Posted on 05/09/2006 10:08:21 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Yea now all we need is a climate which will allow us to grow that much sugar ;) Seriously Brazil is a bad comparison because the sugar they grow makes it far easier to get ethanol.
That being said this is good news and hopefully things like this will begin to add up and relieve some of the strain on world demand..
well we went through this nonsense with Jimmy Carter so we've had plenty of time to get off the foreign oil addiction.
Instead of talking, the Brazilians have gotten their act together.
Hopefully Americans are paying attention this time.
there are plenty of crops out there that can be made into ethanol, thank you.
and whatever the cost; its cheaper than the life of one more American G.I.!
However, the technology to use synthetic enzymes to break down celluose into simple sugers that can be fermented into ethanol appears to be only a couple years or so away from being practical for large scale production, and it would be far more efficient. If oil prices remain high, ethanol produced in that manner should be cheaper than gasoline even after factoring in that there is less energy per gallon of ethanol.
However, conventional igasoline engines can only handle mixtures of up to about 10% to 15% ethanol, and they don't run as efficiently on such mixtures.
If we want to be able to start using ethanol for a significant percentage of our fuel in cars we need to build cars that work with higher percentages of ethanol, and that do so more efficiently. If you want people to start buying flex fuel cars, you need at least some limited availability of the fuel now at a competitive price, even though it's production costs aren't competitive yet.
The subsidies encourage the development of the cars that can use it, and it encourages the investment in the technology to make ethanol production more efficient by demonstrating that there would be a market for the product they are investing developing.
You'll have to decide for yourself if you think that's a good use of our taxes.
You better not tell that to the sugar beet farmers in CA.
>>The only economical form of ethanol production is from sugar beets, which don't grow in the USA.
Maybe we should stop giving some of it away to countries that hate Americans. In any case, there are other sources for making ethyl alcohol..
Biodiesel is another alternative fuel with great potential.
However, ethanol and gas-ethanol fuel mixtures expand to rapidly when compressed to detonation. It sharper energy impulse would cause to much wear on the engine.
Ethanol can handle greater compression than gasoline before detonation, and wouldn't be as harsh as gasoline if compressed to detonation, but it's still not practical to use it in a diesel type engine.
You need to be able to use higher compression rations to compress more fuel into the same size cylinder since it's less energy dense than gasoline, however you still need to compress it short of detonation and have it be ignited by a spark plug and burn in a more controlled manner to smooth out the release of energy.
Jimmy Carter's incompetence in both foreign and domestic policies not only produced oil prices that when adjusted were the highest in our history, but his efforts at price controls created shortages where people were waiting hours in line to fill their cars with gasoline and the gas stations were having to close because they simply couldn't get fuel.
As soon as Carter left office all those problems disappeared.
Instead of talking, the Brazilians have gotten their act together.
I am extremely impressed with what the Brazilians have done.
However, we aren't in the same climate as Brazil, we have a greater population density, and we have much greater fuel needs.
Brazil can grow crops that produce more fermentable sugars per acre than we can, and they have a longer growing season.
Because of the warmer climate they can also use higher percentage mixtures of ethanol with gasoline without running into the issues we face with doing that in cold weather.
Hopefully Americans are paying attention this time.
People are paying attention, but we can't meet more than a small percentage of our fuel needs through growing corn for fermentable sugar. We run into problems of having enough farmland, and in a lot of the country we simply don't have close to enough fresh water for irrigation.
However, producing ethanol from cellulose is much more promising. However, the technology to break down the cellulose into fermentable sugars is being estimated as taking another two or three years to develop to the point where it can be used to in large scale production of ethanol.
From your post #45:
there are plenty of crops out there that can be made into ethanol, thank you.
and whatever the cost; its cheaper than the life of one more American G.I.!
If you wanted to try produce enough ethanol using current technologies you would have to divert huge amounts of water to irrigation and would result in many millions of people dying of thirst.
Acting like there's nothing preventing us from doing the same thing Brazil is doing and invoking incredible sacrifices of our brave servicemen part of an argument based in ignorance rather than fact is something I find highly offensive.
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