bathtub.
I am not sure how vapor pressure enters into FI engines, where the fuel is atomized, but we already put low boilers like butane in Winter Blends. Ethyl Ether would work fine in an ethanol system.
In the so-called shortage of the early '70's, a few private pilots were using street gas. They would reach 5000 Feet, the butane would boil, they'd vapor lock and involuntarily decent/restart/repeat as needed. A good way of picking buttons off the seat.
Size of economies:
US:$12.37 trillion (2005 est.)
Brazil:$1.58 trillion (2005 est.)
US Roadways:
total: 6,393,603 km
paved: 4,180,053 km (including 74,406 km of expressways)
unpaved: 2,213,550 km (2003)
Brazil:
Roadways:
total: 1,724,929 km
paved: 94,871 km
unpaved: 1,630,058 km (2000)
So, with Brazil being the worlds 11th largest economy, slightly larger than California alone, with little or no oil reserves of their own, makes a really, really poor example.
Yikes!
If brazil is actually energy independent because of use of ethanol, then there is some energy input that the writer of the article is not aware of. It is perhaps a more convenient motor fuel than say natural gas or coal.
In any case, if a country is willing to pay enough, they can be energy independent.....even the us.
Doesn't ethanol eat away older cars' fuel lines and such? (Not sniping - just trying to clear up what may be old questions)
The Hate Ethanol Chorus will be along soon to delight us with their flat-earth ignorance.
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