Ethanol war brewing

Business 2.0 mag/ CNN ^ | 27 june 06 | Chris Taylor

[bmwcyle]

If this information is out there why are we headed in the wrong direction?

[P-40]

If this information is out there why are we headed in the wrong direction?

There is a lot already invested in ethanol production, marketing, distribution, and so forth. Introducing a new product at this stage will take some time, but it will happen. The profit motive will dictate the change unless government policy delays the change.

[appeal2]

Due to ethanol's two carbon molecules, it attracts water and thereby becomes corrosive.

[appeal2]

I believe the current catlytic converter might help this.

[appeal2]

Only part of the solution. There's over 100 million cars out there that run on gasoline. They cannot be converted to diesel. They consume 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Diesel is probably only 10 percent of that. If we cut our gasoline consumption by 20 percent, there will be a major glut of gasoline in the world. Europe runs on diesel in almost the exact opposite proportion to us running on gasoline. To them, gasoline is an unwanted bi-product that they are only too happy to sell to us idiotic Americans. Problem, boutiquification has meant that Europe's gasoline can't be imported.

Butanol burns extremely clean and eliminates most pollutants so maybe the EPA can count that towards Eurpo imports.

[P-40]

I might as well repost this butanol link...

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?siteid=mktw&dist=moreover&guid={5EE0ED96-7A54-4DEA-9E4B-9018970D5E47}

[thinkthenpost]

It is my understanding and I may be misinformed, that processing ethanol from sugar is more efficient, or the ethanol you get has more energy available that corn ethanol. In other words with corn ethanol you lose 5 mpg versus gasoline and with sugar ethanol you only lose 4 mpg. Sugar cane does not easily grow anywhere, but sugar beats on the other hand grow (as long as they get enough water) everywhere. I think if it is true that there are better forms of ethanol than from corn, the industry ought to move in that direction rather than get stuck on one crop that isn't the best.

[P-40]

there are better forms of ethanol than from corn

My understanding is that the feedstock is not as important as where you are trying to get the feedstock to grow. Corn is best in some areas but not so great in others. If you are having to grow corn using irrigation and/or a lot of fertilization, then a different crop might be the better bet. Some crops that grow well as a summer crop up north might make a good winter crop down south if you wanted to get two crops per year from one field also. There are a lot of interesting dynamics involved...and I do worry that those crops with a powerful lobby and entrenched subsidies involved are going to get more of the pie than they deserve. And just as an aside, why do we have an import tariff on ethanol right now? Is it because of not wanting to import ethanol...or because of foreign policy as it relates to sugar. The answer unfortunately is the latter is the biggest reason...and the hardest to change.

[TKDietz]

That could very well be true. Ethanol has a huge head start though. Prices are up now but that's mainly because of government created demand. Production costs for ethanol are currently far lower than production costs for bio-butanol, and as farmers and ethanol producers increase their yields with newer technology they've gotten better and that trend will likely continue. There is a lot of talk about new technology bringing the costs of bio-butanol down, but so far no one is getting close to the projected low production costs. Bio-butanol may be the future but ethanol is here and now. We'll see a lot more of it in the near term. If bio-butanol production technologies improve and truly do bring costs down to around the same as those for ethanol as they seem to think they can do (on butanol.com they claim production costs will eventually drop to $1.20 a gallon), bio-butanol will be a far better deal than ethanol and will take its place. The ethanol producers won't go out of business though, they'll just convert to bio-butanol production. The infrastructure will be in place for it. It's just another form of alcohol so it shouldn't be too costly to switch over to processes used to produce bio-butanol instead of ethanol. If bio-butanol is the future, then ethanol will help us get there.

[TKDietz]

I'm no expert on ethanol but I've been reading about it a lot lately. I don't think the feedstock is so much determinative of the energy content of the final product as the processes used to distill and refine it. Obviously they have to remove as much water as possible from the final product, which they do by using stills designed to produce extremely high alcohol content on the first run, leaving them a product that is around 95% alcohol. Then they use chemicals or filtration processes to remove most of the remaining water. There are also ways to reduce the oxygen content which improves the energy content of the final product but those are expensive.

The main reason you hear people talking about how corn is not the best feedstock is that you cannot get as many gallons of ethanol per acre from corn as you could from crops like sugarcane or sugar beets. The problem is that there are only limited parts of this country where either of these crops flourish, especially sugarcane.

There are some additional problems with sugar beets that make them a less cost effective feedstock. Cost breakdowns I've seen show the cost per gallon from sugar beets being higher than that for corn even though you can produce more gallons per acre from sugar beets grown in the few parts of the country where they do really well. Yes you could probably get them to grow just about anywhere, but they will not do well enough to make them an economically viable crop but in a few rather small areas of the country. I think Michigan is the biggest producer in this country. They don't do worth a flip in the hot south where I live. They end up being smaller and really susceptible to disease. They're also tough to harvest because they grow unbelievably strong and long roots. Most of the sugar sold in this country comes from beets grown here, not cane, by the way, and that's another problem. We've really protected our sugar industry. Prices are kept high, and sugar beet producers would lose money if they tried to produce ethanol rather than refined sugar products.

Corn though can be grown in most parts of the country and there is a huge part of the country where it can be grown without irrigation. No doubt there are some better crops for use as ethanol feedstocks, but corn appears to be the best one we have currently being mass produced. In the future if methods for producing cellulosic ethanol prove to be as cost effective as anticipated, things like prairie grass will replace corn as the ethanol feedstock of choice, but we'll still probably see excess corn and other excess food crops being used as well, which is better than having the government buy the excess and in many cases letting it go to waste, or paying farmers not to plant.

For a moment I thought you were suggesting that we used refined sugar for ethanol production. Rereading your post I don't think that's what you meant, but just in case I'll say that refined sugar is not economical for ethanol production. The more refinement a feedstock undergoes before fermentation, the more expensive the final product will be. Dried corn for instance is less economical for use in ethanol production than fresh corn. But a lot of dried corn gets used because drying it makes it easier to transport, and makes long storage possible for year 'round ethanol production.

[TKDietz]

I said in my last post to you that I though Michigan was the biggest sugar beet producer in this country. I meant to say Minnesota. I think Michigan is number four or five. Ohio also produces them. Most production is in cooler northern states.

[thinkthenpost]

Interesting stuff, I was under the impression sugar beets were more robust than you indicate.
I hope ADM and others lobbying efforts don't lead to adoption of a second rate fuel, (I don't have anything against ADM).

[ctdonath2]

In high school some kids squirted some into a locker. Half the school stank horribly the rest of the day (and maybe the next).

[TKDietz]

I'm posting a map showing where sugar beets are grown commercially. I'm no good at HTML so I can only say I hope it comes out okay. I've seen a better map with more information, but I couldn't find it when I looked today. This one does though show how small the regions suitable for commercial sugar beet production are. It may be possible to develop new varieties of sugar beets that would be commercially viable in other parts of the country, but so far that hasn't happened.

[TKDietz]

Bigger and linked to the site (I hope):

[oyez]

The carboxcilic acid of butanol smalls just like puke.

[stboz]

Make that carboxylic....and it does stink!

[P-40]

Make that carboxylic....and it does stink!

Well...they add compounds to natural gas to make it stink....so maybe they can add something to carboxylic to make it smell better. :)

[2harddrive]

Why not just produce ehhanol from ethane gas (fractionated from the NGLs produced from oil and gas wells) and water? MUCH cheaper,,,and you can DRINK it, too!

[okie01]

If this information is out there why are we headed in the wrong direction?

Because ethanol was already in broadspread production. Heretofore, it was a by-product of animal feed production.

That's why, by the way, all the "ethanol requires more energy to produce than it creates" complaints are misleading. The energy used to produce ethanol also produces a significant quantity of animal feed.